Columbia Salmon, Steelhead Hatcheries In The News

Federal hatcheries in the Columbia River system can’t catch a break.

A handful in the gorge lost a third of their staffers this year and volunteers and state and tribal staffers are helping to facilitate spawning and other work, while budgetary shortfalls from back in DC also spill over to local agency shoulders, leading to closures.

The usual suspects are suing yet again over alleged violations at Mitchell Act facilities.

We’ll take these one at a time.

AN ARTICLE IN THE Spokane Spokesman-Review reports how longtime federal fish biologist Michael Tehan, who retired in February, is volunteering at three hatcheries, while the Yakama Nation, Warm Springs Tribe and WDFW and ODFW “have also sent their hatchery staff to fill the gaps, along with interns and other volunteers.”

Having worked the policy side, the grunt work proved to be an eye-opener for Tehan, who “was surprised to see how old and worn out so much of the infrastructure was: nets mended with duct tape, hip waders with the soles falling off the boots. At the Willard National Fish Hatchery, built in 1952, a leak in the concrete structure that diverts river water into the hatchery requires them to supplement it with groundwater, he said,” writes Orion Donavan Smith.

Smith reports that WDFW was informed by federal counterparts that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had lost 12 workers, or 32 percent of their staff, at the Warm Springs, Spring Creek, Willard, Carson and Little White Salmon National Fish Hatcheries due to federal government downsizing earlier this year.

While USFWS maintains it has enough staff, there’s a risk that not enough broodstock or eggs will be collected, and WDFW says it and the tribes are paying their employees to work at the federal facilities to make sure there are enough hands for spawning.

Columbia Gorge hatcheries are part of a system that helps fuel recreational, treaty and commercial fisheries from the Gulf of Alaska to the Northwest Coast to Buoy 10 and up the big river and its tributaries.

Smith adds a jarring quote from Zach Penney, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s director of strategic services:

“In some cases, I think the staffing cuts at federal agencies have put the facilities and their teams in an unwinnable situation, and that puts anybody who fishes for salmon in a place where we’re all going to lose eventually,” Penney told Smith. “If juvenile production in 2025 is compromised, it is possible that we will lose adult fish returns in 2026, 2027, 2028 and beyond, depending on how long the fish might spend out the ocean. And the impacts of that are not just in the Columbia River or to tribes.”

Chronic Congressional underfunding of Mitchell Act hatcheries and the Washington legislature’s failure earlier this year to fully fund WDFW’s request for Skamania Hatchery operations is leading to its closure and the loss of 100,000 early winter steelhead smolts released into nearby rivers.

AS FOR THAT SECOND THREAT to federal hatcheries, Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler last week announced they intend to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service over alleged Endangered Species Act violations associated with funding Mitchell Act hatcheries under the new December 2024 biological opinion.

They claim the biop, which came out of a lawsuit against the 2017 edition, is “arbitrary and capricious,” “legally deficient,” “inconsistent with the ESA,” and doesn’t adequately protect listed Chinook, coho, chum, steelhead and southern resident killer whales.

The orgs say they’re “building on decades” of work to “ensure Columbia River hatcheries operate in a manner that does not further perpetuate the decline of threatened salmon and steelhead and their ecosystems,” but if this lawsuit is anything like past ones, if successful it will gradually chip away at hatchery production supporting sport and other fisheries.

In a settlement over another Mitchell Act lawsuit announced late last year with WFC and TCF, WDFW agreed to reduce fall Chinook smolt releases into the Kalama River for 2025, end and mothball the Deep River netpens that produce coho for Lower Columbia commercial fisheries, and terminate a hatchery winter steelhead program on the Washougal River.

Those young winter steelhead were eventually shipped over to Banks Lake, one of several landlocked Eastside repositories WDFW finds itself trucking Westside anadromous fish over to after reaching settlements with WFC.

The tradeoff for WDFW was protection from further WFC and TCA lawsuits over Lower Columbia hatchery fish for a period of time. Will it be ultimately the same for NMFS?

MEANWHILE, SINCE WE’RE TALKING Columbia salmon and steelhead and NMFS, the federal agency recently approved extending California and Steller sea lion lethal removal authority on portions of the river system for another five years so as to reduce the marine mammals’ predation on listed stocks.

The take permit granted to WDFW, ODFW and other state and tribal entities allows them to remove 424 CSLs and 62 SSLs, figures which represent the balance leftover from the original August 2020 permit.

Between then and now, managers removed 116 CSLs and 114 SSLs, entirely at Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls. The geographic scope of the permit is far more broad, but the funding and means to perform removals under its specific conditions elsewhere is otherwise lacking.