- Details
- By Tribal Business News Staff
- Food | Agriculture
Federal agencies have awarded $6 million to the Klamath Tribes, the Yurok Tribe and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to launch the upper basin’s first long-term spring-run Chinook salmon reintroduction effort.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries funded the tribally led initiative, which aims to restore spring-run Chinook within the Klamath Tribes’ ancestral territory for the first time in more than a century, according to a joint press release. NOAA Fisheries is partnering with the tribes and the state on the project.
The project will establish up to 40 remote incubation sites in cold-water streams above Upper Klamath Lake and expand production capacity at ODFW’s Klamath Fish Hatchery near Chiloquin. Planned upgrades include four new raceways and water-efficiency improvements.
Once completed, the hatchery will rear up to 600,000 fertilized eggs and juvenile fish annually. Additional eggs will be raised in streamside incubation systems placed in spring-fed tributaries, including the Williams, Sprague and Wood rivers. The systems use natural stream flows to improve imprinting and survival rates while limiting exposure to predators.
Spring-run Chinook have been largely absent from the upper Klamath Basin for decades, despite historical runs estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Recent dam removals reopened portions of the river system, but two remaining barriers continue to restrict access to headwater habitat.
Initial fish production from the hatchery expansion is expected in 2028, with adult returns to hatchery and tributary sites projected as early as 2030.
Tribal leaders described the effort as a long-term restoration strategy tied to watershed conditions, including stream flows, ocean cycles and weather patterns. In a statement, Klamath Tribes Chairman William Ray Jr. said the investment will support both the community and the watershed.
“We appreciate all of these partners coming together to bring the c'iyaal's (salmon) home to the Klamath Tribes in hopes that within the next generation we can re-establish a fishable population to feed our people, to heal our people,” he said. “It has been over a hundred years since the Klamath Tribes have had c'iyaal's in our waters, we have gone without and it has caused harm.”
