hey lead bouncer: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

Quote

The Bureau of Reclamation, which built the dam, was aware of the impact Grand Coulee would have on salmon and steelhead and took steps to compensate for the losses through the construction of hatcheries. This was complicated, however, by the fact that the upper Columbia salmon runs had been declining for years before the dam finished them off. End quote

http://www.nwcouncil.org/history/Hatcheries.asp

In 1875, Spencer Baird, the United States Fish Commissioner, advised the commercial fishing industry that artificial propagation of salmon would be so successful it would eliminate the need to regulate harvest. Regulation was a controversial issue at the time, as the salmon runs were being fished heavily for economic gain but without effective regulation, and some scientists already were concerned that overfishing might prove catastrophic to the runs. In response to a request from the Oregon Legislature, Baird outlined the problems he saw for the salmon industry: 1) excessive fishing; 2) dams; and 3) altered habitat. Baird believed each of these problems could be resolved through artificial propagation of fish. That is, sufficient numbers of fish could be produced in hatcheries to satisfy the demand of commercial fishers, hatcheries could be located on tributaries of the Columbia where the fish would not have to pass dams on their way to the ocean as juveniles or back from the ocean as adults, and altered natural habitats would be of minor consequence because so many fish would be spawned artificially at the hatcheries. [End Quote]

[Quote]
"Dams are probably number two on the columbia, if there were no dams, the harvest problem would not disappear."
[End quote]

[Quote]
That opinion runs counter to every single piece of credible science ever conducted on the Columbia River watershed.

Fish on...

Todd
[End quote]

[QUOTE]
Back in the '70's the coho in Hood Canal were literally given away with a handshake, and within three years were almost completely wiped out, taking some other fish with them. [END QUOTE]

QUESTION- Were the fish caught in a dam or a net?

QUOTE
The amount of fish being harvested out of the Columbia Basin, including those Columbia basin fish being caught in Alaska and B.C., comprise a miniscule percentage of the historical run sizes there.

They were beat down considerably by overfishing before the dams were ever built, but....

QUESTION- Were the fish caught in a net?

WASHINGTONS FIRST CR HATCHERY
[Quote]
In 1877 Columbia River cannery operators, worried about the decline of the prized spring Chinook runs, organized the Oregon & Washington Fish Propagation Company, raised $21,000 in donations, and built a salmon hatchery on the Clackamas River. It was the first hatchery in the Columbia River Basin. The facility was operated by the U.S. Fish Commission and only partially funded by the cannery operators. Other contributors included the state of Washington. The facility operated until 1881 and then closed, apparently for lack of funding (The state of Oregon reopened it in 1888, then turned its operation over to the U.S. Fish Commission again in 1889). [End Quote]

[Quote]
It is ironic to note that this wisdom prevailed for more than 100 years, even in the face of declining returns of hatchery salmon. Fisheries scientist and author Jim Lichatowich observes that Baird saw artificial production as a better means of protecting the economically important commercial fishery than attempting to protect naturally spawning fish by regulating harvest. In other words, “protection” favored the fishery, not the fish. Hatcheries would eliminate the need to regulate the fishery. “Baird reached this conclusion just three years after the first hatchery for Pacific salmon was opened on the Sacramento River,” Lichatowich writes in a 1996 report prepared for the Bonneville Power Administration. “Ninety years later the hatcheries began making meaningful contributions to the fishery, but by then most of the original natural productivity of the Pacific salmon in the Columbia River had been destroyed.” [END QUOTE]

Question- What is the First goal of CCAPNW?
Answer- To establish SELECTIVE HARVEST FOR NATIVE,WILD FISH.

WASHINGTONS COLUMBIA RIVER DAMS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_dams_on_the_Columbia_River

SOME HIGHLIGHTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF FISH CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA AND THE UNITED STATES
1850—California became a State.

1851—California enacted a law concerning oysters and oyster beds.

1852—California enacted the first salmon law and included a closed season on some kinds of game. It called upon all citizens and officers of justice to remove, destroy, and break down any weir, dam, fence, set or stop net, or other obstruction to the run of salmon in any river or stream.

