05 May 21
Lack of Funding is RSN’s Biggest Problem
We begin our May Fundraising Drive tomorrow. The biggest challenge we face is pulling in the basic funding we need to run the organization.
We have the people, we need a reasonable effort on donations. This is a bridge we must cross.
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Founder, Reader Supported News
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05 May 21
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Ken Klippenstein and Alex Emmons | Border Police Wants Bite of Burgeoning Anti-Drone Industry
Ken Klippenstein and Alex Emmons, The Intercept
Excerpt: "Citing threats from drug cartels to migrants, CBP's interest dovetails with a million effort by the U.S. government to counter small drones.
n April, U.S. Army officers met with representatives from Aurora Flight Sciences, a Virginia-based subsidiary of Boeing, to test whether the company’s technology could intercept and bring down an enemy drone. Aurora was one of three companies that took part in the test at the army’s Yuma Proving Ground, just 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona.
A marketing video shows how the system works: The AI-guided drone uses ground-based radar to locate other drones (called UAVs or UAS, short for unmanned aerial vehicles or unmanned aircraft systems) from range. When it gets close to an “enemy” drone, it “locks on with an onboard sensor” and fires a small projectile. The object fouls up the helicopter blades, and the “enemy” drone falls to the ground.
The demonstration was the first of its kind, held by the Defense Department’s Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office — the Joint C-sUAS Office, also called JCO — and a second one is planned for September. According to U.S. Army Col. Greg Soulé, director of the acquisition and resources division at JCO, who briefed reporters in April, the test came after 35 separate companies submitted white papers in response to a January request for information.
The demonstration was specifically focused on ways to defeat small drones in such a way as to “minimize collateral damage,” said Leland Browning, deputy director of JCO. “For example, if you were operating in urban terrain, and you wanted to minimize the amount of collateral damage from taking out one of these enemy UAS,” Browning continued, acknowledging the risk drones can pose to bystanders and infrastructure.
The tests are part of a rapid effort by the U.S. government to develop an answer to small drones, which are increasingly being used by terror groups and drug cartels. The staggering demand — hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of funding for research, in contrast to the relatively cheap cost of small consumer drones — has already created a private economy to produce counter-drone technology for the military, involving dozens of aerospace and defense companies.
In the current fiscal year, the Defense Department is looking to spend at least $404 million on research and development and at least $83 million on procurement of counter-UAS technology, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. And other agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, are looking to capture a share of the market, raising concerns that the efforts could lead to further surveillance and militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.
A review of contracting documents, as well as internal CBP documents and interviews with officials, shows that criminals using small drones, often to evade law enforcement, are now a major concern for CBP, which is casting a wide net looking for solutions to the problem.
In February, CBP put out a request for information to private companies, seeking ways to respond to drones, including by radio frequency jamming and “kinetic attack” — a broad term that could encompass everything from surface-to-air projectiles to the small drones being researched by the Army. As the request states, “CBP is interested in learning about the availability of systems to counter the threat of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones, which includes the capability to detect, identify, classify, track, and/or mitigate these threats.”
Requests for information are used to gather information about a certain product or service and often precede acquisition of that product or service. CBP, which currently uses drones for surveillance purposes, says it’s researching these capabilities in order to respond to drones used by criminal organizations “for smuggling activities and for monitoring CBP operations.”
“The RFI is merely that,” Jason Givens, a CBP press officer, told The Intercept, “a request for information on the current availability and technological capabilities of a Counter Unmanned Aircraft System (C-UAS) to address current and future threats and gaps regarding unmanned aircraft systems. It does not mean that CBP is interested in obtaining ‘kinetic attack’ capabilities.”
There is some basis for CBP’s drone concerns. Mexico’s defense secretary last month said that drug cartels have used drones carrying explosives to attack law enforcement and military personnel. This echoes the Islamic State’s widely reported use of small drones to drop grenades on targets. While there’s no evidence of anything that dire happening in the U.S., people have pleaded guilty to retrieving drugs delivered by drone. Southwest border residents have reportedly seen a rise in drone activity recently.
It’s likely that CBP’s efforts to counter drones will become a part of the trend toward militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border. That trend had seemed to reach its peak under the Trump administration, which deployed thousands of U.S. troops there during his presidency and declared a national emergency to unilaterally fund the construction of a $15 billion border wall without Congress’s approval. While President Joe Biden revoked the emergency declaration, many of the troops remain.
