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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (June 13, 2022)
A2 The BulleTin • Monday, June 13, 2022 The Bulletin LOCAL, STATE & REGION how to reach us Upper Columbia River Basin CIRCULATION didn’t receive your paper? Start or stop subscription? 541-385-5800 PHONE HOURS 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday 7 a.m.-11 a.m. Saturday-Sunday and holidays GENERAL INFORMATION 541-382-1811 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 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The Bulletin retains ownership and copyright protection of all staff-prepared news copy, advertising copy and news or ad illustrations. They may not be reproduced without explicit prior approval. The tribes of the upper Columbia River Basin — the Coeur d’Alene, Spo- kane and Colville, along with first na- tions in Canada — aim to do just that. But it’s tricky. Audacious even. Consider that salmon and steel- head that return to the Snake River are struggling in large part because of the eight dams they must pass. Those eight dams, four on the Columbia and four on the Snake, all have adult and juve- nile fish passage facilities. There’s honest debate about how well they perform. Many scientists say each of the dams takes a toll and eight is too many, thus their call to remove the four dams on the Snake River as a needed measure to save wild Snake River salmon and steelhead. But adult fish that return to the up- per Columbia River also will have to pass eight dams before they get to Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee — two massive hydroelectric dams without fish ladders. Juvenile fish must make their way through turbines on the two big dams and over spillways or through turbines on three small Avista Corp. dams on the Spokane River, all before passing eight more on the mid- dle and lower Columbia River. ‘A daunting task’ How is that possible? Or rather, is it possible? The tribes think so and in March they were in the second phase of a four-phase project to figure out how to make it happen. They must do so without the power of the Endangered Species Act. “We are talking about passing fish across five dams that don’t have fish passage. For sure it’s a daunting task but, you know, that is probably why it hasn’t been tried yet,” said Tom Bi- ladeau, nonresident fisheries program habitat restoration biologist for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. should be freaking out. Excuse my lan- “If it were simple, someone would guage, you should be crapping your have done it. But the tribes are really pants because you don’t want to end up committed to making this happen and like us.” there are a lot of new or novel technolo- The demise of upper Columbia gies out there that weren’t available de- River salmon started with the con- cades ago to pass fish across high-head struction of Little Falls Dam northwest dams, and when I talk about passing of Spokane. Then came Long Lake and fish, I’m talking about juveniles going Nine Mile Falls dams. downstream and adults going back up.” “Those were the first ones that Fish have been missing from the started depleting the salmon runs in Coeur d’Alene territory for a century. the Spokane River,” Penney said. “And But they used to spawn in places like when Grand Coulee went in, that was Hangman Creek and other trib- the nail in the coffin.” utaries to the Spokane He has spent his en- River. Spokane Falls, tire career helping an impassable salmon reclaim barrier on the territory. For Spokane about two River, was a decades, destination the Nez for several Perce man tribes. worked on “Salmon his tribe’s and steel- efforts to head supple- would hit ment wild there and, salmon and just like Celilo steelhead runs and Kettle falls, it with hatchery fish. would be a place all Then he managed the tribes would come the Nez Perce Tribal to harvest fish,” said A chinook salmon, second from Fish Hatchery. Now, Aaron Penney, sup- the bottom, swims with sockeye he’s running a nascent plementation biologist salmon at the Bonneville Dam hatchery program for the Coeur d’Alene fish-counting window near North for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. Bonneville, Washington, on the Tribe. Columbia River in June 2012. Grave warning Life cycle model study Rick Bowmer/aP file At last summer’s Grand Coulee Dam Salmon and Orca Sum- is a high-head bar- mit in Shelton, Wash., Coeur d’Alene rier with no fish passage. Chief Joseph tribal council member Hemene James Dam was built downstream. It also offered a grave warning to the Nez has no fish passage. Together, the two Perce and other tribes of the Pacific dams are the electricity-producing Northwest working to preserve and workhorses of the region. improve salmon runs. So the effort is audacious. Un- “My people