PORTLAND, Ore. – Numbers of returning salmon have been so promising in
recent years that Columbia River tribes are working on marketing plans that
could help ratchet Northwest Indians out of decades of economic woe. To
maintain the long-sought gains in reestablishment of the fish runs, though,
takes persistence, vision, and funding.

Thus the award of $2.34 million for fish restoration throughout the
Columbia basin and a pledge of $122 million for fish passage around
hydropower projects in one of the basin’s major tributaries, have the four
treaty tribes encouraged that the momentum can be sustained.

The $2.34 million in fish restoration funds is congressionally-authorized
money that has been funneled through National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration Fisheries (NOAA Fisheries) since 2000. “The bulk of the $90
– $100 million appropriated for the Northwest has gone to the states in the
region,” Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s Project
Implementation Coordinator, Laura Gephart explained.

“Cumulatively the Columbia River tribes have received $11.5 million, a
relatively small portion of the overall authorization.” Gephart added that
out of the entire sum of funds, 98 percent is spent on tangible
on-the-ground projects. “We’re very proud that only a small amount of the
dollars go for planning and administrative costs,” she said.

The anadromous cycle: Hundreds and thousands of miles between the uppermost
reaches of tributary streams where salmon hatch and rear – and return at
the end of their lives to spawn the next generation – and the ocean where
they live during their prime. The problem is that the upper tributaries
where the fish spend their most vulnerable days are areas that since
non-Indian settlement have been given over to farming, ranching and
forestry – activities not conducive to maintaining healthy salmon habitat.

That’s why the fish restoration funds have been vital to bringing the
salmon back. The river tribes have a total of 135 projects under way or
completed, with 30 new projects up for review this year. The four treaty
tribes on the Columbia – Nez Perce, Warm Springs, Umatilla and Yakama –
have replaced culverts that historically blocked fish passage through
streams, planted trees and shrubs on denuded river banks and built fences
to protect the young plantings from cattle. “The Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Reservation were even able to buy 80 acres to consolidate their
holdings in the Uskuulpa Buckaroot watershed,” Gephart said. “The entire
300-acre parcel is completely protected now under the auspices of the
tribe.”

By raising fish in hatcheries and then depositing them in streams, the Nez
Perce tribe has also made progress by rein-troducing coho salmon into a
major Columbia basin drainage, the Clearwater River. “So far, as many as
1,500 adult coho have returned,” Gephart said, “where before in the early
1990s the fish were extinct.” The other tribes are engaged in similar
efforts to restore naturally spawning salmon to the streams by using plants
of fish from hatcheries.

NOAA Fisheries funds also enable the river tribes to monitor returning
numbers of fish populations via coded tags inserted into the salmon and
trapping systems. “Stations are maintained where the fish are collected,
measured and weighed, before returning them to the stream,” Gephart
explained. “This allows the biologists to get a good handle on the number
and types of fish returning to these watersheds.”

Fish returning to the watershed is precisely what parties involved in the
$122 million pledge of money for fish passage around Deschutes River dams
hope to get as well.

When the Pelton-Round Butte hydropower project was built nearly 40 years
ago in 1968, pundits thought the construction fish ladders would enable the
salmon to continue using the large Deschutes drainage which includes the
upper Deschutes, Metolius and Crooked rivers. What people didn’t count on,
though, was problems juvenile salmon had trying to migrate downstream.
Problems with currents in Lake Billy chinook behind the dam that
disoriented the young fish, prevented them from finding their way through
the projects and effectively ending salmon migration beyond the dam.

Co-owners of the Deschutes hydro projects, Portland General Electric (with
the controlling interest) and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
(currently one-third owners with the possibility of becoming majority
owners by 2007), have earmarked $122 million to address the problem. In
exchange for a 50-year license from the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, PGE and the Warm Springs Tribe will fund a state-of-the-art
fish passage tower, the first of its kind to be tested.

Unique in the world, the tower will draw warm water in from the lake’s
surface, collecting fish in the process. The juveniles will then be trucked
downstream from the dams, and released so they can swim to the ocean. If
the plan goes as intended, the tower should enable fish to access 226 miles
of stream including ancestral spawning grounds vital to rebuilding the
strength of the Deschutes salmon runs.

The plan marks an agreement between groups that historically have been at
odds over the fish, and thus Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, was on
hand for the ceremony announcing the venture which she termed “cooperative
conservation.”

Conservationist groups including American Rivers, Oregon Trout and Native
Fish Society also signed the agreement along with federal, state and
country agencies. “This agreement sets the bar for other dam operators in
the Northwest and across the country,” said American Rivers President
Rebecca Wodder. “PGE, the Warm Springs tribes and the other settlement
parties have proven that by working together we can achieve great outcomes
for this river’s health, its salmon and steelhead, and its people. For all
of the families who enjoy the Deschutes today, and for those future
generations who will fish its waters, run its rapids and view its wildlife
in the years to come, this agreement is cause for great celebration.”