1854—The California Legislature outlawed nets and seines in Stockton and Mormon Sloughs, San Joaquin County.

1861—The California Legislature adopted its first laws for the protection of trout.

1870—Under "An Act to provide for the restoration and preservation of fish in the waters of this State", approved April 2, 1870, the Governor appointed three Commissioners of Fisheries to serve without pay during 4-year terms. Their duties were to establish "fish breederies", to stock and supply streams, lakes, and bays with both foreign and domestic fish, to purchase and import spawn and ova, to employ fish culturists and other needed help, to construct fish ladders, and to distribute spawn and ova to fish breeders. The new law also contained provisions for the conservation of fish. From 1870 to 1882, about $40,000 was appropriated for the Commission. In the reports of the Fish Commissioners from 1870 to 1886, their official title is given as Board of Commissioners of Fisheries. From 1886 to 1909, the title Board of Fish Commissioners is used.

1871—The Congress of the United States appointed a Commission of Fish and Fisheries for all the states of the Union, with a full staff of officers having a knowledge of fish culture. Up to 1880, the total sums placed at the disposal of the Commission amounted to about $488,500.

1871—The American Fish Culturist Association was organized and, in 1872, applied to Congress to authorize the United States Commission to undertake the duty of restoring fish to depleted rivers. A resolution

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― 9 ―
was passed authorizing the United States Commission to fulfill that duty.

1878—The California Fish Commission was granted jurisdiction over game as well as fish.

1909—The name of the Board of Fish Commissioner was changed to Board of Fish and Game Commissioners. Beginning with the Biennial Report for 1910–1912 the title Fish and Game Commission is used.

1913—The first general angling license ($1) was required for all persons over 18.

1927—The Department of Natural Resources, created in this year, succeeded to the powers and duties of the Fish and Game Commission. A Division of Fish and Game was established within the Department, and a new Fish and Game Commission was created to administer the Division.

1933—A separate Fish and Game Code was enacted by the Legislature, deleting fish and game from the State Penal Code.

1937—The Fish and Game Commission was increased from three to five members.

1940—The State Constitution was amended to provide for a five-man commission serving 6-year staggered terms, the members being removable only by concurrent vote of both houses of the Legislature.

1952— The Division of Fish and Game in the Department of Natural Resources was made a separate department, and called the Department of Fish and Game.

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Stipulation- Grand Coulee would be a larger threat to the columbia and snake river system if it were located below the mouth of the cowlitz river, thus preventing transfer or passage of fish. Although Dams MAY account for more dead fish than Commercial harvest, it was not the dams that created the need for hatcheries as evidenced by history.

Stipulation-
Grand Coulee is the end of the line and a terrible mistake. On the flip side, Im prepaired to collect articles about overharvest in Alaska and British Columbia.
Opinion-
If there were no dams, gillnets would not allow selective harvest. If there were no dams, we would still have a harvest problem. Thus, Tu, WSC and CCA would still exist.
If you dont want CCA help in removing the dams, call them up. Otherwise, stop complaining.

Salmon science is a complicated issue for most fishermen to fully understand. Sure there were lots of reasons why our salmon runs have declined, but it's still the opinion of most scientists that the "dams" where likely #1. Read the full history below of the Columbia River and you just might also come to the final conclusion that the "Dams" and what they had taken from the fish were the fish's worse problem to overcome.

Don't just read the parts that fits your positon; read them all and then make your own judgment calls about which was number 1 or number 2 on the long list of problems that have lead to the lost of our salmon runs! Let's just look at the Columbia's past history up to 1959 and go from there.

Surely, no one will say that the commercial fishery wasn't the reason for the early salmon runs declines and depletions, but it was the dams that cut off there recovery. The commercial boys started the salmons decline, but the dams finished them off for good! It's my understanding that there are now over 54 "dams" on the Columbia river system!

Enjoy!

