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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017
Creek: Next phase will reconnect more tributaries Dams: Salmon runs are a
informational kiosk about the
project, overlooking the small
inlet where Megler Creek spills
into the Columbia.
Continued from Page 1A
Cove and Chinook, Smith said,
the highway is heavily armored
by riprap, with culverts to trib-
utaries often perched too high
up to provide adequate fish
passage outside the highest of
tides.
CREST found a willing
partner in Lewis and Clark
National Historical Park for the
Columbia-Pacific Habitat Res-
toration, a plan to reconnect
tributaries at several points
along highway. The first phase
installed a 12-by-12-foot cul-
vert trough U.S. Highway 101
to reconnect nearly 100 acres
of wetlands just north of the
park’s Fort Columbia site. The
second and current phase is
reconnecting Megler Creek. A
third phase will look to recon-
nect even more tributaries
upriver near Hungry Harbor.
“We have a dual mandate of
doing what we can to restore
natural ecosystem process,
but we also want to do what
we can to get our lands kind
of back to a state that closely
resembles what Lewis and
Clark encountered when they
were here,” said Carla Cole, a
natural resources project man-
ager for the park.
In addition, she said, “It’s
becoming increasingly import-
ant along the Columbia to open
access to these cold-water ref-
uges with climate change.”
Reconnecting
Megler Creek
Just west of the Dismal
Nitch rest area, State Route
401 shrinks to one lane. A con-
crete barrier separates traf-
fic from crews with Thomp-
Returning chum
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Thompson Bros Excavating crews work on CREST’s Co-
lumbia-Pacific Passage Habitat Restoration project.
son Bros. Excavating, digging
out and building up shoring
walls under the northern half
of the highway to start plac-
ing the precast sections of the
new 25-foot concrete box cul-
vert that will run under the
highway.
After the northern half of
the highway is complete, the
entire process moves to the
south. A new sheet pile coffer-
dam will hold the Columbia
out of the project site until the
plug is pulled in February.
Preparation for Megler
Creek started before the culvert
near Fort Columbia had ever
opened. The project involved
years of monitoring different
endangered species of salmon
spawning, and numerous lev-
els of scientific review. CREST
and the local park each pieced
together about $500,000 in
competitive grants from vari-
ous agencies to pay for the $1
million project.
Smith said the old culvert
was only 48 inches in diame-
ter, and perched 6 feet above
mean water level, disconnect-
ing Megler Creek from the
tidal influence of the Colum-
bia except during high tides.
After redirecting about 300
feet of Megler Creek around
the project site, crews had to
dig out about 8 feet of sed-
iment that had backed up
behind the highway over the
past century, unable to wash
out into the Columbia during
storms.
The lower elevation will
allow tides to reach farther
into the historic wetlands at the
mouth of the creek. A new peb-
bly bottom, woody debris and
shrubbery will create a more
natural, nutrient-rich stream.
“I’m hopeful people will
be able to see salmon going
through,” Cole said.
The Dismal Nitch rest area,
being refurbished by the Wash-
ington Department of Trans-
portation, will include an
During spawning surveys,
Smith said, CREST observed
several species of endangered
salmon inside Megler Creek.
One they didn’t see inside was
chum, but he and Cole said
they’re particularly excited
about the prospects.
Clark’s
journal
from
November 1805 talks about
catching “what Pore fish we
can kill up the branch on which
we are encamped.” Cole said
the term “pore” — translated to
poor — likely refers to the less-
er-quality chum species, which
has shrunk to 3 percent of its
historical run in the Columbia.
“Chum will be a big bene-
ficiary of this project, because
chum typically spawn right (at
the head) of tide, and they’re
not as athletic as some of the
others,” Smith said, adding
coho and steelhead will travel
farther upstream to spawn.
Cole said she’s excited
to come back in November
and watch for chum salmon
spawning. She sees the spe-
cies, whose roe is commonly
used in sushi, as a potential
new homegrown industry for
the Lower Columbia.
“Chum roe is a really lucra-
tive fishery all across the
Pacific,” she said. “We envi-
sion a future where there could
be native chum runs, and we
could have our own chum fish-
ery, harvesting the roe, which
is actually more valuable
pound-for-pound than Chinook
salmon flesh.”
Sea lions: Last five years of program will be reviewed
Continued from Page 1A
conservation and management
perspective to prevent the
spread of a detrimental behav-
ior and to minimize the total
number of animals removed,”
the scientists wrote in the
paper published in the jour-
nal Proceedings of the Royal
Society B.
“The earlier you start, the
more effective you are at slow-
ing the spread, and the fewer
animals you have to remove
to make a difference,” said
Zachary Schakner, who coau-
thored the study as a graduate
student at UCLA and is now
Recreational Fisheries Coor-
dinator in NOAA Fisheries’
West Coast Region.
The states have removed
166 California sea lions since
the effort began in 2008, a
small fraction of the num-
ber of animals that migrate to
the Columbia each winter and
spring. The states may eutha-
nize sea lions if no permanent
holding facility, such as a zoo
or aquarium, can be found.
