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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (March 13, 2008)
Extension hosts noxious weed education B y L e slie M itts Spilyay Tymoo OSU E xtension at W arm Springs hosted an educational forum recendy to inform people about weeds. According to Jon Valley, a D eschutes County employee available to answer questions and speak to community mem bers, educational tools like the “weed wagon” help people to be able to identify weeds and learn about types o f noxious weeds that should be removed. Noxious weeds can be difficult to control because seeds can re main viable for years and have extensive, root systems. However, they can be con trolled if people report weed sightings and take steps to prevent their spreading. The weed wagon was parked in the community center park ing lot during the forum, mak ing its first appearance in Warm March 13, 2 0 0 8 Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon Page 6 Leslie Mitts/Spilyay Rico Thompson browses brochures in the “weed wagon” as Owen Danzuka Sr. looks on. Springs since being purchased for use by the Interagency Weed Management Team. The event also included pre sentations and speakers, with topics ranging from common weeds o f the range, seeding for fire rehabilitation, local range treatm ents plots, grazing for weed management, and how to recognize invasive species. P articipants included the Oregon Department o f Agricul ture, the county weed depart ments, Central Oregon Agricul ture Research Station, the BIA and Fire Management. Biomass transmission line project assessment released The Resource Manage ment Interdisciplinary Team recently approved for pub lic review a project assess m ent pertaining to the pro posed Biomass Transm is sion Line. The project would develop 85 acres in a narrow swath running from Warm Springs Forest Products Industries to Round Butte Dam. T he Resource M anage ment Interdisciplinary Team (RM ID T) unanim ously passed a motion to release the project for public review and comment during a February 28 meeting. ■ The transmission line will cover a distance o f 15 miles. The poles carrying the line will be 80 feet tall and they will be spaced 350 apart. A 12-foot wide mainte nance road will be used to access the line. T he line will tran sp o rt electricity generated at the W arm S p rin g s b io m ass power plant to the Round Butte switch yard, where it will be sold to Portland Gen eral Electric. The project assessm ent followed a process outlined in the In teg rated R esources Management Plan. Resource professionals gathered com m ents from tribal members, planned the development and analyzed for its potential impacts. Tribal members have 30 days to comment on the Bio-, mass T ran sm issio n Line Project Assessment. Copies o f the document are available at the Warm Springs Power Enterprises office. Biologists find challenge in supporting both kokanee and bull trout (AP) - The 228 tiny kokanee swam in a white plastic bucket only a few days after hatching in the Metolius River. O n their way downstream to Lake Billy Chinook, they ran into a detour: an 8-foot-high fish trap, and, eventually, the bucket, as part of an effort to track the number of kokanee making the trip. Trapping that many kokanee this early in the season was re ally unusual, noted Megan Hill, a fish biologist with Portland General Electric. But it's a welcome turn for fisheries managers, who have Clackamas River basin to help populations there, said Peter Lickwar, a fish and wildlife bi ologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And Ratliff sees a connection between the high bull trout num bers and the. peak o f the ko kanee numbers. After the ko kanee population reached its high around 2000, the number of bull trout soared. “They went through the roof in 2002,” he said o f the bull trout. “We all wondered if it was a sustainable population, and it looks like it wasn't.” That's because last fall, the propriate at this time. That's especially the case be cause things are about to change in Lake Billy Chinook, said Lickwar, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and PGE are in the process of installing a fish passage facility at Round Butte Dam to collect fish that people will truck to downstream por tions o f the Deschutes River. But it will also change the water currents and temperatures o f the reservoir, Lickwar said, and so the agency wants to see how that affects bull trout and ko I se e n th e k o k a n e e p o p u la tio n . n u m b er o f bull tro r ^ s p g w ning decline iii te c e n f years. in the Metolius River ’a fbpped kanee and oth er fish populations b e fo re c h an g in g th e m an a g e The fish are pulled in many directions: federally protected bull trout prey on them, anglers seek to snag them and biologists are about to try to coax some o f them to migrate past the Pelton and Round Butte dams to the ocean. And with these multiple pres sures, plus uncertainty over what's going to happen when an add-on to the dam changes wa ter currents and temperatures, biologists are keeping a close eye on the kokanee, to make sure the p o p u la tio n can rem ain healthy. “We're putting a lot o f de mands on this kokanee popula tio