Fish restoration unites many partners

The first steelhead smolt was caught last week in Portland General Electric's (PGE) screw trap in Whychus Creek, adjacent to Camp Polk Meadow.

"Fish biologists checking the trap have (also) been seeing lots of Chinook salmon as well," said Amanda Egertson, Stewardship Director for the Deschutes Land Trust (DLT).

Fish reintroduction projects have become big business in the Sisters Country. The effort to reintroduce ocean-run species and

indigenous fresh-water trout and salmon into Whychus Creek and the Metolius River has created jobs for biologists, engineers and other

professionals.

The PGE screw trap sitting in Whychus Creek is a costly and sophisticated piece of engineering. Sheldon Jackson and Shayla Frank, young biology graduates, check each trap daily and install "pit tags" (tiny radio transmitters) in the ocean-run fish to keep tabs on them as they progress downstream.

Data collected by this method provides fishery and habitat biologists and river managers with information on how long it took the fish to make the trip to the next trap, where they will pass through a devise that counts and identifies them.

The new PGE Surface Collector at Round Butte Dam - after a rough and costly start and a lot of "let's try this" engineering - has been capturing ocean-run fish, which are then transported downstream for release. The millions of dollars spent in developing this equipment is another key to reintroducing fish into the Metolius and Whychus Creek drainages.

Shayla Frank, of the Warm Springs Nation, graduated from Salish Kootenai College, an institution dedicated to providing post-secondary educational opportunities for Native Americans. She spends her days doing an assorted number of tasks associated with reintroduction of indigenous fish.

Lewis and Clark - when they arrived in the Northwest - saw salmon in numbers that are almost impossible for us to imagine. It was the same for "The Pathfinder," John C. Fremont in 1842, who in his journals, mentioned "...we could almost walk on the backs of fish to cross the 'River of the Falls.'"

Dean Hollinshead - for whom Hollinshead Park in Bend is named - said that in the early 1900s he and his family got through winter living in Rosland (near where La Pine is today) by putting up barrels of ocean-run fish he and his brothers pulled from the Deschutes River at Pringle Falls.

Since those days, Northwest salmon have been greatly reduced. However, politicians, biologists, businesses concerns - and those who just love fish - set into motion a series of events that has resulted in a small gain in rebuilding salmon and trout runs.

Ironically, it was power-generating dams that contributed most heavily to the decline of the fishery; now PGE is leading the way toward recovery, along with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; the U.S. Forest Service; Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; DLT; Bureau of Land Management; Upper Deschutes Watershed Council; and other conservation partners.

One outstanding example of habitat rehabilitation in taking place close to Sisters, where the Deschutes Land Trust is returning Whychus Creek to its meandering channel in Camp Polk Meadow, which will bring about further progress toward reintroducing fish to Whychus Creek.

Megan Hill, PGE's Native Fish Study Team leader, is the person responsible for ensuring that the graduate students in the field, and other personnel checking traps and tagging fish get the job done.

Speaking about radio-tagging fish she said, "Yeah, this is really cool technology, and is a great way to study the effects of all the work that's being done on these restoration projects."