Yet these attempts to crack down on the border have given rise to more sophisticated methods of circumvention, of which drones are a prominent example, a CBP intelligence agent not authorized to speak publicly told The Intercept. Drones have become a major concern for CBP as they are increasingly used for reconnaissance purposes by cartels and also by guides who assist undocumented migrants crossing the border, he explained. Yet he was skeptical of the idea that drones with kinetic attack abilities were a practical solution, instead saying they represent the kind of government waste endemic to the military. “The counter [drone] stuff seems like Soldier of Fortune fluff,” the CBP official said. “Like, ‘Hey this would be cool, taser rounds you fire from a shotgun!’”
Even so, CBP is examining its air capabilities, having looked at equipping its air assets with sophisticated sensor systems as well as laser designators to “highlight TOIs,” or targets of interest, according to an excerpt from an internal CBP study from May 2019 obtained by The Intercept. CBP has a history of using lasers to pinpoint migrants for physical pursuit. Asked about the lasers, Givens, the CBP spokesperson, said: “CBP has not, and currently is not evaluating deploying laser designators as a counter-UAS device.”
The study, a document exploring modifications to the technical specifications of CBP’s air assets, doesn’t specify any targets but does catalog threats it says CBP faces at the border, including terrorists, drug smugglers, and “undocumented aliens.” A source familiar with the study expressed grave concerns that undocumented migrants were being lumped in with legitimate threats like drug traffickers. “CBP confronts a variety of threats at America’s maritime borders including terrorism, trafficking, and illegal entry,” the study reads. “To address these threats, AMO” — CBP’s Air and Marine Operations — “requires an integrated set of capabilities across a family of surveillance aircraft,” including drones but also planes and helicopters.
Armed drones were a relatively rare technology in the early 2000s, when the U.S. conducted the first post-9/11 drone strikes in Afghanistan and Yemen in 2002. But in the time since, other countries have raced to develop their own armed drones. Turkey has used its drones in Libya and Syria; the United Arab Emirates has used Chinese-made drones in Yemen. Azerbaijan used low-cost, commercial drones to devastating effect in its conflict with Armenia last year.
The federal government has maintained interest in counter-drone technology for years. In 2018, Congress passed legislation giving federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency, broad authority to disrupt, seize, or “use reasonable force” against a drone so long as it would “mitigate a credible threat.”
But interest in counter-drone technology really exploded in September 2019, after a swarm of small drones and cruise missiles, which the U.S. and Saudis blamed on Iran, damaged Saudi oil facilities, shutting down half of the country’s oil production for a few days. Iran has denied involvement in the attack, but the U.N. investigators concluded that the attack could not have come from the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group in Yemen, which claimed credit.
The attack was cheap, highly effective, and evaded the technology Saudi Arabia uses to monitor threats to its airspace; the U.S. military responded by investing heavily in research to counter these small drones. The military’s official strategy for countering drones references the attack, stating: “Iranian proxies are actively conducting kinetic operations with sUAS [small unmanned aerial systems]. The 2019 attacks on key Saudi Arabian oil facilities demonstrated how sUAS can be used to attack and disrupt critical infrastructure.”
But importing counter-drone technology from a military to a domestic law enforcement context introduces a host of issues, some of which CBP’s own request acknowledges. The request notes that some “technical methods” to bring down drones “are likely not legal for any entity other than those conducted by the DHS [of which CBP is a part], Department of Justice, Department of Defense, or Department of Energy.”
The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concerns that the 2018 legislation would give the Department of Homeland Security “nearly unchecked power to shoot down drones in the U.S. and take other significant actions domestically with virtually no checks to prevent abuses or misuse.”
The potential for abuse stretches beyond the possibility that CBP might target other drones with munitions. The request for information shows that CBP is also seeking information on threat “mitigation” — a euphemism it goes on to define as “neutralize”— methods that appear to include various forms of electronic hacking.
When told about CBP’s request for information about countering drones, Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, raised similar concerns.
“The destruction or seizure of drones means depriving people of their property. It can also mean depriving reporters or ordinary people from recording illegal or abusive government activities,” Stanley said in an email. “Congress has passed a bad law granting ambiguously wide authority to agencies to do this with insufficient checks and balances. Agencies can also intercept communications without a warrant or notice under their counter-drone authorities.”