When the major "DAMS" went in…

Grand Coulee Dam: Columbia River at mile marker 596.6, completed in 1941,federally owned

Ice Harbor Dam: Snake River, near the confluence with the Columbia River at mile marker 9.7, completed in 1961, federally owned

Lower Monumental Dam: Snake River at mile marker 41.6, completed in 1969, federally owned,

Lower Granite Dam: Snake River at mile marker 107.5, completed in 1975, federally owned

Hells Canyon Dam: Mid-Snake River at mile marker 247.0, completed in 1967, spillway 330 feet, 3 gates, concrete gravity type hydroelectric dam. Idaho PUD owned

Brownlee Dam: Mid-Snake River at mile marker 285.0, completed in 1958, spillway 1097 feet, 4 gates, creates a 58 mile reservoir, concrete gravity type hydroelectric, PUD-owned by Idaho Power

Dworshak Dam: Clearwater River at mile marker 1.9, North Fork, Idaho, completed in 1971, federally owned

Bonneville Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 146.1, completed 1938, second power house built in 1982. Federally-owned

The Dalles Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 191.5, completed 1957, federally owned

John Day Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 215.6, completed 1968, federally owned

McNary Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 292.0, completed in 1953, federally owned

Priest Rapids Dam: First dam on the Columbia River above the confluence of the Snake River, at mile marker 397.1, completed in 1959, concrete gravity type, hydroelectric PUD owned.

Wanapum Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 415.8, completed in 1963, concrete gravity type, hydroelectric owned by Grant County PUD

Chief Joseph Dam: Columbia River at mile marker 545.1, completed in 1955, concrete gravity type, federally owned

Wells Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 515.8, completed in 1967, concrete gravity type, hydroelectric PUD owned, 4460 feet in length, 2 fish ladders. The Wells Fish Hatchery releases 3 million juvenile salmon and steelhead annually. In the 1980s the Douglas County PUD developed a hydrocombine system

Rocky Reach Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 473.7, completed in 1961, concrete gravity type, hydroelectric, PUD owned,

Rock Island Dam: Columbia River, at mile marker 453.4, completed in 1933, concrete gravity type, hydroelectric PUD, second powerhouse completed in 1979, 1184 foot spillway, 31 gates. PUD owned. Chelan and Douglas PUDs combined

Keenleyside Dam: B.C. Canada, Columbia River, mile marker 770, completed in 1968, owned and operated by BC Hydro.

Mica Dam: Upper Columbia River, mile marker 956.0, B.C. Canada, completed in 1973,with a powerhouse added in 1977. Mica is owned and operated by BC Hydro. Mica is an earthfill embankment dam, 800 feet in height. It was built in accordance to the Columbia River Treaty to provide water storage for flood control and power.

Duncan Dam: B.C. Canada, Duncan River, completed in 1967, owned and operated by BC Hydro. Duncan is a forty-mile high earthfill dam that was built to provide storage (it does not have a powerhouse). It was built under the terms of the Columbia River Treaty.

Revelstoke Dam: B.C. Canada, Upper Columbia River mile marker 882, constructed in 1984. Revelstoke dam forms Lake Revelstoke. It is a concrete hydroelectric gravity dam, owned and operated by BC Hydro

CHRONOLOGY OF SALMON DECLINE
IN THE COLUMBIA RIVER
1779 TO THE PRESENT
_________________________________________

1779 - Captain James Cook looked for the Northwest Passage, found the Columbia River and started the trade in beaver pelts. Trapping beaver was the first major change in salmon habitat on the west coast.

1789 McKenzie crossed the Rocky Mountains to the British Columbia Coast

1800s-

1890s Effects of mining, logging, farming, and fishing cause decline in salmon runs

1806 Lewis and Clark crossed the continent to the mouth of the Columbia River

1811 David Thompson followed the Columbia to its mouth

1824 Hudson’s Bay Company located at Fort George (Astoria)

1826-
1834 The average number of beaver pelts taken is 3,000. The trapping of beaver in the Northwest was the first major ecological change of salmon habitat by humans.

1828 The first saw mill established at Mill Plain on the lower Columbia River by Hudson’s Bay Company.

1830s The depletion of beaver in the 1830s took place 100 years before the first extensive surveys of salmon habitat.

