BY ROCKY BARKER

Central Idaho's Pahsimeroi River used to be the prime example of how the federal government was promising more than it could deliver on improving habitat to help Idaho's endangered chinook salmon.

Ranchers in the Challis area were pointing fingers at the mind-numbing red tape federal agencies required to get funding to eliminate barriers that blocked spawning streams and to provide more water for fish in the summer and fall.

Agencies like the Bonneville Power Administration said the rules were necessary for accountability; the state said the finger-pointing didn't help fish or irrigators.

But today, 10 miles of cold, spring-fed creek habitat that had been lost for up to a century are home to salmon, thanks to the joint efforts of the BPA, the state, the Custer Soil and Water Conservation District and landowners. This year Idaho biologists found 69 redds, or salmon nests, where last year they saw just two.

The Pahsimeroi has long been a barometer of the health of the Snake River system. This Pahsimeroi success story addresses the main concern for improving salmon habitat cited by U.S. District Judge James Redden when he threw out the 2001 biological opinion that guides how the government protects endangered salmon and manages the Columbia and Snake river dams. When the judge rejected the plan in 2003, he said there wasn't enough evidence that habitat measures to offset the effects of dams were "reasonably certain to occur."

Since then, the Bush administration has offered two new biological opinions: The first was rejected in 2005; the second goes before Redden in a hearing Monday in federal court in Portland.

The Obama administration has issued an addendum to the Bush plan that it hopes addresses Redden's concerns, including how it might move toward breaching four Snake River dams if other measures don't save salmon.

JUDGE LAUDS REGIONAL PROGRESS

But Redden signaled in a letter last week that he sees progress, especially on the habitat front. Federal agencies "deserve credit for working with local, tribal, and state entities to attempt to ensure that ... habitat mitigation measures are reasonably certain to occur," Redden said.

It hasn't been easy, said Karma Bragg of the Custer Soil and Water Conservation District. She helped her neighbors navigate a federal maze to get money to change from flood to sprinkler irrigation. The money also shifted where irrigators diverted water from creeks and rivers to make those waters more hospitable to salmon.

Her experience growing up on a ranch helped state and federal officials persuade Idaho landowners that the changes being offered were preferable to sanctions under the Endangered Species Act, which protects the chinook salmon.

"Originally, I was begging landowners to work with us," Bragg said. "Now I have people knocking on my door all the time."

In the last six years, ranchers have removed two large irrigation ditches that drained a creek, captured waters from two springs and blocked salmon migration during low water. Today, more than 13,000 gallons per minute of clean, cold water flows again into the Pahsimeroi.

In many cases, the ranchers have more water themselves and the value of their land has increased.

"These kind of things get fixed because you get ranchers who are ready to do it, federal agencies who are ready to fund it, and people like Karma who make it happen," said Jeff Allen, who has worked on the Pahsimeroi for the state for six years.

CAN FEDS SHOW REDDEN ENOUGH PROGRESS?

Despite these improvements, the federal government must show Redden that salmon survival will continue to improve and that the 13 stocks of salmon and steelhead throughout the Columbia Basin won't wink out when ocean productivity drops again to early-1990s levels.

Scientists on both sides of the debate agree that the limiting factor for the viability of the four salmon and steelhead stocks that return to the Snake River is the eight dams and reservoirs between the Pacific and spawning grounds in Washington, Idaho and Oregon. Thousands of miles of prime fish habitat are protected in wilderness and roadless national forests of Idaho.

The federal strategy has been to improve passage at the dams with devices that make it easier for young salmon to go through dam spillways, and to increase the amount of spawning and rearing habitat so more salmon leave the headwaters to make the trip through the dams.

"Under the biological opinion, the improvements are going to continue in the habitat and the hydrosystem," said Michael Millstein, a BPA spokesman.

CAN THE CHINOOK SURVIVETHE NEXT DOWNTURN?

But even with recent record numbers of mostly hatchery-raised steelhead and sockeye, the spotty survival rates of wild spring chinook salmon that spawn in the Pahsimeroi illustrate the challenge that remains.

In the mid 1990s, fewer than 1,200 spring chinook returned to the entire state and the percent of smolts that survived and returned to spawn dropped to nearly zero. But when ocean cycles turned in 1997 and the productivity rose dramatically, Snake River survival soared and 43,234 chinook returned by 2001.

It was a different story from 2001 to 2004, as survival dropped and the wild chinook were not spawning at a rate sufficient to replace their own numbers. In 2005 just 7,919 returned to Idaho.

The full salmon life cycle takes about five years. According to the latest data available, the salmon spawned in 2005 should just be able to replace themselves.

These results raise one of the scientific questions that Redden will have to resolve - and one that Idaho Fish and Game Deputy Director Virgil Moore continues to ask himself and his fisheries staff:

"Do we have enough resiliency in the stocks to get us through the next downturn?"

Rocky Barker: 377-6484