The restoration of salmon and steelhead populations to their historic distribution in the Elwha River is cause for celebration. Salmon populations are likely to effectively recolonize the watershed as access to quality habitat above the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams is reestablished and habitat at the dam sites and below is improved. The HSRG believes there is every reason to be optimistic about the future of salmon and steelhead populations and the value they provide to the community. The main concern the HSRG has with the Elwha Plan is the potential for unintended negative consequences of excessive and prolonged hatchery influence. This issue should be addressed through a strengthened adaptive management component, including detailed monitoring procedures and protocols, to ensure that the benefits of hatchery intervention outweigh the risks. Revised adaptive management and monitoring plans should be developed as soon as possible and subjected to peer review before implementation.

In general, hatcheries can play a significant role in the conservation, recovery, and rebuilding of natural

populations of salmon and steelhead and have the potential to provide opportunities for sustainable

harvest. The HSRG identified the following specific benefits that may result from implementation of the Restoration Plan:

• Adding viable natural populations that provide support for the broader Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs) as a whole.
• The strategy is likely to be successful at preserving the existing genetic resources of salmon and steelhead throughout the period of adverse habitat conditions during and immediately following dam removal in the Elwha Basin.
• Nutrification resulting from increased natural spawning will benefit ecological processes in the Elwha Basin (Appendix A).
• Larger spawner abundance may help improve spawning habitat through bioturbation.
• The project as currently planned could provide harvest opportunities through selective harvest of hatchery fish.

The risks associated with hatchery programs are well‐documented; they include adverse genetic, ecological, and behavioral changes; increased potential for overharvest; and transmission of disease from hatchery fish to native stocks. The HSRG identified the following as specific risks associated with implementation of the Elwha Plan, as proposed:

• Prolonged hatchery influence may lead to loss of fitness of natural populations, potentially resulting in reduced or delayed restoration and loss of long‐term sustainable harvest opportunities.
• Ecological interactions of hatchery fish may reduce or delay recovery of native species, especially at the juvenile life stages during the recolonization phase, before ecological function within the Elwha Basin have been restored.
• Inadequate program monitoring may lead to management decisions that reduce or delay recovery, rather than promoting it, and prevent managers from identifying and testing alternatives that could be more effective.
• Inadequate monitoring may lead to poorly‐informed management responses to external events and conditions (e.g., changing climate conditions) that affect program outcomes.
• Inadequate monitoring and evaluation represents a lost opportunity to gain knowledge that could lead to more effective restoration and long‐term fisheries management in the Elwha Basin and elsewhere.
• Prolonged influence of hatchery fish may lead to loss of fitness of natural populations, potentially resulting in reduced or delayed restoration and loss of long‐term sustainable harvest opportunities.

The greatest concern the HSRG has about the likelihood of success of the restoration program is the use  of an extensive hatchery program combined with the lack of a structured adaptive management process driven by an effective monitoring and evaluation program. The monitoring program should be designed to focus on those key assumptions that: a) directly affect decisions that move the project toward success, b) involve uncertainty about the “true” value, and c) can be measured with sufficient accuracy

and precision to be useful.

Based on extensive analysis of hatchery programs and salmon and steelhead populations throughout the Pacific Northwest, the HSRG has identified three fundamental principles that must be followed for hatchery programs to be effective tools in management. These are:

1. Clear and explicit goals
2. Scientific defensibility
3. Monitoring and evaluation that drives adaptive decision‐making

When hatchery programs do not adhere to these principles, the likelihood of success is reduced and the risk of unintended negative consequences increases. The Elwha Plan must be improved in all three of these areas.

Issues related to goal setting are addressed in the species‐specific chapters that follow (Chapters 2 through 6), as is the scientific defensibility principle. Clear and explicit goals are needed to define a program’s path, while the scientific defensibility principle simply means that the scientific method Review of the Elwha River Fish Restoration Plan and Accompanying HGMPs should be applied (Platt 1964), where a working hypothesis is developed under which the proposed strategy will contribute to achieving the program goals, while avoiding negative consequences.

The third principle requires two things that are missing in the Elwha Plan: 1) a structured annual decision‐making process with explicit, predefined decision rules, and 2)a decision‐focused monitoring and evaluation plan. Without a structured adaptive management process supported by an effective monitoring and evaluation plan, the restoration program may fail in several ways:

1. Wrong decisions may be made, leading to delay or failure to meet the full restoration goal. For example, the longer the termination of hatchery intervention is delayed, the slower the recovery of fitness. For example, it is possible that if the abundance trigger for ending hatchery outplants is too high or poorly measured, recovery may be delayed for decades. Hence, monitoring performance indicators that drive decisions are critical to project success.
2. If uncertainties affecting the decision rules are not effectively addressed, not only may achievement of goals be delayed, but explanations for failure will be lacking. In other words, we failed because we were not looking. If we don’t know why specific strategies fail, there is little hope that effective remedial action will be undertaken.
3. Removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams offers a unique opportunity to learn about watershed restoration processes. Suppose, for example, that spontaneous colonization is very rapid and efficient (which some scientists argue to be the case). If we fail to recognize and understand this, not only will we delay success by employing ineffective strategies, we also will have wasted valuable financial resources in the process. In other words, when we fail and learn nothing from it, there is a double loss to society.