A12 The SpokeSman • TueSday, auguST 30, 2022
Conserving, celebrating an ancient fish
Tribes gather at
Willamette Falls to
harvest lamprey
BY McKAYLA LEE
Underscore News
An ancient fish has been
swimming in the waters of the
Pacific Northwest since before
trees existed. After surviving for
hundreds of millions of years, Pa-
cific lamprey were decimated by
dams and other human-caused
habitat disruptions, as well as
lack of government protections.
Tribes are leading conservation
efforts, with the goal of getting
their numbers back to levels that
ensure a reliable harvest.
On a hot afternoon in July,
members of the Yakama Nation
and the Confederated Tribes of
Warm Springs celebrated their
first foods with a feast. The tribes
held the event near Willamette
Falls, where, that morning, tribal
members had gathered the lam-
prey they served. The celebra-
tion was open to the public and
featured a full day of drumming,
dancing and feasting.
“We organized this event to
honor and celebrate our annual
lamprey harvest,” said Donella
Miller, Yakama Nation Fisheries
biologist and program manager.
“We normally have feasts to honor
the foods back at our longhouses
at home, but we haven’t had any-
thing down here on our ancestral
lands since the 1990s. It was im-
portant to us to come back and
share these teachings with our
young ones, to pass on traditions.”
Pacific lamprey play key roles in
tribal culture and ecology. Among
the oldest fish in the world, they
have been around for over 450
million years and even predate di-
nosaurs. The eel-like fish are anad-
romous and have unique physical
characteristics, including having
no jaws or bones, although they
have a mouth full of teeth.
Lamprey spend their early
years nestled in the sediment of
creek beds as blind filter feeders.
They transform into parasitic
adults when they’re between
three and seven years old, then
photo by mckayla Lee/underscore news
A Yakama tribal elder demonstrates how to filet a Pacific lamprey during
the Willamette Falls Lamprey Celebration.
migrate to the ocean to feed on
bigger fish and grow for years
before returning to spawn in the
freshwater of rivers and creeks,
to which they are drawn by the
pheromones of other lamprey.
The fish are a traditional food
source for the Columbia River
Basin’s Indigenous people, as well
as a culturally important species
for medicine and ceremony.
“Lamprey are kind of like river
gold, their oil content is so high,
which makes them a high-nutri-
ent food,” Miller said. “And their
oils also have medicinal pur-
poses. You can use that for ear-
aches and even for your skin.”
Over time, once-abundant
lamprey populations declined.
Populations above dams and in
the rivers and streams that flow
into the Columbia River are
functionally extinct, meaning
that so few make it to those places
that they can no longer play their
ecological role there. Passages at
dams designed for salmon were
nearly impossible for lamprey to
navigate, while their spawning
beds were spoiled by poor water
quality. And their high fat vol-
ume made them the perfect prey
for birds. Lamprey have always
fed many species, and their for-
mer abundance took predation
pressure off salmon and steel-
head. Now, that same longstand-
ing predator-prey relationship is
much more harmful to today’s
tiny populations of lamprey.
For decades, the government
treated Pacific lamprey as unwor-
thy of protection or restoration.
But the tribes never stopped
pushing for their recovery. The
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission (CRITFC) created
the Tribal Pacific Lamprey Res-
toration Plan in 2001. This trib-
al-led initiative is the most com-
prehensive plan to reestablish the
lamprey population. CRITFC
has been committed to protect-
ing tribal treaty fishing rights and
conserving and sharing fish cul-
ture since its founding in 1977.
The organization helps coordi-
nate fish restoration for the Ya-
kama, Warm Springs, Umatilla,
and Nez Perce tribes.
CRITFC Lamprey Biologist
Laurie Porter said that one of the
biggest issues lamprey face is pas-
sage at the dams, which nearly
wipes out returning adults by the
time they reach the Lower Snake
River. Too few lamprey make it
past the final Snake River dam
to sustain that watershed’s pop-
ulation.
“On average, only a few hun-
dred pass through Lower Granite
Dam — and that’s basically extir-
pated, there’s no other way to say
it,” Porter said.
In 2008, the Yakama Nation
launched its Pacific Lamprey
Project to restore lamprey in the
nation’s ceded lands and in the
tribe’s usual and accustomed ar-
eas. The plan is intended to com-
plement CRITFC efforts.
“We harvested lamprey in a
sustainable manner, taking only
what we needed for subsistence,”
said Davey Lumley, a biologist
with Yakama Nation Fisheries.
Evans Lewis, Yakama Tribal Foreman for the Sturgen Hatchery grills fresh caught lamprey on Saturday, July 30.
pass dams on smaller tributaries,
so the fish can get back to more
of the places where Native people
once collected them.
The project is guided by tradi-
tional ecological knowledge.
“We want to work with elders
to compare where lamprey were
historically found versus where
they are now,” Lumley said.
Once they have identified
those spots, the project can re-
introduce them. The fish them-
selves will help out, too.
“Pacific lamprey are not like
salmon,” Lumley said. “Lamprey
are attracted to pheromones of
other lamprey, so by us putting
lamprey into streams of low pop-
ulation it attracts more wild lam-
prey to go there.”
In addition to traditional eco-
logical knowledge, new tech-
nology will help support elders’
knowledge of lamprey migration.
Tiny tracking devices will provide
new insights to help guide con-
servation efforts.
The Willamette Falls Lam-
prey Celebration is undergoing
its own restoration. The July 30
event was the first celebration
“We depended on them for food
and medicine back when lam-
prey were plentiful, but due to
various factors this is no longer
the case. Our goal now is to re-
store natural production of lam-
prey to a level that will once again
provide abundance.”
The Pacific Lamprey Project
installed “lamprey slides’’ to help
the fish get past the dams in the
Columbia River Basin. The U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers de-
signed the original fish ladders so
that salmon and steelhead could
jump up to the reservoirs behind
the dams through successive small
pools, like a series of waterfalls.
But lamprey are weak swim-
mers and are unable to jump,
so they need a vertical surface
they can suction onto in order to
climb their way through.
“It’s difficult enough for
salmon to get through but for
lamprey it’s nearly impossible,”
Miller said.
Lumley said the project started
by installing the slides at Bon-
neville Dam, on the Columbia
River. Now, tribal biologists are
adding slides to help lamprey
held in this spot by the Yakama
and Warm Springs nations for
over 30 years, offering a time for
the community to gather and
commemorate the natural and
cultural resources they have pro-
tected since time immemorial.
Tribal leaders and commu-
nity members made it clear that
the tribes will continue to work
together to engage, protect and
restore their rights and resources
for current and future genera-
tions of their people.
“Tribes have always been at the
forefront of ensuring that these
resources persist for future gener-
ations,” Miller said.
She added that the celebration
will continue, too.
“Carrying on this way of life
and our teachings for the peo-
ple has been an honor,” Miller
said. “We opened this event to
the public to welcome and share
these good feelings. The land and
the foods were good medicine for
everyone who was in attendance.”
█
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McKayla Lee attends the University
of Montana and is the inaugural
recipient of the Underscore
Indigenous Journalism Fellowship.
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IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR
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FOR THE COUNTY OF
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IN THE MATTER OF THE
ESTATE OF
Case No. 22PB07031
COLLIN C. DAY,
NOTICE TO INTERESTED
PERSONS
Deceased. Notice is hereby given
that David R. Potter was ap
pointed as the Personal Repre
sentative of said Estate on August
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