1843 The center for the fur industry moved north to Vancouver Island
1846 Brittan and America settle their boundary dispute and Americans continue to take beaver pelts.

1848 The Columbia River Basin covers an area of 259,000 square miles. Before any water resource development, over 163,000 square miles of the basin was accessible to anadromous salmonids.

1848 The citizens of Oregon were concerned enough about salmon stream protection to include a provision for salmon protection in their territorial constitution of 1848. That provision required fishways at all dams. Since this law went into effect it has been poorly enforced.

1850 Pre-development run size is estimated to be from 10 to 16 million wild salmonids.

1852 James G. Swan was traveling by sea from San Francisco when he recorded in his diary at the Columbia River was in flood stage and that the water 30 miles off the mouth was covered with sawdust and boards.

1854 It was believed that humans would assume control over salmon production with hatcheries the same way agriculture controlled the production of plants and animals.

1855 Treaties between the United States and Columbia River Indian tribes is signed and the tribes secure the right to fish in usual and accustomed places.

1859 First irrigation project constructed in the Columbia Basin

1866 First salmon cannery built on the river at Eagle Cliff by Hume and Hapgood. Washington State adopted its first fishing gear restrictions.

1870 California creates a board of fish commissioners.

1870 Timber around estuaries and along navigable rivers was nearly exhausted, causing a major impact on salmon spawning and rearing areas.

1870 The American Fish Culturists’ Association was founded. It later was renamed the American Fisheries Society, a professional organization that has numerous technical journals in fisheries.

1872 First game laws passed by the Oregon Legislature making it illegal to use explosives or poisons to take salmon.

1874 Payette River, Idaho, produced a commercial catch of 30,000 pounds of sockeye salmon or 7,000 fish.

1875 The U.S. Fish Commissioner, Spencer Baird, told the fishing industry that artificial propagation would eliminate the need to regulate the harvest.

1877 There are three salmon hatcheries on the West Coast. Hume begins releasing chinook salmon fry at his Rogue River hatchery. This hatchery joins the McCloud River Hatchery in California and the Clackamas Hatchery in Oregon.

1876 Camp Creek, a tributary to Crooked R in Oregon degraded from a meadow and willow sheltered creek to a gully of raw banks devoid of fish habitat. This creek is still degraded in 2005. This was caused by over grazing that set the creek up for failure during severe thunder storms.

1878 The first salmon hatchery is built in the Columbia Basin on Clear Creek, a tributary of the Clackamas River. It was started by salmon canners to increase the supply of salmon from the Columbia River. The salmon runs were declining.

1878 Oregon creates a state fish commission and passed the first conservation law which restricted mesh size on the gillnet fishery.

1878 The Oregon Legislature enacted a one day fishing closure in this state’s coastal streams, but enforcement was a problem.

1887 Congress Directs U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate causes of declining salmon runs.

1880 In 1880, Alvin Anderson, British Columbia inspector of fisheries, realized that Pacific salmon are organized into separate local populations, with each river having its own distinct stock. He recognized that the supply of salmon in a river depended upon the number of spawners in that river. Andersons’ views reflected earlier recognition that Atlantic salmon faithfully returned to their home stream. Accepting the stock concept led managers in British Columbia’s salmon fishing to limit fishing effort by restricting both the timing of fishing and the type of gear permitted. Pacific salmon were believed to be genetically uniform in the U.S., spawning in rivers at random.

1880 Sockeye salmon runs declining and the Payette River sockeye fishery is commercially extinct.

1880 The number of salmon canneries on the Columbia reaches the peak of 39.

1880 The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts was established as the first government-run center for fisheries research in the United States.

1883 The year when the harvest of chinook salmon peaked on the Columbia River. There were 1,700 gillnet boats in the fishery. They took 42,799,000 pounds of fish which is about 3 million fish and processed 600,000 cases of canned salmon. Form then on the runs decline rapidly with 18,135,000 pounds taken in 1889.