Civil liberties concerns over CBP’s use of drones are hardly abstract. Last year, CBP drew broad criticism when it dispatched a Reaper drone to surveil Minneapolis during protests over the police killing of George Floyd. In August of 2019, CBP also confirmed to The Intercept that it had used drones to surveil Dakota Access pipeline protests. While CBP possesses many air assets, including Predator B drones under its Air and Marine Operations branch, the closest CBP has come to actually arming their own air assets is when they put a sniper in a helicopter, according to a source familiar with the agency’s capabilities.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, testifies before a House financial services committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Facebook Board Upholds Decision to Ban Trump, Demands Clearer Guidelines
Shannon Bond, NPR
Bond writes: "Facebook was justified in its decision to suspend former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the company's oversight board said on Wednesday."
That means the company does not have to reinstate Trump's access to Facebook and Instagram immediately. But the panel said the company was wrong to impose an indefinite ban and said Facebook has six months to either restore Trump's account, make his suspension permanent, or suspend his for a specific period of time.
Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump's accounts in January after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, saying he used his account to "incite violent insurrection." Other social networks also kicked off the then-president, with Twitter going as far as banning Trump for good.
"In applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the Board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities," the Oversight Board wrote in the announcement of its decision. "The Board declines Facebook's request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty."
Facebook, following the ruling, will now "determine an action that is clear and proportionate," Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications Nick Clegg said in a statement. Until then, he said, Trump's accounts will remain suspended.
The decision is the most high-profile and high-stakes case the panel, made up of outside experts, has weighed in its short existence. Permanently stripping Trump of the ability to reach his 35 million Facebook followers and 24 million Instagram followers is likely to stoke criticism that the tech company is biased against conservatives — a claim many on the right have made for years without evidence.
The board's ruling could also set a precedent for how Facebook treats posts by other political leaders, and as a model for other companies that are struggling to balance speech rights against potential harms. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long said the company should not be the arbiter of truth and has argued for a hands-off approach to political speech in particular, saying it's already highly scrutinized.
The social networks' moves to ban Trump in the wake of Jan. 6 immediately caused an uproar and added fuel to a raging debate over whether tech companies should determine who gets a voice online.
Republican politicians and right-wing commentators said it was evidence of Silicon Valley's alleged anti-conservative bias. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she found Twitter's ban "problematic" because she believes "the right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance."
But others say Facebook's ban was overdue. They argued the company had given Trump too much leeway to break its rules because of its lenient stance on political speech and posts it deemed "newsworthy" and therefore kept up, even if they violated Facebook's policies.
Zuckerberg said at the time of the suspension in January that he believed the risks of allowing Trump to keep using the platform was "simply too great." When Facebook referred the decision to the oversight board several weeks later, the company said it believed the move "was necessary and right," given the "extraordinary circumstances."
The board says it received 9,666 comments on Trump's suspension. Many researchers and civil rights groups said Facebook was right to ban Trump because of his efforts to undermine the election and encourage violence. A submission from Republican lawmakers accused Facebook of bias against conservatives.
The board also received a "user statement" on behalf of Trump, as part of its deliberations.
The former president has teased that he may not return to any of the major platforms and says he's considering launching his own social media network. On Tuesday Trump, added a new page on his website with a feed of messages — effectively, a blog. There's no ability for other people to comment or reply, but there are buttons to share the posts to Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook created the oversight board to review the hardest calls it makes about what content it does and does not allow users to post. The board began accepting cases in October. It is designed to review a small number of cases each year, and Facebook has agreed to abide by its decisions. The panel can also make recommendations about the company's policies.
The panel, which is funded by Facebook through a $130 million independent trust, is currently made up of 20 experts from around the world, ranging from specialists in law and human rights, a Nobel Peace laureate from Yemen, the vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, the former prime minister of Denmark, and several journalists.
Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao. (photo: StarTribune)
ALSO SEE: Derek Chauvin Files for New Trial After
Murder Conviction in George Floyd Case
Feds Plan to Indict Chauvin, Other Three Ex-Officers on Civil Rights Charges
Andy Mannix, The Star Tribune
Mannix writes: "Leading up to Derek Chauvin's murder trial, Justice Department officials had spent months gathering evidence to indict the ex-Minneapolis police officer on federal police brutality charges, but they feared the publicity frenzy could disrupt the state's case."
Ex-cop would face federal charges in two cases; three others just in Floyd case.
eading up to Derek Chauvin's murder trial, Justice Department officials had spent months gathering evidence to indict the ex-Minneapolis police officer on federal police brutality charges, but they feared the publicity frenzy could disrupt the state's case.
So they came up with a contingency plan: If Chauvin were found not guilty on all counts or the case ended in a mistrial, they would arrest him at the courthouse, according to sources familiar with the planning discussions.
