Elwha River Dam Removal cont.

Preparations for a Dam-less Summer

Since the Elwha Dams will both be removed by May 2010, this upcoming summer will be the first dam-less summer the Elwha River has seen in almost a century. Now that the dams will be removed, fish will have the ability to swim upriver and spawn again in their natural habitat. In preparation for the return of the habitat back to the fish, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is expanding their fisheries operations by expanding and refurbishing their existing fish hatchery.

“The new space will allow us to expand our hatchery operations, even more so when the dams come down,” said Larry Ward, the tribe’s hatchery manager. “More fish will have better access to the river valley as well.”

The tribe preemptively created a steelhead brood stalk program so that the steelhead would not be wiped out during the deconstruction of the dams. The Elwha River steelhead population is part of the Puget Sound steelhead population listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“We’ve found that wild steelhead tend to immigrate to the ocean as 2-year-olds, so we’ll try to rear them to that age before we release them,” said Larry Ward, a fisheries biologist and hatchery manager for the tribe. “We’ve been successful at raising the 2005 stock to spawning maturity, so things are going well so far.”

The current Elwha River only allows salmon to travel up the first five miles of river, but with the dams removed the salmon will not be limited to inadequate hatching habitats. The current fish hatchery supports chum and Coho salmon, but after the expansion it will also support pink salmon. By creating and expanding this hatchery, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is helping the local and world-wide salmon run. While salmon are an important part of their life and culture, this is not entirely a selfish act. They are directly helping all salmon fishermen economically as well as benefiting their own economic, traditional, cultural, and spiritual relations to the salmon. Furthermore, they are indirectly profiting the entire ecosystem in which the salmon are contributing to, which is a large ecosystem as they travel across oceans and travel many miles up river systems. For example, the river above where the salmon travel lacks its normal abundance of mussels, which is due to the lack of salmon. Mussel larvae feed off the gills of salmon for the first few weeks of development before they drop off and continue their development on the streambed. Scientists hope that once the river is populated with salmon once more, the mussel population will return as well.

The hatchery will be completed in the spring of 2010; a few months before the last dam is deconstructed. This preemptive approach is very significant. This shows how much the removal of the dams is affecting their livelihood. As of November 2010 the hatchery is 65% complete and is on time to be completed by next spring.

WORKS CITED:
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. "Hatchery Groundbreaking at Lower Elwha Klallam"
http://nwifc.org/2010/02/hatchery-groundbreaking-at-lower-elwha-klallam/

Seattle Times: "Elwha Steelhead Broodstock Program Successful"
http://nwifc.org/2009/07/seattle-times-elwha-steelhead-broodstock-program-successful/

-SH