You’ve all heard about the annual fish “salvage” on the Upper Deschutes River above Bend. Periodic dewatering of the river by irrigation districts and the stranding of fish has been going on for decades but it recently has had negative press resulting in limited efforts made to save some fish. When this started I spoke to ODFW who said they wanted nothing to do with it. The salvage only occurs on a very small part of the river where hikers can easily see it, is mostly a feel-good PR event with no measurable biological impact, and the burden should be on the irrigation districts to better manage the river and perform any needed fish rescue operations. I stopped writing about this a long time ago, but here’s a recent no-holds-barred article on the topic from Bend resident George Wuerthner.