The backup plan would not be necessary. On April 20, the jury found Chauvin guilty on all three murder and manslaughter counts, sending him to the state's most secure lockdown facility to await sentencing, and avoiding the riots many feared could engulf the city once again.
Now, with Chauvin's state trial out of the way, federal prosecutors are moving forward with their case. They plan to ask a grand jury to indict Chauvin and the other three ex-officers involved in George Floyd's killing — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao — on charges of civil rights violations, a source said.
If the grand jury voted to indict, the former officers would face the new civil rights charges on top of the state's cases, meaning all four could be headed toward yet another criminal trial in federal court.
The backup arrest strategy and meticulous planning over the timing of charges illustrates the complicated synchronicity of two parallel investigations into the most high-profile case of police brutality in decades. Over the better part of the last year, as special prosecutor Keith Ellison's team pursued murder and manslaughter charges, federal authorities have been mounting their own case in private before a grand jury — a group of 23 citizens who meet in secret to hear evidence and ultimately decide if there is probable cause to charge.
Proving how delicate outside publicity was, Judge Peter Cahill repeatedly expressed frustration during jury selection in Chauvin's murder trial about the announcement of a $27 million payout from the city of Minneapolis to Floyd's family. As a result, two seated jurors had to be dismissed because they said it affected their ability to be impartial.
Under the contingency arrest plan, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office would have charged Chauvin by criminal complaint — a quicker alternative for a federal charge that doesn't require a grand jury — so they could arrest him immediately, and then asked a grand jury for an indictment, according to sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Prosecutors want to indict Chauvin in connection to two cases: for pinning Floyd down by his neck for more than 9 ½ minutes in May 2020, and for the violent arrest of a 14-year-old boy in 2017. In the latter case, Chauvin struck the teen on the head with his flashlight, then grabbed him by the throat and hit him again, according to court documents.
The other three ex-officers would be charged only in connection with Floyd's death.
The federal case will be prosecuted by Justice Department attorneys in Minnesota and Washington, D.C.
The charges would run in addition to the Justice Department's civil investigation into whether Minneapolis police engage in a pattern and practice of unlawful behavior. Justice officials announced this investigation the day after Chauvin's guilty verdict, another calculated move designed to avoid interfering with the state's trial.
A spokeswoman for the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment on the potential charges or the contingency arrest plan.
Last state case was in 2019
Over the past decade, federal prosecutors have brought civil rights charges against officers in the U.S. 41 times per year on average, according to a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
The most recent federal civil rights trial against a Minnesota officer occurred in 2019, for St. Paul officer Brett Palkowitsch. Palkowitsch kicked an unarmed 52-year-old Black man who was handcuffed and being attacked by a police K-9, leaving him with seven broken ribs and two collapsed lungs. Throughout the trial, Justice Department prosecutors from Washington, D.C., painted Palkowitsch as a bully who willfully defied training and seemed to revel in the brutality. The jury found the officer guilty, by standard of using "more force than a reasonable officer would use under the circumstances."
Last summer, as antipolice brutality riots ripped through the Twin Cities, Justice Department officials vowed to pursue a robust investigation into Chauvin and three other officers implicated in Floyd's death. On May 28, in a news conference outside the FBI field office in Brooklyn Center, then-Minnesota U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald said the federal investigation would focus on whether the officers used their authority as law enforcement agents to deprive Floyd of his constitutional rights. MacDonald stepped down earlier this year, heeding the request of the incoming presidential administration for U.S. attorneys in most states to resign. Her permanent replacement has not been named.
Video of Chauvin's arrest of Floyd, on May 25, 2020, was the subject of the most high-profile criminal trial in recent memory. Images of the white officer kneeling on the Black man's neck in Floyd's final moments, as Floyd begged for his mother and bystanders pleaded for mercy, inspired protests and riots the world over. In the days after Floyd's death, the unrest culminated in the burning of the Minneapolis Third Precinct police station, where Chauvin worked.
The second arrest that has been the subject of the federal investigation is lesser known. It was captured on body-camera footage, which prosecutors for the state's case described in court documents, citing it as evidence of Chauvin's brand of violent policing when dealing with suspects who refuse to bend to his will. The video has not been publicly released, but it is described in court records.
On Sept. 4, 2017, Chauvin and another officer responded to a domestic assault, in which a mother said her juvenile son and daughter assaulted her. The officers arrived to find the 14-year-old son lying on the floor in the back of the house, on his phone, and ordered him to get up because he was under arrest.
