Chapter 2

Restoration and Recovery

For over 150 years, immense changes to the watersheds and landscapes of steelhead country have devastated the functioning, interwoven ecosystems required for wild steelhead, and wild salmon, to thrive. Dams, logging, land development, pollution, hatcheries, canneries, overexploitation, and the warming climate have all taken their toll. These devastating impacts compound and reinforce one another and the damages continue to accumulate today. The factors combine differently in every watershed, but no wild steelhead river has escaped their impacts.

It is daunting, but steelhead anglers can’t look away. The scale and complexity of the challenge is massive, but it is the responsibility of our community to put our shoulders to the work of preventing and repairing as much of this damage as possible.

For years, conservationists and scientists have broadly described the key factors contributing to the loss of anadromous fish as the “Four H’s.” Undoubtedly, many anglers are familiar with the categories: Habitat, Harvest, Hatcheries, and Hydro. Today, to account for the impacts of the rapidly changing climate, we must add an ominous fifth category: Heat.

Heat

The most recent addition to the list of threats facing wild steelhead is the growing impact of Climate Change on anadromous fish ecosystems. The warming climate diminishes annual snowpack, melts glaciers, and increases the risk of lethal water temperatures or drought conditions. When there isn’t enough rain in late spring, rivers can drop too fast and leave new steelhead redds dry if they were made in the shallow edges of the river channel. Warmer air also holds more moisture, which means rainfall becomes more sporadic and falls in bigger events, causing dramatic spikes in river volume that can wash away juvenile fish, scour out redds, and cut deeper, straighter river channels, reducing habitat complexity.

A heating climate also has deeply worrying consequences for ocean ecosystems. Warming, acidifying seawater is reducing the amount of food available to steelhead and salmon. Years of marine heatwaves in the North Pacific, like the “Blob” of 2013 -2016, correlate to poor steelhead survival and will likely become more common.

Unfortunately, these impacts are accelerating and only make the future for wild steelhead more uncertain. This growing threat adds great urgency to our work to restore habitat, remove migration barriers, reduce harvest, and protect clean, cold water. The diversity of wild steelhead gives them the best opportunity to adapt and survive in less stable systems. It is a crucial reason to prioritize these resilient wild fish and provide the habitat, connectivity, and protections they need.

Habitat

Vast land use changes across the Northwest have destroyed and impaired wild steelhead rearing and spawning habitat, suppressing the carrying capacity of freshwater watersheds. The list of factors seems endless: reckless logging practices, riparian zones cleared for settlement, estuaries and wetlands drained for agriculture or urban development, pollution from industry and cities, river dredging and channelization, and water table withdrawal for irrigation or municipal use, among others. All of these impacts degrade the ability of a watershed to sustain cold water, recycle nutrients, and maintain the hydrologic stability required for fish and the insects and aquatic macroinvertebrates they depend upon.

We primarily think of habitat degradation in the freshwater environment, but anglers must not overlook the detrimental changes happening in the Pacific Ocean. Disruptions to the food web caused by the changing climate and increased competition from unbalanced, excessive stocking of hatchery pink and chum salmon are reducing steelhead survival during their critical years spent at sea.

Hydro

Wild steelhead and salmon have lost thousands of miles of spawning and rearing habitat to the massive hydropower dams blocking and impeding fish migration throughout the Northwest, with predictable and devastating results. Even when fish passage exists, the impoundments behind dams bury habitat under sediment, impact water temperature, shelter invasive predator species, starve the lower watershed of gravel and wood, and kill or weaken smolts during their extended downstream migration. Hydro, as a category, includes all dams, diversions, poorly functioning culverts, and other barriers to fish passage, like the floating Hood Canal Bridge in Puget Sound. Nothing destroys a river ecosystem like a large dam, but every stretch of creek and river we can reopen to migrating steelhead means more fish spawning on the gravel.

Harvest

Historical commercial fishing provided one of the first devastating blows to wild steelhead numbers by killing millions of tons of fish. Bycatch in mixed-stock commercial salmon fisheries, most of which goes undocumented, still remains a problem. Tribal treaty commercial fisheries continue to directly target wild steelhead and also impact wild steelhead as bycatch in salmon fisheries. Recreational anglers also killed too many fish for far too long, especially in places like Puget Sound, but have largely shifted to catch-and-release fisheries. But this isn’t completely benign; in catch-and-release fisheries, accidental mortality still occurs and fish, especially those caught repeatedly, show declines in spawning success due to accumulated stress hormones. A mind-boggling exception to widespread catch-and-release fishing still exists on Southern Oregon rivers, where managers allow wild steelhead to be harvested by recreational anglers despite a lack of population or harvest rate data. Poaching also remains a challenge on steelhead rivers throughout their range.

