Young Chinook Poisoned At Lower Umpqua Hatchery; Sheriff Investigating

Thousands of young hatchery fall Chinook salmon died at a rearing site on Oregon’s Central Coast, the apparent victims of a deliberate poisoning late last weekend.

“A gallon of bleach, 20,000 nice, fat little Chinook gone,” lamented Rick Rockholt of the Gardiner Reedsport Winchester Bay Salmon and Trout Enhancement Program this afternoon.

He said it’s believed that on Sunday night someone broke into the program’s equipment shed where fish food and other items are stored.

The loss amounts to a quarter to a fifth of the Chinook being raised at the STEP facility just off of Highway 101 between the towns of Reedsport and Gardiner.

“It’s just crushing. Why somebody would do that?” Rockholt wondered.

Thousands of hours of volunteer work go into collecting returning adult Chinook, spawning and fertilizing their eggs, and then rearing the young salmon for release there and at other locations on the lower Umpqua River for sport fisheries and a derby that is the fundraiser for the program.

“It’s just taking away from the struggling Chinook fishery we have on the Umpqua. It takes away several hundred adults,” Rockholt said.

Reedsport City Manager Deanna Schafer called it a “cruel and senseless intentional act of vandalism” in a Facebook post.

ODFW’s Meghan Dugan confirmed the report of the poisoning was true and said there may be a better estimate on how many Chinook died tomorrow. She said the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation.

“These fish are the property of the state of Oregon, so this is a game violation,” Rockholt stated. “They should make an example of them.”