When the boy refused to comply, Chauvin grabbed him and wordlessly struck the teen in the head with his flashlight multiple times. The video shows Chauvin using a neck restraint, choking the boy unconscious, then placing him in a prone position with a knee in his back for about 17 minutes until paramedics arrived, according to court documents.
In a scene reminiscent of the Floyd arrest, Chauvin held the position even after the child told him that he was in pain and couldn't breathe, and after the mother tried to intervene, prosecutors said. At one point, the boy started bleeding from his ear — from getting hit with the flashlight, he later told paramedics — and he asked to be flipped on his back. He then began crying and again asked to be flipped over, prompting Chauvin to ask if the boy would be "flopping around at all."
"No," the boy responded.
"Better not," Chauvin said. He kept his knee on the child's back. According to prosecutors, Chauvin's report from the incident suggested that the boy "then displayed active resistance to efforts to take him into custody" by "flailing his arms around." He went on to write that the boy, whom he described as "approximately 6'2" and at least 240 pounds," would "escalate his efforts to not be arrested," and because of the boy's large size, Chauvin "deliver[ed] a few strikes to [the juvenile male] to impact his shoulders and hopefully allow control to be obtained."
The fluidity of the grand jury process makes it difficult to predict timing, but a source said they believe the indictments will come down soon. The state trial for Kueng, Lane and Thao, for aiding and abetting Floyd's murder, is scheduled to begin in August.
Former Attorney General William P. Barr was singled out for how he spun the Russia investigation’s findings in a summary of the Mueller report. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
Judge Says Barr Misled on How His Justice Department Viewed Trump's Actions
Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times
Schmidt writes: "A federal judge in Washington accused the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr of misleading her and Congress about advice he had received from top department officials on whether President Donald J. Trump should have been charged with obstructing the Russia investigation and ordered that a related memo be released."
Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in a ruling that the misleading statements were similar to others that William P. Barr, the former attorney general, had made about the Mueller investigation.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington said in a ruling late Monday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Mr. Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.
The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Mr. Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Mr. Trump. But Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the memo contained strategic advice, and that Mr. Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be.
An undocumented immigrant mother and her infant son are released from detention with other families at a bus depot in McAllen, Texas on July 26, 2018. (photo: Loren Elliott/Reuters)
Biden Administration Begins Migrant-Family Reunifications
Nia Prater, New York Magazine
Prater writes:
he Biden administration said Sunday that it will begin to reunite families that were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border during Donald Trump’s tenure. Last month, Axios noted that while President Biden had created a family-reunification task force during his first two weeks in office, his administration had yet to bring any families back together.
Now the New York Times reports that four previously deported parents from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras will be permitted to reenter the United States this week in order to be reunited with their children. They will be in the country on humanitarian parole as other options are explored.
Sources also told the Times that 30 other migrants will likely be allowed into the country within one to two months to reunite with their children.
“The Family Reunification Task Force has been working day and night, across the federal government and with counsel for the families and our foreign partners, to address the prior administration’s cruel separation of children from their parents. Today is just the beginning,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement. “We are reuniting the first group of families, many more will follow, and we recognize the importance of providing these families with the stability and resources they need to heal.”
The Trump administration officially implemented its family separation policy in 2018 with then Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying the government would have a “zero-tolerance policy” toward border crossings from undocumented immigrants. But data shows that migrant children were being separated from their parents as early as October 2017 as part of a DHS pilot program. Mayorkas said two of the mothers coming to the country this week were separated from their children during this time.
At least 5,500 children are believed to have been separated from their parents while the policy was in place. NBC News reported in February that more than 500 children have yet to be reunited with their parents.
Officials announced back in April that the reunification task force was currently reviewing 5,600 files to verify whether there were additional cases of separation that the Biden administration didn’t already know about. The files are from January to July 2017 and are being checked against information in other databases across the government.
A Zapatista woman. (photo: Flickr)
Mexico: Zapatistas Sail to Spain on 500 Anniversary of Cortes' Conquest
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Two men and five women set out on Sunday evening from Isla Mujeres, Mexico's most eastern point, and although Subcomandante Galeano - formerly known as Subcomandante Marcos - said they were traveling with the message that 'the invasion has started,' their mission is more so one of solidarity."
