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Yakamas hope to re-establish self-sustaining salmon runs in Yakima River BasinYakima Herald-Republic
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TUCQUALA LAKE, KITTITAS COUNTY -- Michael Porter helped write history Tuesday, armed not with a pen but a small dip net.
Porter and other staff members of the Yakama Nation Fisheries Program carried the contents of their nets -- a wriggling mass of young coho salmon -- to the water's edge where the nets were emptied.
Their release in this high-mountain lake above Lake Cle Elum marks the first time in about 100 years that migratory fish have experienced the headwaters of the Yakima River Basin, Yakama Nation biologists said.
These fish are part of an experiment to re-establish self-sustaining fish runs in the basin's upper reaches. The key ingredient, in addition to fish, are fish passage facilities at basin irrigation dams.
None of the five dams -- erected between 1912 and 1933 -- was built to accommodate the movement of fish.
Correcting that oversight is beginning at Lake Cle Elum, the 436,000 acre-foot lake that is the largest in the system, where testing the feasibility of adding passage began in 2005.
Eventually, the tribal-sponsored program will add sockeye, spring chinook salmon and steelhead trout.
This first day of a two-day planting of 300,000 young fish at up to 60 different places in the Lake Cle Elum watershed means a great deal to Brian Saluskin.
The fish passage biologist and Columbia River fisherman said tribal fishermen talk about the sockeye, also known as blueback salmon, in reverent tones.
The last echoes of native, wild sockeye and coho were silenced more than 100 years ago, about the time the first crude crib dams were built in the natural lakes to serve irrigation.
"I grew up as a tribal fisherman on the Columbia River in the '80s," the 40-year-old Saluskin said. "I saw a decline of the runs. To get sockeye back in the basin where they haven't been for a hundred years is a big deal to me and the Yakama Nation."
Dave Fast, senior research scientist for the nation, said sockeye are especially prized by Native Americans for their flavor and the timing of their return in early- to mid-summer.
"This is both culturally and spiritually important to the nation," the longtime biologist said.
Fish being released Tuesday and again today were obtained from an Oregon hatchery where the fish were no longer needed.
Tribal fisheries biologist Mark Johnston said the fisheries program jumped at the chance to get the fish to further the experiment.
"We want to keep introducing fish until they come back to sustain themselves. That's the goal," Johnston said.
He said the headwaters -- the tributary streams and small lakes -- offer great habitat for migratory fish. But the ecosystem is effectively sterile because there has been no marine biological material left when spawning fish die to feed the small organisms that fish in turn rely on for their food.
If successes in the passage study continue, all that could change.
The Bureau of Reclamation agreed to conduct the passage study and built a manmade flume on Cle Elum's huge spillway through which fish are released once the lake is full.
Some 20 of the first group of fish released through the flume in 2005 were captured at Roza Dam upon their return from the ocean.
This year, about 1,900 of the 12,000 coho placed in the lake have so far exited the lake.
Johnston said the passage study will end this year with a final report and recommendation in September to the federal government to allow for passage at Cle Elum for juvenile fish and a collection facility at the base of the dam to capture the adults.
In any case, adults will have to be trucked around the dam to reach tributary spawning grounds because the dam's height and the lake's annual drawdown makes a fish ladder impractical.
That matters little to Saluskin. He wants to see the river system be productive for fish again.
"This reconnection gives us a chance to have a holistic ecosystem that was taken away when the dams went in," he said.
* David Lester can be reached at 577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.
