Power and Conservation Council reports progress

The raw number of adult salmon returning to the Columbia River has increased over the past 40 years but is still not meeting regional mitigation goals, and wild fish protected by the Endangered Species Act remain at risk of extinction.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council reported Tuesday that an average of 2.3 million adult fish returned to the basin from 2014-23. That is on par with the 2004-13 average of 2.4 million but dramatically higher than the 1.3 million average recorded in the 1990s.

In some individual years, the returns were higher. For example, an estimated 4.6 million salmon and steelhead returned to the Columbia River in 2014. But in other years, like 2018 and 2019, the returns numbered only about 1.3 million fish and were reminiscent of the disastrous runs in the 1990s that prompted some wild runs being protected as threatened and endangered.

Just as adult returns to the basin have risen, so too has the number of fish bound for areas upstream of Bonneville Dam — another council goal.

For decades the council that includes representatives appointed by the governors of Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana has maintained a goal of returning 5 million fish to the basin to mitigate for impacts caused by the hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers. It’s a broad target that includes fish harvested in the ocean, those that either spawn or are harvested below Bonneville Dam and those that swim past the dam 40 miles east of Portland, Ore.

It doesn’t differentiate between wild salmon and steelhead and those that begin life in hatcheries, or break numbers down into individual species like — spring, summer and fall chinook, coho, sockeye and steelhead. Nor does it consider whether a fish is protected by the Endangered Species Act or where it might be headed after it passes Bonneville Dam.

Still, as the council prepares to update its $280 million fish and wildlife program next year, its staff and representatives look to it as a significant accomplishment both in terms of the returns themselves and because it is the most detailed data collected and reported by the group since its creation by the Northwest Power Act in 1980.

“Increased salmon and steelhead abundance in the Columbia River Basin — especially above Bonneville Dam — over the past 40 years marks important progress,” Louie Pitt, a council member from Oregon and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, said in a news release. “These fish still face severe stresses from climate change, pressures from human population growth in the Basin, and other environmental impacts. Some stocks are struggling right now. We cannot ease up in our collective efforts to help these fish populations grow stronger and larger everywhere we can — including in blocked areas of our Basin such as above Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee Dams.”

That some fish are struggling is an understatement, according to fisheries officials from the Nez Perce Tribe’s Fisheries Resources Management. Department Director David Johnson and Jay Hesse, director of biological services, point out that while the council’s program has helped the tribe and other fish and wildlife managers improve hatchery production, fish passage at dams and restore habitat, many wild populations are at dangerously low levels.

“Wild fish populations in the Snake River Basin are on the brink of extinction and hatchery programs are not meeting their mitigation goals,” Hesse said in an emailed message to the Tribune. “About 7,500 wild Spring/summer Chinook salmon returned back to the Snake Basin in 2024; and results in about 40% of the populations having 50 or fewer wild fish — a level considered quasi-extinct.”

Johnson said the increased number of adult fish is being driven, in part, by fall chinook and sockeye that return to the middle and upper sections of the Columbia River. Tucannon River spring chinook are in such dire condition that some of those fish are held in a gene bank, he said.

Before development of the hydropower system and the earlier over-exploitation of the runs by commercial fishing in the lower Columbia, the returns were as high as 16 million fish annually.

The Northwest Power Act tasked the council with making sure the region has a reliable and affordable power supply while also protecting and mitigating fish and wildlife populations harmed by the dams. Each year it evaluates fish and wildlife projects submitted by states and tribes and recommends which of those should be funded by the Bonneville Power Administration and its ratepayers.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com.