1883 Livingston Stone surveys the Columbia River to locate a suitable hatchery site.
In the United States, the influential Livingston Stone maintained that salmon ran up rivers randomly, fostering the misconception that salmon were readily transplantable from river to river. Stone’s rejection of the home-stream concept encouraged reliance on hatcheries, and transplanting of stocks became a cornerstone of salmon management in the United States. If salmon had no real dependence on their home streams, then why not move them around so as not to conflict with other desired uses of the land.

1883 David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford University and the leading academic salmon biologist of his day, shared Stone’s view, stating, ‘It is the prevailing impression that salmon have such special instinct which leads them to return to spawn on the same spawning grounds where they were originally hatched. We fail to find any evidence of this in the case of Pacific Coast salmon, and we do not believe it to be true.

1884 George Brown Goode tells the World Fisheries Congress that salmon on the Columbia are under complete control of the fish culturists, even though there was no solid evidence of success. The U.S. Fish Commission viewed hatcheries as the primary management activity, saying that it was easy to make fish so abundant through artificial propagation that regulation of the harvest would be unnecessary.

1886 Columbia River chinook salmon stocks continue to show visible signs of depletion.

1887 Oregon establishes a three person State Board of Commissioners to enforce fish and game laws.

1889 There are 57 fish wheels operating in the area 30 miles above Bonneville and near Celilo Falls. The best wheels catch 6,000 fish a day.

1889 The canneries began processing sockeye salmon and steelhead for the first time. A few years later chum salmon and coho were being canned. These are species that had previously been considered inferior, but the chinook catch had decline so much that other fish were needed to keep the canneries operating.

1890 Washington State creates the Washington Fish Commission.

1890 The salmon decline at Kettle Falls on the upper Columbia is severe and has been in sharp decline since 1882.

1890s In the Grande Ronde valley logging accounted for 15 to 20 million board feet per year and loggers used a system of splash dams which blocked salmon migration and destroyed spawning and rearing habitat.

1892 The Oregon Legislature establishes a hatchery fund from license fees.

1892 The Columbia River fishery employed 5,545 workers, and salmon were harvested by 378 pound nets, 38 seines, 1,314 gill nets, 57 fish wheels, and 75 dip nets.

1893 Oregon establishes the State Game and Fish Protector position beginning the combined fish and game administration in Oregon.

1894 Salmon investigations are started by the U.S. Fish Commission because there is an “alarming decrease in the salmon catch of the Columbia River within recent years.”

1894 Marshall McDonald, U.S. Commissioner for Fish and Fisheries, said, “We have relied too exclusively upon artificial propagation as a sole and adequate means for maintenance of our fisheries. We have been more disposed to measure results by quantity rather than quality, to estimate our triumphs.”

1895 Columbia River salmon harvest reached 30 million pounds.

1895 Marshall McDonald, U.S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, conducted the first study of Columbia River salmon stocks and concluded that over-harvest was evident and predicted salmon abundance would decline.

1896 The Oregon State Fish and Game Protector said, “I am convinced that not more than 10% of the ova spawned in the open streams are hatched, owing principally to spawn-eating fish that prey on them… while from artificial propagation 90% are successfully hatched. What more need be said in favor of fish culture?”
1898 Oregon splits the fish and game management programs and creates the Board of Fish Commissioners comprised of the governor, secretary of state, and the fish commissioner. A Board of Game Commissioners followed in 1899.

1899 The salmon harvest declined to 18 million pounds.

1899 Oregon and Washington established a joint fishery management program involving two committees of both state legislatures. The purpose was to reach coordinated agreement on Columbia River fishery regulations.

1900 Gas engines were added to salmon boats, leading to the creation of the ocean troll fishery. It started with 500 boats and by 1915 there were 1,500.

1900 Log drives started on the Minam and John Day rivers. Splash dams were built on the John Day R between Spray and the Columbia River. Log drives and splash dams lasted until 1936.

1901 The first hatchery coho salmon fry released in Oregon.

1901 Oregon established the Master Fish Warden position to enforce regulations

1902 H.D. Langille, Federal Surveyor of timber lands, said, “All sections contiguous to the Grande Ronde R. have been logged over and left in hopelessly denuded condition.