This year,NOAA Fisher-
ies will review the last five
years of the program, and will
take the study findings into
account, said Robert Ander-
son of NOAA Fisheries’ West
Coast Region in Portland.
“What was really new was
the combination of behavioral
ecology with disease ecol-
ogy to come up with manage-
ment recommendations that
could make the program more
effective,” said Michael Buh-
nerkempe, coauthor of the
research and an assistant proj-
ect scientist at UCLA.
The study examined the
association between sea lions
known to prey on salmon at
Bonneville Dam with other
animals that later developed
the same behavior, assess-
ing how the behavior passed
among animals. The research-
ers then modeled various strat-
egies for removing sea lions
to determine which were most
effective and which required
the removal of the fewest sea
lions.
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A federal judge urged
officials to consider breach-
ing four of those dams on the
Snake River.
“Because of the scale of
the EIS, there’s no practi-
cal way for us, even if we
wanted to, to provide a map
of each and every site that
we consider,” said Sean
Hess, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation’s Pacific North-
west Region archaeologist.
“There are some import-
ant sites out there that we
don’t talk about a lot because
of concerns about what
would happen because of
vandalism.”
Fish survival, hydro-
power, irrigation and nav-
igation get the most atten-
tion and will be components
in the environmental review
due out in 2021. But at more
than a dozen public meet-
ings in the four states to col-
lect feedback, the cultural
resources program has equal
billing. Comments are being
accepted through Jan. 17.
Umbrella law
The review process is
being conducted under the
National Environmental Pol-
icy Act, an umbrella law
that covers the well-known
Endangered Species Act.
Thirteen species of salmon
and steelhead on the Colum-
bia and Snake rivers have
been listed as federally pro-
tected species over the past
25 years.
But the environmen-
tal law also requires equal
weight be given to other
laws, including the National
Historic Preservation Act,
which is where the cultural
resources program comes in.
Among the 4,000 sites are
fishing and hunting process-
ing areas, ancestral village
areas and tribal corridors.
“People
were
very
mobile, prehistorically,” said
Kristen Martine, cultural
resource program manager
for the Bonneville Power
Administration.
Some of the most nota-
ble sites with human activity
date back thousands of years
and are underwater behind
dams on the Columbia and
Snake rivers. Celilo Falls,
a dipnet fishery for thou-
sands of years, is behind The
Dalles Dam on the Columbia
River. Marmes Rockshelter
was occupied 10,000 years
LISTINGS
THE DAILY
ASTORIAN
A
Quick response
Just as diseases are eas-
iest to stop when they have
affected only a few individu-
als, so are undesirable wildlife
behaviors such as the preda-
tion on salmon at Bonneville
Dam. The study found that the
removal of sea lions would
have been more effective,
requiring the removal of fewer
animals overall, if it had started
soon after biologists first real-
ized that sea lions were target-
ing protected salmon.
“If you can do that, you’re
beating it before it has a chance
to explode into more of an epi-
demic,” Buhnerkempe said.
“Otherwise it quickly gets out
of control.”
fraction of what they were
ago but now is underwater
behind Lower Monumental
Dam on the Snake River.
“If we’re breaching dams,
it would definitely change
how we manage resources,”
said Gail Celmer, an archae-
ologist with the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.
Environmental review
U.S. District Judge
Michael H. Simon ordered
the environmental review in
May after finding that a mas-
sive habitat restoration effort
to offset the damage that
dams in the Columbia River
Basin pose to Northwest
salmon runs was failing.
Salmon and steelhead
runs are a fraction of what
they were before modern set-
tlement. Of the salmon and
steelhead that now return to
spawn each year, experts say,
about 70 to 90 percent origi-
nate in hatcheries.
Those opposed to breach-
ing the Snake River dams to
restore salmon runs say the
dams are an important part
of the regional economy,
providing irrigation, hydro-
power and shipping benefits.
Meanwhile, several tribes
said they are better able to
take part in the review pro-
cess than they once were.
“Tribes have not had
much opportunity to partici-
pate in these things because
they didn’t have profes-
sional staff or trained peo-
ple,” said Guy Moura of the
Colville Confederated Tribes
in Washington state, noting
the tribe employed four peo-
ple in its cultural resources
program in 1992 but now
has 38. “With growth in size,
there also came the evolution
of what was being done.”
The tribe at one time
had a large fishery at Ket-
tle Falls, on the upper part
of the Columbia River, but it
was inundated in the 1940s
behind Grand Coulee Dam.
Dams farther downstream
on the Columbia prevent
salmon from reaching the
area.
Also among the 4,000
historical sites is Bonne-
ville Dam, one of 14 dams
involved in the environmen-
tal impact statement. Bonne-
ville Dam is the lowest dam
in the system at about 145
miles from the mouth of the
Columbia River. It started
operating in the 1930s and
became a National Historic
Landmark in 1987.
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