n ,” said B rett H odgson, Deschutes District biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “The question is, how can we best manage the situation to try to meet those three demands?” The kokanee population has been up and down since scien tists started monitoring it closely about 15 years ago. Kokanee, a landlocked ver sion of sockeye salmon, quickly became the biggest game fish in Lake Billy Chinook after the reservoir filled in 1964 upon completion o f the Pelton Round Butte dam complex, said Don Ratliff, senior aquatic biologist with PGE. The population has declined rapidly since then, he said. While anglers normally catch an average o f 70,000 ko kanee a year, and caught 135,000 in 2000, last year they only pulled in 16,000. One of the reasons for this decline, Ratliff said, is bull trout, and the predator-prey relation ship it has with kokanee. Bull trout, a larger species that eats both kokanee and small bull trout, is listed as threatened un der the federal Endangered Spe cies Act. But the bull trout population in Lake Billy Chinook is robust, and there's even talk of trans ferring some o f them to the But when that happens, the fisheries managers will have a better handle on what direction to go in, and how to balance the risks and benefits to the differ ent species o f fish. While there are no plans at the moment to cut back on how many bull trout are munching on kokanee, the state and tribes are cutting back on how many kokanee people can catch. With the kokanee population down, and the bull trout popu lation up, anglers are casting their lines for bull trout in the spring months instead, Hodgson said. kanee population increasing,” Hodgson said. The Warm Springs tribes and PG E are also keeping a close eye on the kokanee population. As p a rt.. o f the federal relicen sin g process fo r the Pelton and Round Butte dams, the dams' co-owners are required to bring back the chinook, steel head and sockeye that used to return from the ocean to the upper reaches o f the Deschutes Basin, but are now blocked by the dams. “We would utilize the robust stocks o f kokanee in Lake Billy Chinook to jump-start a sock- Mike G auvin, fisheries m anage “I th in k th ro u g h a red u ctio n eye rim ,” said G auvin,-w ith the ment Supervisor with the tribes'. “The reality is, until this thing turns on in 2009, we really don't know how the fish are going to respond to it,” he said. o‘f the harvest, and adjustment of bull trout numbers through just natural predator-prey rela tionships, hopefully, optimisti cally, we're going to see the ko tribes. “The key for us is to find a balance between how many fish can go out, and how .many fish need to stay in that lake.” noting that populations without either anglers or predators still cycle up and down. And, a previous study found that bull trout actually eat more insects than they do kokanee. ‘We're trying not to move too quickly to a conclusion and pro gression of action that might not necessarily be the best to pur sue,” Lickwar said. “W hat I guess we've tried to support is a little bit o f patience in trying to watch how things develop.” There are many unknowns about the interaction between kokanee, bull trout and their ecosystem in the reservoir, said by more than a third, from 974 ment of bull trout. to 601. So the bull trout popu And there are other things lation now appears to be declin that could prey on kokanee, or ing, following the pattern o f its affect their population, he said, kokanee prey, he said. “It's kind of a slingshot ef fect that echoes through the ecosystem,” Ratliff said. T he kokanee p op u latio n seems to be on a slight upswing now, he and Hodgson agreed. “What it appears we have is a normal predator-prey cycle, and there appears to be a trend where the two populations are starting to adjust and normalize to each other,” Hodgson said. But the question, he said, is ; w hether fisheries m anagers should try to stem any increase in the numbers o f bull trout to let the kokanee take off to meet these dem ands, or if they should just let it be, Hodgson said. “I think there is agreement that there is a predator-prey re lationship between bull trout and kokanee,” he said. “Where the uncertainty lies, is whether there needs to be more aggressive bull trout management.” What adds another layer of debate is the bull trout's threat Louie Louie Party with ened status. The Metolius run of bull trout is one o f the few runs o f the fish in the country that people can catch, and al lowing anglers to catch and keep Doors open at730pm even m ore w ould require a $15 w ith appetizers, a cash bar and dancin9 change in federal regulations. O verniijht p a d re s available R atliff said he would like Must be 21 and over federal fishery managers to ap prove a recovery plan for the bull trout, so that once they hit With MO Slot Play Coupons a certain level, people could Sun-Thurs through May 22, subject to availability catch and keep more so the bull trout population could become more stable. ‘W e have more than we need spawning, and they appear to be $5,000 Fridays, March 14 and 28 with affecting other species in the $1,000 every hour, Spm-midnight lake,” Ratliff said. 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