1903 Log drives on the McKenzie River started and lasted through 1915. This period was the heyday of log drives on the upper Willamette River.

1903 By this time the prime spring chinook decline was evident and to compensate, more of the harvest shifted to the fall chinook run, a fish the canners considered inferior.

1903 The Boise River enters the Snake River 379 miles above the mouth. This stream use to support large runs of chinook salmon and steelhead, but irrigation development exterminated the runs.

1903 Washington established a game code and county commissioners appointed game wardens.

1904 W.H.B. Kent reported that the foot hills are entirely cut, burned, and denuded by sheep grazing and all the lower elevation ponderosa pine were cut on in the Grande Ronde basin.

1907 The U.S. Forest Service in eastern Oregon recommended fencing creeks to keep cattle out of riparian areas for recovery. The remedies recommended in 1940 were the same and in 1991 the Malheur National Forest supervisor stated the same solutions to over grazing. The problem is that riparian areas along salmon spawning and rearing streams are still over grazed. Burning willows in along creeks is still practiced by ranchers to benefit cattle.

1907 Swan Falls Dam on the Snake River built by Idaho Power Company, reduces all salmon and steelhead runs above the dam. The fish ladder did not work well. In 1940 the fishway was rebuilt and fish can pass upstream.

1909 Sport anglers required to buy a license to fish in Oregon

1909 Oregon constructed Central Hatchery (later named Bonneville Hatchery) on Tanner Creek. This hatchery had the capacity to handle 60 million eggs and served as a central clearing house and incubation station for eggs collected throughout the region. Eyed eggs and fry from Central Hatchery were distributed throughout the Columbia Basin and beyond. For example, chinook eggs from the McKenzie River were stocked in the Alsea River on the Oregon coast.

1909 Oregon and Washington establish for the first time consistent fishery seasons. The upper deadline for the fishery is at the mouth of Oregon’s Deschutes River.

1910-1920 Columbia River salmon canneries reach peak production.

1911 Oregon’s Fish and Game Boards are combined to form the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners made up of three members appointed by the governor.

1912 Ocean commercial trolling for salmon begins off mouth of Columbia

1913 The position of Washington Chief Game Warden is created to enforce fishery rules.

1915 The legislatures of Oregon and Washington create the Columbia River Fish Compact for joint regulations of Columbia River commercial fisheries.

1915 Washington commercial and game fish regulations are combined under the authority of the State Game Warden.

1916 Oregon abolishes the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners and replaces it with the Fish and Game Commission with the governor serving as the chair of the three member commission.

1917 Purse seines are prohibited in the Columbia

1918 The Willamette River is closed to commercial salmon fishing.

1918 The U.S. Congress ratifies the Columbia River Fish Compact created in 1915 by the states of Oregon and Washington to provide cooperative regulation of the Columbia River commercial fishery.

1919 Warm Springs Dam is constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation on the Middle Fork Malheur River with no fish passage. This dam ends spring chinook and summer steelhead runs in the river.

1919 The Washington State Fish Commissioner said “The most important reason for artificial propagation is the fact that the natural method is extremely wasteful, which is not true of the artificial method.”

1919 The first school of fisheries was launched at the University of Washington

1920 Oregon once again changes the fish and game board, replacing it with a commission.

1920 The U.S. Forest Service planners knew they were authorizing logging that would ensure that harvest levels would collapse by the 1990s in eastern Oregon watersheds.

1921 Oregon established separate fish (3 members) and game (five members) commissions with members appointed by the legislature and then later they were appointed by the governor. Oregon establishes a tax on commercial fishery landings.

1921 Washington abolished the State Fish Commission and replaced it with the Departments of Fisheries and Game.

1923 Whip seines are prohibited in the Columbia

1926 The Columbia River fishery had expanded to 1,790 gill nets, 506 traps, 94 seines, 48 fish wheels, 291 dip nets and 342 trollers.

