For the first time in more than 100 years, Chinook salmon have been spotted at the confluence of the Sprague and Williamson rivers in Chiloquin, the government seat of the Klamath Tribes in Southern Oregon.
It’s the latest milestone following the removal of four dams on the Klamath River last year, which was the largest river restoration project in U.S. history.
“A hundred and fifteen years that they haven’t been here, and they still have that GPS unit inside of them,” said the visibly giddy Klamath Tribal Chair William Ray, Jr. “It’s truly an awesome feat if you think about the gauntlet they had to go through.”
Ray said salmon traditionally comprised about a third of the diet of the Indigenous people in the Upper Klamath Basin. That food source vanished with the building of Copco 1 Dam in northern California in 1918.
Scientists have been tracking the migration of this year’s run of fall Chinook as they’ve passed all of the old dam sites on the river.
Last week they reached a huge milestone: A Chinook was photographed entering Upper Klamath Lake. But it was unclear how that fish and the others waiting to scale the fish ladder would fare in the lake, which has been plagued by water quality issues, including toxic cyanobacteria blooms.
“This past summer the water in the lake was so toxic that you could not drink it or swim in it,” said Ray.
Ray says the Klamath Tribes fisheries staff started tracing the tag on one of the Chinook as it passed through the Link River Dam fish ladder in Klamath Falls on Oct. 8. Just a couple days later, the fish was detected passing into the Williamson River, having swum approximately 15 miles through the lake.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed radio-tagged fall Chinook salmon have made it into the Sprague River.
“The run so far this year has been incredibly exciting, and we’re expanding our monitoring program on an almost daily basis to keep adapting,” said Mark Hereford, ODFW Klamath fisheries reintroduction project leader. “It is incredible to be a part of this historic return and see where these salmon go and what they do.”
ODFW Public Information Officer Adam Baylor said tagged fish were also detected Tuesday in the spring-fed waters of Pelican Bay, on the opposite side of the lake.
“We figure that right now, there are possibly more than 100 salmon that have made it — that are above the Link River Dam,” said Ray.
ODFW and the tribes are encouraging people not to touch or catch the salmon. The rivers in the Upper Klamath Basin are closed to all salmon fishing.
“What’s next is to allow them to live their lives without any kind of interference,” Ray said. “We’re praying. We’re praying as loud as we can pray that the spawners will do their natural work and just keep coming back every year so the population can grow into a fishable population for us.”
In the meantime, Ray said the Tribes have a responsibility to continue habitat restoration work in the region to make sure the new visitors to the Upper Klamath Basin have healthy places to go.
