FISHING Matt Johnson, senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, explains the incubation system on the McCloud River, where winter-run Chinook salmon eggs are held while they mature into alevins and fry before being placed in the stream. This system combines components of a remote-site incubator with a system of trays from CDFW’s Mount Shasta Fish Hatchery to ensure mud from the river won’t suffocate the eggs. (PETER TIRA/ CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE)
COMING HOME TO THE McCLOUD FEDS, STATE, NORCAL TRIBES TEAM UP TO RELEASE YOUNG WINTER CHINOOK ABOVE SHASTA DAM
By Brandon Honig
W
hen scientists proposed moving endangered winterrun Chinook salmon into historical habitat upstream of Shasta Dam this summer, they expected some people would doubt the seemingly new idea could work. But it wasn’t a new idea at all, and it had been proven long ago. “When talking about returning
salmon to historical habitats above high-head dams, it’s not uncommon to hear claims that it’s too difficult,” said Stacie Fejtek Smith, fisheries biologist for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries. “And that is fundamentally untrue. The traditional knowledge shows us that fish can be moved and that people have been doing it since time immemorial.” As an urgent response to a third straight year of drought, NOAA
Fisheries and its partners – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe of Northern California – proposed moving winter-run Chinook to the McCloud River, where the fish historically spawned until Shasta Dam cut them off from their habitat in the 1940s. The Winnemem Wintu, who are also known as the Middle Water People of the McCloud
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