This story is excerpted from the Tribal Tribune. Photo above of chinook in the San Poil River from the Colville Tribal Fish and Wildlife Department:
In August 2020, the Colville Tribal Fish and Wildlife Department trapped and hauled 100 adult chinook salmon from Wells Fish Hatchery, below Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams – the two massive concrete structures that have blocked migration of salmon into the northern reaches of the Columbia River and its tributaries for nearly seven decades – and released them into the San Poil River.
In October, CTFW announced that surveys have shown those salmon successfully spawned in the San Poil River.
“Most of the chinook stayed in the area and a lot of them spawned,” said CTFW Senior Research Scientist Casey Baldwin. “We were able to document 36 redds (spawning nests) in about a six mile reach. The fish held there through the late summer and started spawning in October. It looks like we had really good survival and conversion to spawning.”
Earlier, in July 2020, the department released an additional 50 chinook salmon, fitted with acoustic tags, into Lake Roosevelt near Grand Coulee Dam, but Baldwin report the data for those fish has not yet been analyzed.
Baldwin added: “Although small studies such as this show promise and progress, it is apparent that there is a lot of work to do to return salmon to their historic habitat upstream of Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams. It will take time and patience to see it implemented in a big way.”
See the original article here.
