A2 The BulleTin • Monday, June 13, 2022
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SAVING THE SALMON
Tribes holding out hope of fisheries recovery
BY ERIC BARKER • lewiston (idaho) Tribune
S
POKANE — With the
thousands of miles of
quality salmon habitat
in the upper Columbia River, a
restored chinook run there could
add significantly to the number
of anadromous fish in the entire
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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.”