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Estacada, Oregon
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Approximately 600,000 bright orange live-eyed Clearwater coho salmon
eggs from the Clearwater River in northern Idaho made the 400-mile,
nine-hour trip back home to the Eagle Creek National Fish Hatchery
in Estacada, Oregon. Fifteen years ago, surplus coho eggs from lower
Columbia River hatcheries were sent to the Nez Perce Tribe as the
foundation for their Clearwater Basin Coho Restoration Project.
Fisheries staff from the Nez Perce Tribe delivered the surplus
eggs from the Dworshak National Fish to the Eagle Creek National
Fish Hatchery where USFWS staff will incubate the eggs and rear
the resulting juvenile coho until March 2011. The juvenile coho
will then be transported back to the Clearwater Subbasin where they
will be acclimated and outplanted into tributaries of the Clearwater
River. Space limitations in the Clearwater Basin at Dworshak National
Fish Hatchery and Kooskia National Fish Hatchery limit the tribe’s
ability to rear the eggs to produce juveniles for release.
“It’s taken 15 years for these coho to come full circle,”
said Mike Bisbee, coho project leader for the Nez Perce Tribe. “The
demonstrated success of these salmon over the past few years speaks
volumes about their instinct to survive and their determination
to come home. Coho are extremely forgiving and runs can rebuild
quickly. We’re helping them do that.”
The Nez Perce Tribe began a coho restoration project in the Clearwater
River Basin in 1994 under the U.S. v. Oregon fish management
agreement. Coho disappeared from the Clearwater River when the Lewiston
Dam was constructed in 1927. Restoration efforts by Idaho Fish and
Game in the 1960s failed and in 1986 coho were officially declared
extinct from the Clearwater River.
“The arrival of these eggs begins the transition to upriver
brood sources for the second phase of the Clearwater coho reintroduction
master plan-an important landmark in re-establishing a self-sustaining
coho population in the Clearwater River,” said Larry Telles,
hatchery manager for the USFWS’s Eagle Creek National Fish
Hatchery. “Once re-established, these fish will act as a critical
piece of the ecological puzzle in the restoration of other salmon
and steelhead populations of that system.”
The Nez Perce Tribe’s Clearwater Basin Coho Restoration
Project, funded by the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund through
NOAA Fisheries, is successfully rebuilding naturally spawning coho
runs to the Clearwater River and its tributaries. In 2009, 4,910
adult coho passed over Lower Granite Dam.
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About CRITFC
The Portland-based Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission is
the technical support and coordinating agency for fishery management
policies of the Columbia River Basin's four treaty tribes: the Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes
of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes
and Bands of the Yakama Nation and the Nez Perce Tribe.
CRITFC, formed in 1977, employs biologists, other scientists, public
information specialists, policy analysts and administrators who work
in fisheries research and analyses, advocacy, planning and coordination,
harvest control and law enforcement. |
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