A panel of scientist says policymakers guiding decisions on fish passage
improvements at Columbia-Snake river dams must broaden their approach by
adopting guidelines which emphasize biodiversity and are aimed at long-term
survival goals.

Members of the National Marine Fisheries Service's System Configuration
Team (SCT) says that such considerations are a part of their deliberations.
But short-term improvements in survival of threatened or endangered species
are a necessary part of ...

Reaching agreement on the direction for federal, state and tribal fish
and wildlife restoration efforts is a complicated business -- a fact that
surfaced early in discussions of the fledgling Columbia River Basin Forum.

The first gathering of the Forum's 12-member committee Wednesday in
Portland showed various entities are on similar, though not necessarily
coordinated, tracks toward a common goal of producing a unified, basinwide
recovery plan.

The Forum's founding document ...

The "federal family" has charted a course that could produce
the promised "1999 Decision" in the form of a National Marine
Fisheries Service biological opinion in the late winter-early spring of
2000, according to a NMFS official.

The exact shape and scope of the decision is still under discussion
within a federal caucus but the process will produce at "bare minimum"
a decision on operation and/or modification of four Lower Snake River dams,
according ...

Participants in the development of a multi-species management framework
used a Portland public meeting to tout their project's potential to bring
order to fish and wildlife decision making.

The Monday meeting came at a turning point in the framework committee's
own processes. Work will now shift from the initial development of a broad
range of policy alternatives to the first scientific scrutiny at those
alternatives' potential biological and economic consequences.

The initial ...