Fate of Idaho salmon plays out in tiny Marsh Creek The fish that spawn here are among the most vulnerable in the region. Will Obama's plan help if the population plummets? Pete Hassemer first came to Idaho's Marsh Creek in 1990, to learn how to count the redds that salmon form in the gravel to protect their eggs. Just starting a career as a salmon and steelhead biologist, he was part of a team that counted 50 nests that year, meaning about 100 chinook spawned here west of Stanley, in the headwater stream of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. It was far from what scientists and anglers knew was possible in these waters, which are surrounded by public lands and wilderness and are among the best in the United States for raising salmon. In 1964, 1,400 salmon spawned in this wisp of a stream that is less than 15 feet wide in many places. That doesn't even count the 2,944 Marsh Creek salmon that were taken by fishermen that year. But by the time Hassemer - today the director of salmon and steelhead management for Idaho Fish and Game - first walked its banks, Marsh Creek was a prime example of the dire straits the fish were in. In 1995, not a single salmon returned. The fish in Marsh Creek did come back, but the 1990s showed how close to extinction these wild chinook really are. They can't simply be boosted by hatchery fish, or recovered with transplants - they have to replace themselves. That's why these pockets of wild salmon measure the true successes and failures of every effort to restore the signature fish of the Northwest. And these fish are partly why some scientists don't think the Obama administration's plan will do enough to save them. FISH RETURN DESPITE THE SNAKE RIVER DAMS In 1999, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission released a statement that said breaching the four federal dams on the Snake River in Washington would be the best way to return fishable numbers of wild chinook back to Idaho. But neither the commission nor state leaders - then or since - have endorsed a policy calling for removing those dams. And many Idaho leaders say recent years show just how well the fish can thrive with the dams. Both salmon and steelhead numbers have been robust. Regional biologists recently forecast that 470,000 spring-summer chinook could return to Bonneville Dam on the Columbia in 2010, with 270,000 headed for the Snake River. Most of these fish come from regional hatcheries. About 73,000 of them are expected to be wild chinook - like those in Marsh Creek. That would exceed the 43,000 wild fish that returned in 2001, a modern record. Hassemer and other biologists think the predictions are overly optimistic - and even if returns are as high as they were in 2001 or better, there is no evidence they will last. Still, the big return years demonstrate the potential. Even Marsh Creek has bounced back, to some degree. Though this year just 37 redds were counted there, many more are expected next year. In 2003, biologists counted 335 redds in Marsh Creek - a dramatic turnaround from the 1990s. Those big years showed a few fish could produce a lot when conditions were right, Hassemer said. The numbers have influenced the Obama administration. The Democrats - who carried the hopes of those who support breaching - have only slightly changed the position the Bush administration held before them. The federal government now proposes to consider breaching as a last-minute contingency. If the four-year rolling average of returning salmon drops to 20 percent of its recent abundance, federal agencies must review immediate actions they can take, such as continuing to spill water over dams, which U.S. District Judge James Redden has ordered since 2004 to improve passage for the salmon downriver. When the average drops to 10 percent - which would equal about where they were for much of the early 1990s - federal biologists would begin to study breaching dams or drawing down reservoirs. But will that provide help in time to keep salmon coming back to Marsh Creek in a worst-case scenario? Some scientists fear it won't. FATE OF SALMON LIES IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN These fish live much of their adult lives about 870 miles from where Marsh Creek chinook are hatched. And despite all the efforts to help salmon up and down the Columbia River watershed in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, the success of these fish largely depends on Pacific Ocean currents. When warmer currents flow north from the tropics, in what climatologists call El Nino conditions, the Columbia salmon lose their productivity. They become more vulnerable to predators and have less food available. But the opposite current, La Nina, makes the ocean dramatically more productive. It was back-to-back El Ninos, coming after the completion of the last of the eight dams, that drove the Marsh Creek fish to the brink of extinction in 1995. One or two more years and we might have lost them, Hassemer said. The dams become less of an obstacle when the ocean is helping the fish thrive - as healthy recent returns have shown. But what if ocean conditions take a turn for the worse? Ed Bowles, who had Hassemer's job when the commission took its breaching stand in 1999, now has the same job at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Oregon, along with environmentalists, the Nez Perce tribe and fishing groups, is challenging Obama's plan in court. We think it is too low and too late, he said. His concern: how quickly the government can react in the event Pacific Ocean conditions shift rapidly. A strong La Nina at the end of the 1990s led to the dramatic returns at the turn of the century. Since then, ocean conditions have gone up and down, peaking with the best conditions ever seen in 2008, said John Ferguson, a salmon biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This fall, he saw conditions turn dramatically again. We're already seeing the ocean wobble, Ferguson said, back to a more normal state and not very productive conditions.