What’s Next for Klamath Salmon

Photo: Mark Hereford, ODFW

Recent news of king salmon spawning in the upper Klamath River Basin was incredible, especially with how recently all four dams have been removed. As a refresher, “according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), at least one chinook salmon has been spotted in a Klamath River tributary this year. That’s the first salmon to be seen in Oregon’s side of the Klamath River Basin since 1912, and that fish was about 230 river miles from the Pacific Ocean.”

While that’s certainly a monumental feat, it also brings up another question—what’s next for the salmon in the Klamath?

Juliet Grable, writing in Hatch Magazine, provided us with some answers.

“The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has installed ‘video weirs’ to capture images of salmon in key tributaries; the agency also has crews on the ground surveying spawning salmon,” Grable writes. “Also in California, the nonprofit Cal Trout has installed a sonar monitoring station just above the former Iron Gate dam. Cal Trout is also leading a project to sample fish using special nets near the Iron Gate dam site; these hands-on surveys will provide a week-by-week snapshot of fish in the river. The crew are fitting some of these fish with radio tags and passive integrated transponders, or PIT tags, so they can track them as they move upstream.”

It’s a big operation, but it’s worth it for all the insight we’ll gain on not only salmon, but steelhead, as they move back into reaches of the Klamath that have been out of reach for over a century. Fisheries managers will also get to see the fruits of their labors when releasing hatchery chinook salmon, as well. While hatchery salmon aren’t as strong as wild fish, they could help bolster wild populations for the foreseeable future.

Grable’s in-depth reporting is worth reading, which you can do here.