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State OKs salmon plan
Chinook may someday reach Upper Klamath Basin
July 18, 2008
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U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Gentlemen display their catch while salmon fishing on the rapids of the Link River in 1891. |
PacifiCorp withdrew a water quality
certification application for three Klamath River
dams in California this week. Water quality
certification is necessary to continue using the
dams.
Faced with the prospect of having to spend millions of dollars on making the dams more fish friendly, PacifiCorp is in talks with state and federal agencies over a proposal to remove the dams.
“What we are doing is basically getting ahead of the curve to learn some information how (salmon) function in the system,” said Chip Dale, regional director for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Reintroduction
Expectations are that adult salmon, steelhead and lamprey will begin swimming upstream throughout the length of the Klamath River on their own, but no one knows how they will react when they hit Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon’s largest lake and the source of the river, said Dale.
Biologists will figure out which stock of fish, whether wild or hatchery, local or from another watershed, will do best in the area, and develop plans to reintroduce salmon eggs, or young salmon to the lake and the tributaries flowing into it and see what they do, Dale added.
Spring chinook
Because spring chinook generally are the fish that swim farthest into the headwaters to spawn, biologists expect the upper Basin fish would have been a strain that returns in the spring to spawn, Dale said.
However, the Klamath’s spring chinook run is practically extinct. A related strain can be found in the Trinity River, the Klamath’s primary tributary, he added.
Faced with the prospect of having to spend millions of dollars on making the dams more fish friendly, PacifiCorp is in talks with state and federal agencies over a proposal to remove the dams.
“What we are doing is basically getting ahead of the curve to learn some information how (salmon) function in the system,” said Chip Dale, regional director for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Reintroduction
Expectations are that adult salmon, steelhead and lamprey will begin swimming upstream throughout the length of the Klamath River on their own, but no one knows how they will react when they hit Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon’s largest lake and the source of the river, said Dale.
Biologists will figure out which stock of fish, whether wild or hatchery, local or from another watershed, will do best in the area, and develop plans to reintroduce salmon eggs, or young salmon to the lake and the tributaries flowing into it and see what they do, Dale added.
Spring chinook
Because spring chinook generally are the fish that swim farthest into the headwaters to spawn, biologists expect the upper Basin fish would have been a strain that returns in the spring to spawn, Dale said.
However, the Klamath’s spring chinook run is practically extinct. A related strain can be found in the Trinity River, the Klamath’s primary tributary, he added.
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