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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2015
Welcome back, good (salmon) chums
Project bringing
chum salmon
to our streams
shows success
Columbia Basin Bulletin
A chum salmon reintro-
duction project has quietly
and successfully moved be-
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lumbia River between Astoria
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Once one of the most abun-
dant of salmon species in the
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on made up as much as 7 per-
cent to 10 percent of historical
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1 million fall-run chum salm-
on returning to the river in
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that the commercial harvest of
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cline due to harvest and as
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been in decline since the
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as threatened under the feder-
al Endangered Species Act in
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broadly distributed species of
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far south as the Sacramento
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chum salmon were found as
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reintroduction manager with
the Oregon Department of
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Brian Alfonse of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife prepares to release an adult chum salmon in a stream near
Clatskanie in December as part of an ongoing restoration project.
LEFT: An adult chum salmon is pulled form a holding tank in preparation of being released into an Oregon river in
December. RIGHT: A dead chum salmon lies on the side of a stream near Clatskanie. Having spawned, the fish body
will provide nutrients back to the river.
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salmon has found its way over
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that 90 percent of the historic
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lumbia River have been ex-
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chum salmon adults returning
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and degradation of spawn-
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ary ecology (an area where
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Early cranberry harvest shapes up as dry run
Drought
could slow
down reaping
bumper crop
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
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Severe drought persists on
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weather this year is a tough
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weather had been mostly on
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centrated along the southwest
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said that before this summer
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Department of Agriculture
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Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Juan Hernandez rounds up cranberries Sept. 23 on the Long Beach Peninsula in southwest
Washington. Cranberry growers receive a premium for harvesting before October, but the
drought has led to a shortage of water to flood bogs and early fall showers have been light.
tures started dropping into the
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premium paid by the Ocean
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ing his harvest plans because
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ter forecasts that the month
has equal chances of being
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has yielded about one-third
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cranberry growers nation-
wide are struggling with low
prices caused by an oversup-
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barrel of cranberries fetched
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Steve McPhail said he
will harvest some of his ber-
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Ocean Spray will pay a pre-
mium that will add close to
10 percent to what farmers
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mid-fall may have another
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duction began in 2010 when
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Grays River Hatchery in
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the eggs when they were at
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gan its own chum reintroduc-
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(a few natives already were
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ery has transferred more than
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rearing and release into the
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Adult chum have been re-
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introduction of chum to tribu-
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One of the limiting factors
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leaving their home stream for
the lower river estuary when
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leave the estuary for the ocean
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turbidity in the estuary (tur-
bidity has declined with the
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them more of a target for
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up for the poor marine sur-
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need to see freshwater surviv-
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Get a grasp on Medicare
The Daily Astorian
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