1927 Fish wheels are banned on the Columbia in Oregon followed by Washington in 1935.

1928 The peak chum salmon harvest of 8.4 million pounds or 700,000 fish takes place.

1928 There are 15 hatcheries operating in the Columbia Basin and a total of 2 billion fry are released into the river.

1930s In eastern Oregon and Washington watersheds there was a prolonged drought with less than one third of the normal rain fall during the summers. Rain fall averaged only 0.l6 and 0.25 inch of rain fall in July and August during the 1930s. This compared to the period 1911 to 1922 when rain fall averaged 0.45 inch.

1930 John Cobb, University of Washington concluded that artificial propagation could become a threat to the Pacific salmon fishery. Fish managers had to put aside their optimism and stop relying on hatcheries alone to increase or maintain the fishery.

1931 Merwin Dam is completed on the N.F. Lewis River in Washington, blocking this large tributary to the lower Columbia River to salmon and steelhead. It is later followed by Yale Dam, 1953, and Swift Dam in 1958.

1932 The Washington Legislature separated food and game fish management and created the Department of Fisheries under an appointed director and the Department of Game under a six member commission.

1932 Powder River is a large tributary to the Snake River in Oregon. It was a magnificent salmon and steelhead stream. Thief Valley Dam was constructed in this year by the Bureau of Reclamation. No fish passage was provided and the salmon runs were eliminated. People at the dam reported that large numbers of coho salmon and steelhead blocked by the dam showed up for several years and then disappeared.

1933 Rock Island Dam is constructed on the upper Columbia and has fish passage problems.

1933 Owyhee Dam is constructed on the Owyhee River terminating salmon and steelhead in that river and the only salmon run in the state of Nevada. This dam was built to serve irrigation interests by the Bureau of Reclamation. No fish passage was provided.

1934 The commercial sale of steelhead in Washington is prohibited.

1935 Fish wheels, haul seines, traps and set nets are prohibited in Washington.

1935 Beulah Dam is constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation on the North Fork Malheur River without fish passage. This dam ends the chinook and steelhead runs in this river. The Malheur watershed is 4,750 square miles supporting large runs chinook and steelhead. Irrigation development and dam construction terminated these unique runs of wild salmon and steelhead.

1937 Oregon and Washington fisheries officials permitted to change fishing seasons. Prior to this the state legislatures were the only body to change seasons.

1938 Bonneville Dam is constructed on the Columbia 140 miles above the mouth. This dam was originally designed without fishways by the Army Corps of Engineers. Commercial fishing was prohibited five miles below and 15 miles above the dam.

1938 The peak steelhead harvest is 2.6 million pounds or 293,000 fish.

1938 The fish management agencies consider a 50% harvest rate excessive to the maintenance of the runs, yet 80% of the spring chinook and 65% of the fall chinook are taken in the commercial fishery.

1938 Willis Rich developed the Home Stream Theory of salmon management based on salmon tagging studies. He determined that salmon home to the streams where they were hatched. He held that proper conservation of salmon required protection of the salmon in each stream and the habitats that supported them. Rich’s work confirms what Canada’s Anderson determined in 1880, and runs counter to the U.S. concept of random spawning advocated by Livingston Stone and David Starr Jordan in 1883. But did Rich’s home stream theory transform U.S. salmon management?

1938 Congress passes the Mitchell Act and authorizes $500,000 to correct the impacts of mainstem dams and other human activities in the basin. This money was used primarily to count salmon populations and inventory habitat conditions in the Columbia River tributaries, but morphed into hatchery development from Bonneville Dam down river.

1938 The Payette River was first surveyed for salmon production in this year. This river supported a large run of sockeye salmon, chinook and steelhead. It is a large Idaho tributary to the Snake River Dam construction ( Black Canyon, 1923; and numerous smaller dams without fish passage) and irrigated agriculture destroyed the river for salmon and steelhead.

1939 Unity Dam is completed on Burnt River, a tributary of the Snake River, 326 miles above the mouth. This dam was completed without fish passage. Its purpose is to provide irrigation water. A watershed of 1200 square miles and is removed form salmon and steelhead production.

