Today representatives from NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife held a media teleconference to update reporters onongoing operations to release approximately 200,000 juvenile Sacramento River winter‐run Chinooksalmon into the North Fork of Battle Creek where they once thrived.
I will write a detailed report on the call and the restoration program later, including my questions regarding the Winnemem Wintu Tribe’s plan to reintroduce winter run Chinook salmon now thriving in the Rakaira River in New Zealand to the McCloud River above Shasta Dam.
The agency representatives included: Howard Brown, NOAA Fisheries, Sacramento River Basin Branch Chief; Jim Smith, Red Bluff Fish and Wildlife Office Project Leader; Brett Galyean, Project Leader of Coleman National Fish Hatchery Complex, and Doug Killam, California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Senior Environmental Scientist.
“The reintroduction of the fish is occurring sooner than expected due the availability of fish from the Livingston Stone National FishHatchery winter‐run captive broodstock program,” according to NOAA Fisheries.
The full press release from the agencies is posted below:
Resource Agencies Re-Introduce Sacramento River Winter-Run Chinook Salmon into Battle Creek to Expand Range of Endangered Species
Sacramento- To jump start the effort to establish additional populations of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, approximately 200,000 hatchery-reared winter-run Chinook salmon are being released over the next two months into newly restored habitat in the North Fork of Battle Creek.
The successful release of these fish is the culmination of many years of planning and cooperation in rearing the fish and in restoring their habitat. This is a significant milestone toward the recovery of endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon.
The reestablishment of fish in this waterway is occurring sooner than expected due the availability of fish from the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery winter-run captive broodstock program. The captive broodstock program began in 1992 as an emergency measure to address the sudden and rapid collapse of winter-run Chinook salmon abundance in the Sacramento River in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Because the winter-run Chinook salmon population rebounded in the early 2000’s, the captive broodstock program was suspended. However, with the loss of nearly the entire in-river juvenile population in 2014 and 2015 due to the extreme drought, the captive program at the hatchery was reinstituted. Each year approximately 1,000 fish are retained in the hatchery and raised to adults for breeding. Fortunately, in 2017 there were enough spawning adults in the river so the captive broodstock at the hatchery was not required to sustain the population.
Resource managers from the Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Program, composed of the California Department Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, NOAA Fisheries, and the Pacific Gas and Electric Company saw the extra broodstock as an exceptional opportunity to expand the current range of the fish and help in its recovery.
“We’re calling this project the ‘Battle Creek winter-run jump start,’” said Jim Smith project leader for the Red Bluff California Fish and Wildlife Office. “We felt these additional fish could help bolster the winter-run population and be a potential catalyst in their recovery.”
North Fork of Battle Creek is historic habitat for winter-run Chinook salmon that has received significant improvement as part of a long-term restoration project. Since 1999, the Battle Creek Restoration Program has spent over $100 million in an effort to restore approximately 48 miles of prime salmon and steelhead habitat.
“Maintaining these critically endangered fish in the mainstem Sacramento River below Shasta dam through cold water releases is not a sustainable strategy, especially considering the likelihood of more drought years,” said Maria Rea, Assistant Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ Central Valley Office. “We must work together to reintroduce these salmon into their historic habitat in Battle Creek and the McCloud River, if we are to recover them for future generations.”
Approximately 200,000 juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon from the adults spawned last summer will be released throughout March and April this year. They were hatched last August at the Livingston Stone Hatchery and immediately trucked to the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek. It was important to transfer the fish immediately to Coleman Fish Hatchery so the juveniles could imprint on the smell of the waterway to guide their return migration in 2020. All of the juvenile salmon will be tagged and fin clipped prior to release, allowing resource managers to track their survival, growth and ocean distribution, as well as to detect them when they return to Battle Creek.
“Each step we take to re-establish these endangered winter run Chinook salmon is vital and helps us remember that in less than a century a run of salmon nearly a million strong has been reduced to thousands,” said California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director, Charlton H. Bonham. “Each effort we make takes us a step closer to returning more of these iconic fish to our state.”
While California is home to many native salmon species, winter-run Chinook salmon face unique challenges during their life cycle. In the past these fish migrated upstream during the winter months and spawned in the cool mountain streams above Shasta Dam. Today they spawn in locations at much lower and warmer elevations during the summer when air temperatures and water temperatures approach their yearly maximum.
These fish historically spawned in the cold, clear waters of the Little Sacramento, McCloud and Pit Rivers as well as in Battle Creek. The construction of Shasta and Keswick Dams, combined with an extensive hydroelectric project on Battle Creek, blocked access to their native habitats and forced them to spawn in the unhospitable waters downstream of Keswick Dam. Over the course of several decades, this reduced the number of winter-run Chinook salmon from four large populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands, to a single, imperiled population that is mostly comprised of hatchery-produced fish.
Today, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon are listed as an endangered species under both federal and state law. NOAA Fisheries also considers winter-run Chinook salmon among eight marine species most at risk of extinction and part of the “Species in the Spotlight” initiative.
The single remaining population of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon has persisted in large part due to federal and state agency-managed seasonal cold water releases from Shasta Reservoir, to protect sensitive salmon eggs from the summer heat, and through the release of hatchery-produced juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon from a conservation program at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery. However, re-establishing self-sustaining populations in other locales is important for the recovery of these fish.
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Digital Media: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfws_pacificsw/sets/72157688322707460/with/25767216627/
Additional information:
Web links:
Winter-Run Chinook Salmon
Winter Chinook Programs at Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery
Critical habitat of winter-run Chinook Salmon