Activists Turn to Private Funding, Organizations to Save the Salmon

Scientists and volunteers wearing snorkels watched steelhead spawn in the Hamma Hamma River, used a hydraulic pump to free the eggs from the river bottom and plucked the eggs from the water with their hands.

Some of those eggs gathered 2 1/2 years ago have turned into 300 adult steelhead--some up to 18 inches long--that dart around in four 10,000-gallon tanks and munch on fish meal and krill at a hatchery near this Olympic Peninsula town.

In April 2002 the fish will be returned to the river as 10-pound adults in hopes that they will reproduce, head out to sea and return to spawn at least two more times to offset a decline in wild winter Hamma Hamma steelhead.

“We are trying to demonstrate that by rearing these fish in captivity and holding them for up to four years, we can create a run that’s much more like nature,” said Barbara Cairns, executive director of Long Live the Kings, a nonprofit group based in Seattle.

Private citizens are no longer just scouring environmental impact statements and filing lawsuits to try to bring back dwindling steelhead and salmon runs--several now protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Hundreds of activists are getting their hands dirty, and wet, with on-the-ground efforts to save the fish --running hatcheries, restoring habitat and conducting salmon-recovery research.

“People who care about salmon feel much more satisfied about going out and saving salmon with their own hands--and their own labor--than they do by going to hearings and writing letters to the government,” said Pat Ford, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition in Boise, Idaho.

The private efforts have drawn kudos from the National Marine Fisheries Service, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), among others.

But activists are quick to say their efforts do not replace or lessen the need for broad recovery efforts and strict regulations from the federal government.

David Bayles, a Eugene, Ore., environmental activist who has long advocated government solutions, decided a decade ago that he needed to back up his talk. His Pacific Rivers Council joined in a $100,000-a-year project--much of it privately funded--to build logjams and protect crucial habitat for fish in a 20,000-acre watershed along the central Oregon coast.

Researchers have studied fish behavior as part of that effort, and Bayles hopes the data will be used in recovery efforts across the region.

“If you’re going to work in public policy, it helps if you have one foot solidly on the ground,” said Bayles, conservation director for the group.

When the political debate began intensifying in Idaho six years ago, members of the Boise Valley Flyfisherman and the Ted Trueblood Chapter of Trout Unlimited decided to demonstrate their passion for the fish.

Members of the groups picked up shovels and stabilized banks of Bear Valley Creek in central Idaho to prevent erosion that would harm spawning beds.

Their work on a 20-mile stretch of the creek has continued each year. They have received grants for planting willow trees, building fences to keep cattle out of the water and other measures.

“We’re willing to do anything that anyone says needs to be done,” said Barry Ross of Boise, a member of both groups.

Oregon Trout, based in Portland, this year will complete a $1-million project--mostly funded with government money--to restore the channelized Wood River to its original form so fish can migrate through the area in the Klamath Basin of southwestern Oregon.

Long Live the Kings is working with the federal fisheries service on the Hamma Hamma River steelhead project, said Cairns, who contends government officials do not have the money, equipment or time to undertake such a project alone.

“A lot of times government agencies are hamstrung by legislatures or lawsuits,” she said. “Even if they want to be inventive or imaginative . . . they don’t have the kind of flexibility and freedom that a small nonprofit like Long Live the Kings has.”

The group’s Lilliwaup hatchery was built on private land with $1 million in private donations. Private funds also cover much of its $140,000 annual operating cost.

Fisheries service officials, charged with leading salmon recovery under the Endangered Species Act, embrace the efforts.

“In many respects private organizations can do it better,” said spokesman Brian Gorman in the agency’s Seattle office. “They make up for their lack of funds . . . by a great deal of enthusiasm and local knowledge.”

But environmentalists caution that the private work, although admirable, has only a limited role.

“The fact that people are out there along the streams or on stream banks doesn’t mean that those projects are going to be effective,” said Rob Masonis, conservation program director for American Rivers in Seattle. “They have to be based on a sound scientific approach to restoration.”

Private work is important in such areas as Puget Sound, where there are large tracts of private land near listed salmon runs, Ford said.

But in other areas, the Columbia-Snake river system, for example, federal officials can make the largest impact by taking steps such as recommending a breach of the four Snake River dams, he said.

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Long Live the Kings: https://www.longlivethekings.org/

Pacific Rivers Council: https://www.pacrivers.org/

Trout Unlimited Ted Trueblood Chapter: https://www.idfishnhunt.com/tutedt.htm