Appeal Tribune
| WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021 | 1B
OUTDOORS
What’s in a name?
Trail moniker is a clue
to its unpalatable past
Zach Urness Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
There are many reasons to love Dog River Trail, a
pathway just south of Hood River that showcases
old-growth forest, clear rivers and a knockout view of
Mount Hood. h But that wasn’t the reason I stopped here for a
roughly 6-mile hike last summer. No, I had come because its
name perfectly captures a moment in Oregon history in the most
gallows humor way possible. h But let’s back up for a second.
The Dog River Trail, south of
Hood River, features old-growth
forest, clear streams and a great
view of Mount Hood. PHOTO BY ZACH
URNESS/STATESMAN JOURNAL;
ILLUSTRATION BY MICAELA ENCINAS/
USA TODAY NETWORK, GETTY IMAGES
See TRAIL, Page 2B
Recreating the end of salmon migration
Fishing
Henry Miller
Guest columnist
It never will make the summer Olym-
pics.
And it’s a far cry from the tourist-lov-
ing salmon toss at the fish stalls at Pike
Place Market on the Seattle waterfront.
But the annual salmon sling on Pacif-
ic Northwest rivers and streams help
ensure the future of the iconic fish as
well as the health of myriad other spe-
cies ranging from bugs to bears.
Every year, volunteers from hatcher-
ies, the Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife Salmon Trout Enhancement
Program (STEP) and state and federal
employees, fling the carcasses of thou-
sands of hatchery-spawned spring-run
Chinook salmon into waters where the
fish originated.
“It happens in the coastal rivers,
wherever there is a hatchery with
salmon,” said Karen Hans, the Fish and
Wildlife STEP biologist with the South
Willamette Watershed District office in
Corvallis. “We always put them in the
same (watershed) drainage. And we al-
ways put them where salmon are
spawning.”
It’s a grunt-and-hurl re-creation of
what nature has done for millennia.
“When Lewis and Clark came here
there were hundreds of thousands of
adult spring Chinook salmon that came
into the Willamette Valley every year,”
Hans said. “And they brought tons, hun-
dreds of tons of proteins and fats and
minerals.”
All of which were deposited in waters
when the salmon died after spawning.
Hans, along with two or three mem-
bers of her pool of about a dozen volun-
teers, drives twice a week during Sep-
tember to Marion Forks Fish Hatchery
about 15 miles east of Detroit to collect
large boxes, called totes, filled with Chi-
nook salmon carcasses.
Starting about 10 miles up the North
Santiam River from Marion Forks, the
crew heads west with about 10 stops
along the river and tributaries, deposit-
ing 20 to 50 Chinook carcasses at each.
Similar deliveries are made on the
South Santiam River drainage using
salmon collected and spawned at the
state’s South Santiam River Hatchery
near the base of Foster Dam.
Mimicking Mother Nature
“The big reason that we call salmon a
keystone species is because their bodies
fed the river ecology, and they fed all the
bears and eagles and turkey vultures
and mink, skunks and ravens and crows
See MILLER, Page 2B
Marie Heuberger, an Oregon State
University student and Salmon Trout
Enhancement Program (STEP)
volunteer, unloads a tote of Chinook
salmon carcasses on the North
Santiam River. TIM AKIMOFF/ODFW