Writing the post I made earlier today reminded me that I have not written about this year’s spring chinook returns to the Upper Deschutes Basin. They remain grim. If this is the sort of reintroduction project that the tribes along the Upper Columbia River want to implement they should expect a long and disappointing effort. They should also expect to spend far more than $200M.

Portland General Electric’s Pelton Round Butte hydroelectric project has a fish trap near its base on the Deschutes River. Fish are trapped there and some are hauled by truck around the 3 dams and released into Lake Billy Chinook where the hope is they will swim up one of the 3 tributaries of the reservoir and spawn. So far, it has not worked well.

Spring chinook start arriving at the fish trap in May and end about now. The last chinook to arrive was on September 8th. I think it’s safe to say that the run is over, or close enough to talk about it. It was dismal this year. A total of 13 upper basin origin spring chinook returned as adults. These fish were raised in a hatchery until they were smolts, released into a river above Lake Billy Chinook, trapped in the Fish Collection Facility that sits on top of the Selective Water Withdrawal tower in LBC, trucked around the dams, and released into the Lower Deschutes River. No naturally spawned adults returned. The uncomfortable truth is that there was zero evidence this year of success in creating a naturally reproducing population of spring chinook in the Upper Deschutes Basin.

After so many years of this effort, there is nothing positive to say about a total of 13 returning hatchery reared adults and 0 naturally spawned adults. Note that PGE will say that 77 adults were passed into LBC, but 64 of those were adults that came from a hatchery. I support releasing hatchery adults not needed for brood stock into LBC, but it should not mask the fact that spring chinook are not spawning in the upper basin anywhere close to the level needed to have successful reintroduction.

All that being said, I remain a supporter of the effort. There is no talk of removing the dams and, despite unfounded claims to the contrary, there is no evidence of reintroduction efforts having a detrimental impact on fish populations in the Lower Deschutes. PGE continues to work on enhancements to the reintroduction effort and perhaps they will be successful over time.