are relegated to getting daunted by that, the upper Columbia fish out of the back of a truck,” James River tribes are stepping up to the chal- said. “All of you who have salmon lenge. It starts with a long-timed study TOP: Tobias Koch and Jill Hardiman pour a tub of fish that were soon to be released into the Spokane River in Plummer in March. CENTER: Buckets of fish are handed off to Conor Giorgi to release into the Spokane River in March. BOTTOM: Conor Giorgi, from left, Tobias Koch and Aaron Penney walk towards the Spokane River as they scope out a spot to release the fish in March. august Frank/lewiston Tribune that began in 2014 with Phase 1 — an effort by the tribes to assess the qual- ity of salmon and steelhead habitat in what is known as the blocked area. “The results from that, they were encouraging to say the least,” Biladeau said. Phase 2 began in March. Fish raised by Penney were released into Hang- man Creek, a tributary of the Spokane River, the Spokane River itself and into Lake Roosevelt — the slackwater section of the Columbia River behind Grand Coulee Dam. Those fish, about 5,000 all together, were tagged so biologists can track their downstream movements. The tags will show fisheries biologists how juvenile and perhaps adult fish move through the blocked area, the portion of the Columbia upstream of Grand Coulee. If reintroduction is successful, it will require figuring ways to get juvenile fish through all of those dams and how to get adults over or around them. New technologies such as the Whoosh sys- tem — a giant suction tube for adults — and floating surface collectors for juveniles placed in front of dams, hold promise. ‘A lot of opportunity’ There is evidence reintroduction might be possible. The Spokane Tribes released 750 juvenile summer chinook in Chamokane Creek in 2017. “They had to go over Little Falls Dam or through Little Falls (Dam). They had to go into Lake Roosevelt, where there’s all kinds of predators, and they had to go over Grand Cou- lee Dam — another dam without fish passage,” said Tim Peone, resident fish hatchery manager for the Spokane Tribe. “Then they had to go through another reservoir and another dam without any kind of passage.” That was all to reach the down- stream side of Chief Joseph Dam and enter the “anadromous zone,” an area where salmon and steelhead can still reach. Ahead of them was Wells Dam, the first of eight where the fish could be detected. “We had more than 90 individuals detected downstream,” said Conor Gi- orgi, anadromous fisheries manager for the Spokane Tribe. Farther downstream, 24 were de- tected at Bonneville Dam and four in the Columbia River estuary. In the summer of 2019, one of those fish, an adult female that was now fat and strong from feeding in the ocean, started swimming back upstream. “We watched her as she made her way up past each of the dams,” Giorgi said. Eventually she entered the ladder at Chief Joseph Fish Hatchery beneath Chief Joseph Dam. A year later, three more adults from the same juvenile release were detected in the Columbia River. At least one was documented to have been harvested and it’s probable the others were as well. Giorgi said the 750 juveniles released had a smolt-to-adult return rate of about 0.4%. Not a great survival rate in the big picture, but on par with return rates for threatened upper Columbia River steelhead that year. “Without any improvements to fish passage systems, just an impromptu re- lease that we did, we got a lot of hope out of that,” Giorgi said. “So we see a lot of opportunity, a lot of hope for this reintroduction effort. Yeah, it’s disap- pointing we didn’t get those three fish back but, at the same time, it also ar- ticulates the benefits of reintroduction. That we can have this cultural connec- tion while also contributing to down- stream fisheries where other people benefit as well, it’s a lot bigger than just the upper Columbia River region.” A later release of 1,400 chinook smolts by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe showed about 90 of those fish sur- vived downstream passage of all three Spokane River dams, as well as Grand Coulee, Chief Joseph and the eight dams on the middle and lower Columbia River. Phase 2 will be repeated and ex- panded to include adult tracking in fu- ture years, all in an effort to learn what can be done to help the fish. Giorgi said the tribes believe they can pull it off and do so without the benefits of the Endangered Species Act. “We are not telling anybody they have to do this. We are not asking for operational changes, we are not asking for increased drawdown, more spill, reduced irrigation water power, what- ever. You maintain all of those current operations and benefits and let’s see what we can get for salmon while still providing those services, and right now the outlook is optimistic.”
