Fish Reintroduction Continues to Disappoint

Portland General Electric’s more than decade long attempt to reintroduce spring Chinook, summer steelhead and sockeye salmon upstream from the Pelton Round Butte Hydroelectric complex continues to disappoint as evidenced by the very low numbers of adult returns to the Pelton Trap.The 2019 spring Chinook run year is now complete and it is now possible to compare this return to past years. Based on spring Chinook tracking, only 47 project-origin adult fish returned in 2019. This is similar to past years and represents a tiny fraction of the number needed for a self-sustaining, harvestable population above the Project.Similarly, a total of only 53 project-originating sockeye were captured at the Pelton Trap in 2019. With the exception of an adult run of 536 sockeye in 2016, a largely unexplainable return some experts have characterized as a “sweepstakes event,” the 2019 return of 53 sockeye is consistent with other return years. This is less than 1% of the 30,000 to 40,000 adult sockeye return numbers suggested as possible by some reintroduction proponents.While both spring Chinook and sockeye return years correspond to calendar year, summer steelhead are not so neat and tidy. The current 2019-20 run year – from June 1, 2019 to May 1, 2020 in the Deschutes – is not complete at this time. Through this past December, a total of 46 Project-originating adults have been captured at the Pelton Trap. This low capture to date is no different than past years, which is to say disappointingly low.It is doubtful the number of returning reintroduction adult steelhead for this run year will get much better. The 2019-20 summer steelhead return numbers at Bonneville Dam (generally the only reliable dam count for anadromous fish in the Columbia basin) have been very low. One wouldn’t expect a sudden, unexpected capture of reintroduction origin fish the rest of the run year.Based on previous years’ returns, about 45% of the Pelton Trap capture takes place after January 1 each year. Using that figure, we can estimate that the total 2019-20 reintroduction return of summer steelhead will be around 67 total fish, a poor and unsustainable return similar to previous years.If these extremely low return numbers of Project-originating adults are not depressing enough, consider what DRA board members and staff learned in a meeting this past fall with ODFW managers and biologists working on this effort. In response to DRA’s question about adult salmonid reintroduction goals, ODFW shared that they have no numeric goals to measure reintroduction success. Accordingly, after 10 years of failure to return even modest numbers of adult salmonids above the dams, OFDW still has no metric against which to gauge success. Absent such a metric, it cannot evaluate the prospect of sustainable returns and thus, by definition, cannot shape a viable future.The SWW Tower and fish reintroduction program must be called what it is – a failure in every metric. Fish return numbers show no progress after a decade of results. The returns are far below the numbers needed for sustainable populations. All this while the SWW Tower is polluting and degrading the lower Deschutes River. Without a definition of success, the project will continue the unsuccessful approach while continuing to harm the lower river. Changes to the fish reintroduction effort and SWW Tower operations, not more time, are the only way to stop that degradation while facilitating fish returns.