On October 30th a judge denied a request to order ODFW to continue to release summer steelhead into the North Umpqua river. This is a long saga that I’ll summarize below, but it appears that the ODFW Commission’s April 2022 decision to stop these hatchery releases may finally be implemented, at least until the next legal maneuver. Here’s a blog post from The Conservation Angler with the announcement. Keeping reading for some background.

Following years of extremely low returns of summer steelhead, in the spring of 2022 ODFW held a series of informational meetings to inform the public on their assessment. For more, look at my posts here and here. This was followed by a Commission meeting where, in what I called a “jaw dropping shocker” at the time, they voted to close Rock Creek Hatchery on the N. Umpqua and stop all hatchery steelhead releases from it. In my opinion it was the right thing to do.

Unsurprisingly, a lawsuit against the decision was filed and in May of 2022 the court ordered the release of hatchery summer steelhead that spring. While not parties to the lawsuit, two tribes also objected to the decision. Since then these tribes have secured commitment from the Commission that they will be consulted on future management decisions.

ODFW is now working on a “hatchery resiliency” effort which is likely to close the Rock Creek hatchery. This is another long discussion, but the summary is that aging hatcheries, global warming, and insufficient financial resources are combining to make many hatcheries untenable. The Rock Creek Hatchery on the North Umpqua is one of the most likely to be permanently closed as it mostly burned down in a wildfire that impacted much of the North Umpqua, the cost to rebuild is high, and there is no longer abundant cold water in Rock Creek required for successful hatchery operation. Tribes who consider fishing the Umpqua as part of their heritage have already started working on using other production facilities to maintain their hatchery release goals.

This is a story that will continue for some time to come.