Water flows over The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River as seen from The Dalles, Ore., on June 19, 2022.Jessie Wardarski/The Associated Press
Indigenous leaders in British Columbia are asking for a decades-long flow of cash to return salmon to the upper reaches of the Columbia River after the White House pledged US$200-million to fund such work by U.S. tribes for the next 20 years.
In Canada, the Columbia River Salmon Reintroduction Initiative, or CRSRI, a joint effort of three Indigenous nations and the federal and provincial governments, has been funded for three years at a time, less time than it takes for a salmon to swim downriver and then return to spawn.
“Long-term commitments would enable us to plan beyond the life cycle of the salmon,” said Mark Thomas, who chairs the CRSRI executive working group.
“We are very aware of the situation in the U.S.,” he said. In Canada, “what we’re seeking is ongoing funding.”
The Columbia, which wends more than 2,000 kilometres from the foot of the Rocky Mountains in B.C. before crossing through Washington and Oregon toward the Pacific, was once among the most productive salmon rivers on Earth, with 7.5 to 16 million fish returning each year to spawn, an annual bounty of food that sustained ecosystems and Indigenous communities alike. Chinook supersalmon that could weigh upward of 30 kilograms and were dubbed “June hogs” once navigated the river’s immense distances.
Nearly a century of dam construction and operation, however, has transformed the Columbia into an electrical powerhouse whose upper stretches have blocked entry to salmon beginning at roughly the midway point in eastern Washington. While salmon remain in the lower Columbia, scientists estimate that the total number of wild salmon and steelhead in the river basin today is 2 to 4 per cent of historical levels; even with hatcheries, the total runs are less than a fifth of their historical strength.
Since 1961, the Columbia River Treaty has governed the use of waters by both countries for flood control and hydroelectricity.
Talks toward modernization of that treaty, however, have included discussion of salmon reintroduction, and Indigenous communities on both sides of the border have built up increasingly sophisticated research programs to study and test the return of a fish whose disappearance has left a gaping ecological and cultural hole.
U.S. tribes received a considerable boost to their efforts last year when the Biden administration committed US$200-million over 20 years toward tribal salmon restoration work. In years past, “we were kind of nickel-and-diming it,” said Monica Tonasket, a member of the Spokane Tribal Council.
The cash commitment, she said, means “it’s very much possible that we’re going to see salmon in abundance again in our rivers.”
Until now, only small numbers of salmon have been reintroduced on an experimental basis into the Upper Columbia, where an estimated 40 per cent of the river’s salmon habitat lies in areas now blocked by dams. The Colville Confederated Tribes, for example, released 1,144 adult Chinook salmon between 2019 and 2022.
Those early efforts, however, have already had a direct impact on Canada.
Some adult salmon released near Northport, Wash., “were documented in Canada, so we know that the efforts in the U.S. will result in salmon swimming upstream into Canada,” said Casey Baldwin, a research scientist for the Colville Confederated Tribes. Northport is 10 kilometres south of the border with B.C.
Successful salmon reintroduction in the United States could also obligate a response on the Canadian side. Columbia Power, a Crown corporation owned by the province of British Columbia, operates the Arrow Lakes Generating Station and the Brilliant Dam near Castlegar, B.C. For both, there is a regulatory requirement “to facilitate passage in the event salmon are naturally reintroduced in numbers,” said Columbia Power president Johnny Strilaeff. That means if salmon successfully navigate their way up from the Pacific, Columbia Power must devise ways to enable them to navigate past those dams.
“Should they come here, that would trigger our obligations,” Mr. Strilaeff said.
Canada, too, has spent heavily on Pacific salmon restoration and innovation, with federal and provincial governments committing more than $140-million over five years. But only 1 per cent of that has gone to the Columbia River watershed.
After the U.S. funding announcement, Lower Similkameen Indian Band Chief Keith Crow met with B.C. Premier David Eby. “I just encouraged him to have a look at what the U.S. is committing over 20 years, and suggested that Canada and B.C. should be doing something similar,” said Mr. Crow, who sits on the Chiefs Executive Council of the Syilx Okanagan Nation.
“The salmon just want to do what they’re meant to do, and we just need to make sure they can get the proper passage through the dams,” Mr. Crow said.
Mr. Eby’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship said in a statement it acknowledges “the historical events that led to the extirpation of wild salmon from the Upper Columbia.”
It called the U.S. funding “welcome news for all who depend on the Columbia watershed.”
U.S. scientists, however, say their focus does not extend north of the border. “The funding we received is only to be used for assessing reintroduction into U.S. habitats,” said Thomas Biladeau, who leads the division studying salmon for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. History suggests “there are enormous opportunities” for natural salmon spawning in Canadian parts of the river, but major habitat changes over the past century mean more study is needed, he said.
“It would be helpful and more efficient if the efforts on either side of the border could co-ordinate with one another,” he said. “This could have the potential to provide one another with timely and important data to advance the effort as a whole.”
A major research focus is how to bring salmon past the formidable obstacles posed by Columbia River dams. Located at roughly the river’s halfway point, Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State is 168 metres tall, one of the biggest concrete structures on Earth and the largest generator of hydroelectricity in the United States.
Revelstoke Dam in Canada is even taller, at 175 metres.
The U.S. funding will give scientists time to study technological solutions – which could include salmon cannons that fire fish through flexible tubes over a dam – and options for hatcheries.
“It’s a lot of the technical aspects of passage and how that works. More releases of fish, tracking and following them, seeing where they go,” said D.R. Michel, executive director of Upper Columbia United Tribes, a collaborative organization that has helped to co-ordinate salmon reintroduction research. Among its members is the Spokane Tribe of Indians, which expects to double the size of its fisheries program in the coming five years. Another member, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, hopes to grow its salmon-focused staff to eight, from 1.5 positions today.
They are doing so at a time when salmon are in a precarious position, with most U.S. stocks already “threatened with extinction,” according to a 2021 paper published by U.S. federal fisheries scientists. Overfishing, dams, salmon farms and hatcheries have all contributed. But climate change has also become an important factor. Modelling by those researchers showed that rising sea temperatures are expected to reduce Chinook salmon survival by 83 to 90 per cent.
Hatcheries, too, have provided a questionable benefit. A cluster of federally funded hatcheries on the Columbia River is struggling to return enough salmon to maintain operations; “the government spends between $250 and $650 for every salmon that returns to the river,” a 2022 investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica found. Part of the problem is that hatcheries tend to produce salmon that are genetically more frail than wild fish.
Brent Nichols, fisheries and water resources director for the Spokane Tribe of Indians, argues that those factors speak for, rather than against, returning salmon to the Upper Columbia.
“One of the things that we really like about our location is we have refugia here,” he said, describing parts of the Columbia and its tributaries that stay below 15 C, even when summertime temperatures approach 40 degrees.
Part of the work that needs to be done in the coming decades is to identify more of those refugia, areas that can offer natural shelter during unfavourable conditions.
“Our aim is to have healthy, abundant and harvestable populations,” Mr. Nichols said. It’s a modest goal, since a harvestable population need not be big enough to support even limited commercial fishing.
Is that worth the immense cost?
Mr. Nichols answers with another question. Over the past century, Indigenous “culture was taken away when the dams were constructed. So how do you justify not correcting that wrong when you have the opportunity to do it?”