READ MORE
Salmon. (photo: Idaho Statesman)
Key Salmon Populations Cross Alarming Threshold - and More Are Nearing That Line
Eric Barker, Yahoo! News
Barker writes:
early half of the wild spring chinook populations in the Snake River Basin have crossed a critical threshold, signaling they are nearing extinction and without intervention may not persist, according to analysis by the Nez Perce Tribe.
The river’s steelhead populations, while doing better, also face alarming threats to their existence, according to the work.
Modeling conducted by fisheries scientists at the tribe, and shared with other state, federal and tribal fisheries managers in the Columbia Basin, indicates if current trends continue, 77% of Snake River spring chinook populations and 44% of steelhead populations will be in a similar position within four years.
Tribal fisheries officials say a wide array of short- and long-term actions, such as new conservation hatcheries, predator control, increased spill at Snake and Columbia river dams, and adoption of Rep. Mike Simpson’s plan to breach the four Lower Snake River dams, are urgently needed.
Fisheries officials in Oregon and Washington agree dam removal should be considered and other actions above and beyond current salmon and steelhead recovery efforts should be pursued.
The tribe found 42% of Snake River spring chinook and 19% of steelhead have reached the quasi-extinction threshold — an analytical tool used by the federal government to assess the risk of extinction or measure the viability of fish populations. The threshold is tripped when a natural origin population of fish has 50 or fewer spawners return to natal streams for four consecutive years.
“It’s a return, a series of returns, that demonstrates you better do something or you are going to lose your ability to do much of anything,” said David Johnson, director of the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management.
Further modeling by the tribe shows Snake River spring chinook populations that are protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act declined at a rate of 19% over the past 10 years and steelhead fell at an 18% clip during the same time period.
Jay Hesse, director of biological services for Nez Perce Tribal Fisheries, examined data from 31 of the basin’s 32 native spring chinook populations that return to places like the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, Loon Creek, the Grande Ronde River and the Imnaha River. Of those, 13 already meet the threshold and more will soon follow, according to the analysis.
“If you take that 19% rate of decline and say going forward, where does that put us, and project out for five years, you end up with 24 of the 31 populations being below 50 natural origin spawners by 2025,” he said.
Hesse analyzed 16 of the basin’s wild steelhead populations. The sea-run rainbow trout also listed as threatened under the ESA are doing better than chinook, but have declined rapidly during the past five years or so because of poor ocean conditions. The fish have posted a 10-year downward trend of 18%, nearly identical to the nosedive by spring and summer chinook.
That trend projected forward puts seven of the 16 native steelhead populations analyzed by the tribe, or 44%, below the quasi-extinction threshold by 2025. The slide for the big B-run steelhead cherished by anglers is steeper — more like 23%.
“Look at the population names at the very bottom,” Hesse said, pointing to a graph charting the projected decline of steelhead. “The South Fork Salmon, South Fork Clearwater, Lolo Creek, Secesh River — those are all populations that are the B-run life history.”
Representatives from other agencies that manage salmon and steelhead in the basin praised the tribe’s work and said it signals the need for more conservation measures.
“If this isn’t a wake-up call, I’m not sure what folks would be looking for,” said Tucker Jones, ocean and salmon program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“We think their analysis is cause for concern,” said Bill Tweit, special assistant in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fish Program.
“Anytime you have a total spawner abundance less than 50 fish, that really puts you in a bad spot,” said Lance Hebdon, anadromous fish manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, is in the midst of five-year, Endangered Species Act-mandated status reviews for spring chinook and steelhead. Chris Jordan, a scientist with the agency’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, said the tribe’s work largely mirrors a viability assessment his shop is working on. While it’s not uncommon for populations to fluctuate, he said the latest downturn is worrying.
“What becomes more and more concerning as time goes on is if these populations don’t rebound from changes in the ocean.”
Michael Tehan, assistant regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries, said while the data is concerning, the fish have displayed remarkable ability to bounce back from previous low abundance. He also said the agency is looking for additional measures to help the fish.
Earlier this year, scientists with the agency’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center published a paper projecting that climate change could cause already low survival rates for Snake River spring chinook to plummet by 90% and the fish could face extinction by 2060. The study, led by Lisa Crozier, said urgent actions are needed to counteract the fish-killing effects of warming oceans and reduced river flows brought on by climate change.
The tribe’s analysis included a chart of the downward trend predicted by the federal scientists with the addition of actual spring chinook returns from 2019 for reference.
“So as grim as her (Crozier’s) projections look, we are saying we are already starting that decline and we are already there at the quasi-extinction threshold,” Hesse said. “I think it adds urgency that this is going to continue.”
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