CANYON CITY – Grant County officials want some credit for improvements made in steelhead habitat in the John Day Basin, but they say that’s not happening in a regionwide draft recovery plan.

The deadline is coming up on Tuesday, Dec. 23, for public comment on the Oregon portion of the Mid-Columbia River Steelhead Conservation and Recovery Plan. The plan, which is required by the Endangered Species Act, is intended to be a roadmap for local work to restore watersheds and rivers and ensure viable steelhead populations.

County Judge Mark Webb said the Court will press to “decouple” the John Day Basin from the plan, which would pave the way for changing the status of the fish in the local area. The steelhead populations of the Middle Columbia region have been listed as threatened since 1999.

The region covered by the plan includes 17 steelhead populations in the Yakima Basin, Umatilla/Walla Walla rivers, and eastern slopes tributaries of the Cascades, as well as the John Day River Basin.

Of the 17 existing populations, NOAA Fisheries Service says four are at high risk of extinction in the next century and 10 are at moderate risk of extinction.

Three populations – the North Fork John Day, Deschutes Eastside and Fifteen-Mile Creek – are considered viable now.

Webb said that as long as the John Day is linked to areas like the Yakima, there won’t be any relief locally from the Endangered Species Act status.

“The Yakima has four dams on it” – a factor that could keep its steelhead populations on the list for decades to come, he noted.

County Commissioner Boyd Britton is frustrated that although local efforts to improve habitat apparently are working, the region is stuck with a listing that limits activities on the ground – such as grazing – even as the fish populations recover.

“It’s making everything we do out here more difficult,” he said. “We want them to acknowledge that the habitat stuff we’re doing is very, very significant.”

Lynn Hatcher of NOAA Fisheries said last week that the agency hears similar concerns everywhere, but that decoupling is not realistic. He said NOAA wants the region – the full “distinct population segment” – to work together to improve the steelhead populations’ viability.

Hatcher said the planners will review all the comments received by the deadline and use them to adjust and edit the recovery plan.

That process could take about six months, with the revised plan expected to be submitted to the federal government in July 2009. The plan is subject to review every five years, he said.

Hatcher said that the plans are not regulatory documents, but are used to guide recovery efforts. He noted that recovery plans may help local agencies or land managers secure funding for projects to improve steelhead population and habitat.

He also said that in the John Day Basin, one steelhead population – the North Fork – is “in excellent shape.” However, other populations aren’t as healthy. The Upper Mainstem, Lower Mainstem, Middle Fork and South Fork are considered at “moderate risk.”

NOAA, in the Sept. 24 Federal Register, outlined a need to protect freshwater habitat, improve connectivity of habitat and improve habitat management to reduce mingling of hatchery fish onto natural spawning grounds in the John Day subbasin.

That report listed degraded habitat, hatchery effect, and predation/competition/disease among the challenges to the fish.

Webb said that if decoupling is not an option, the county wants the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to focus as much on predation and ocean-based threats to steelhead, as it has on habitat limitations.

The County Court is finalizing its input on the draft plan for submission by next Tuesday. Britton said he hopes others will comment on the plan, too.

“We’re urging the citizens of Grant County to get their voices on the record,” he said.

He and other residents voiced some concerns in a public meeting held last month in John Day. Britton told the crowd that he appeared as “an endangered species – I am a working man.”

Dave Traylor of the Grant County Public Forest Commission said it’s critical for the community’s survival to get out from under “the umbrella of ‘threatened.'”

“What they’re doing to us is not right, and what’s going on with the steelhead is not right,” he said. “They’re treating us like a bunch of rubes.”

Comments can be sent to Hatcher, NOAA Fisheries, 304 S. Water St., Suite 201, Ellensburg, Wash. 98926, or by fax to 1-502-782-2737.