1941 Grand Coulee Dam is completed, eliminating 1,100 miles of salmon habitat in the upper Columbia for chinook, sockeye and steelhead. It is estimated that 90% of the sockeye runs in the Columbia were exterminated by this dam. The Spokane River salmon runs were terminated. This was one of the rivers that Livingston Stone identified in 1894 for a hatchery sight due to its strong salmon runs. A massive salmon transplanting effort moved upper Columbia River salmon to tributaries below the dam, believing that this would somehow rescue the runs.

1942 Eastern Oregon and Idaho salmon and steelhead streams are surveyed. This U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report published in 1950 evaluates the environmental conditions of rivers for salmon production. This is the first extensive inventory of these watersheds. The early settlement of this area and irrigated agriculture has degraded most watersheds, ruining their value for salmon production. In addition, turn of the century irrigation dam construction by the Bureau of Reclamation eliminated salmon and steelhead runs from most watersheds. These dams were build without fish passage and there was no mitigation for any fish losses. However, some streams still had native runs of summer steelhead and spring chinook. An example is Eagle Creek, a tributary of the lower Powder River in Oregon.

1942 Weiser River, Idaho, still had a few chinook and summer steelhead using it. The biologists recommended that this watershed be saved by screening irrigation diversions and providing fish passage around irrigation dams. The headwaters of this river has a large amount of good spawning gravel.

1946 The Mitchell Act is amended by Congress to permit the Secretary of Interior to enter into agreements with the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho to use their hatcheries to enhance Pacific salmon runs. The Lower Columbia River Fishery Development Program was established which authorized the construction of 31 hatcheries in the Columbia Basin, but only 21 were built.

1949 Drag seines, traps and set nets are prohibited in Oregon effective Sept. 14, 1950. The salmon wars between gill netters and other harvesters are being won by the gill net fishermen.

1953 McNary Dam is completed just downstream from the mouth of the Snake River. This dam removed mainstem spawning areas for fall chinook and created passage problems.

1953 Federal dam construction in the Willamette River Basin begins. Seven large dams are built between 1953 and 1968. These dams block wild spring chinook and winter steelhead form most of the high quality spawning grounds in the basin.

1955 Chief Joseph Dam is completed and eliminates mainstem spawning on the upper Columbia.

1956 The Dalles Dam is completed just downstream from the mouth of the Deschutes River. The reservoir behind this dam flooded historic Native American fishing grounds at Celilo Falls. This dam was supported by the states because they believed the Indian harvest of salmon would be eliminated and the salmon would be saved.

1957 Pelton Dam is completed on the Deschutes River in Oregon, blocking spawning areas for spring chinook, steelhead and sockeye salmon. The national fight to save the Deschutes was lost.

1958 Brownlee Dam is completed on the Snake River, blocking all salmon migration into the Snake above that point, eliminating salmon spawning in the Boise, Weiser, Payette, Malheur, Powder, Salmon Creek, and many other watersheds.

1958 The original and long standing objective of hatcheries is to maintain the supply of salmon, i.e., replace natural production lost to habitat destruction and over-harvest. But the evaluation of hatchery programs focused on whether hatcheries contribute to the fisheries. This divergence between the goal and evaluation lead to an outcome where salmon could continue to decline but hatchery program were considered a success as long as the cost of artificial propagation was less than their economic contribution to the fishery. The cost of hatchery production did not include the loss of natural production resulting from watershed development or from hatchery operations.

1958 From 1921 through 1958 the harvest of chinook in the Columbia averaged 15 million pounds, down from the average catch of 25 million pounds in the period 1889 to 1920. Form 1954 to 1958 the average harvest was only 6.9 million pounds. Some of this decline is attributed to an expanding ocean troll fishery, but a chinook decline in the river is still evident for this period.

1959 Priest Rapids Dam is completed on the Columbia above the mouth of the Snake River. This dam removes mainstem spawning for fall chinook and presents a passage problem for all species

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CCA Your Best Bet For The Fish