Huge numbers of wild steelhead are also lost to predation by invasive and native predators. Native pike-minnow, and warm water invasive species like smallmouth bass, walleye and channel catfish feed extensively on fry and smolts, especially in the slow-moving impoundments behind dams. Terns and Cormorants eat large numbers of smolts, especially in the lower Columbia River. Pinnipeds (seals and sea lions, in particular) have seen their populations explode and eat large numbers of juvenile steelhead in the Salish Sea and returning adults on the Columbia and Willamette, often where fish are unnaturally congregated by dams and fish ladders.

Hatcheries

Originally used to replace wild populations lost due to dam construction, overharvest, and habitat losses, hatcheries use domesticated fish stocks raised in captivity on an industrial scale to provide harvest opportunities and fisheries. They are politically popular, expensive to operate, and are widely documented to impede wild fish recovery through genetic distortion and increased competition. Hatchery fish have repeatedly provided short-term illusions of abundance before crashing as stocks become inbred or fail to survive as well as their wild counterparts. For years, hatchery managers have planted out-of-basin fish, like the notorious Chambers Creek and Skamania stocks, into watersheds where they weren’t native, exposing distinct wild steelhead populations to additional harvest impacts and genetic degradation. Hatcheries using wild fish as broodstock also eventually see declines as domestication quickly reduces diversity in offspring. Fish adapted to thrive in concrete raceways and routine pellet feedings simply don’t survive as well as the diverse wild fish.

There is also growing scientific evidence and awareness that the absurd numbers of hatchery pink and chum salmon being stocked into the Pacific Ocean to support commercial fisheries are deeply impacting the ocean food web, contributing to unsustainable food shortages and lower steelhead survival at sea.

A variety of factors have coalesced to contribute to the systematic declines of wild steelhead population. These factors are generally referred to as the Four H’s: Habitat, Harvest, Hydro power and Hatcheries. Unfortunately we now need to add a fifth ‘H” for Heat, since climate change is posing a new and dangerous threat to wild steelhead throughout their range. However, at the center of it all, are “Humans”, including their impacts and will to create changes within the “H’s” to change the trajectory for wild steelhead. We, as anglers, have a leadership role to play in changing our focus.

The Columbia River Basin once produced more steelhead than any other river in the world. Before the 1840’s up to 16 million salmon and steelhead returned to the Columbia river systems. Some of the largest steelhead ever recorded once migrated the Columbia system. This included the magnificent B-Run steelhead that returned to Idaho’s Clearwater river, which was decimated with the installation of the Dworshak Dam built without fish passage. Dams block access from the Pacific Ocean to critical spawning and rearing habitat, disabling steelhead from completing their life cycle. Including a series of warm water reservoirs lethal to salmon and steelhead. Where fish passage is not provided by fish ladders, the blockage is permanent, and expiring the run of steelhead to the rest of the system. More than 40 percent of the spawning habitat once available in the Columbia River Basin is permanently blocked by dams.

Not only are there many more anglers now than there once was, the technology and innovation used in our fishing equipment has greatly improved. The commercial guiding industry has grown drastically along with an abundance of accessible information available at our fingertips telling us when and where the conditions are right to fish. Social media shares locations, amps up the hype and advertises the steelhead experience to the masses. Anglers are more effective and efficient than ever, but there are increasingly fewer fish along with closed rivers that historically held magnificent runs of fish. We’ve made it so much easier to catch steelhead at a pivotal time to their survival and it maybe time to reconsider the idea of what constitutes a “fair chase”. Since we are better than ever at catching steelhead we need to make decisions to help limit our impact and find ways to help rebuild abundance through diversity and watersheds if we are going to keep fishing.

Although a controversial topic, scientific research points to hatcheries as a limiting factor for wild steelhead and salmon success as well as one of the most controversial. Hatcheries provide fish for harvest to the detriment of wild fish. Hatchery fish compete with wild fish for limited resources, like food and available spawning habitat. Genetic introgression between wild fish causes loss of overall species fitness, because wild fish evolve to survive in the specific conditions of their specific natal river system and hatchery fish do not. While hatcheries were intended to be a solution for wild steelhead loss, for nearly a century, they have actually been a driver of further wild steelhead declines.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) identifies 15 Distinct Population Segments (DPS) of wild steelhead along the west coast of the United States. Wild steelhead are currently listed as Threatened or Endangered of extinction in 11 of the 15 DPS with concerns for the remaining four currently unlisted. Threats include habitat impediments (dams), habitat degradation, habitat loss, commercial and recreational fishing, hatcheries and climate change along with the current “warm blob” in the North Pacific.

The Shifting Baseline syndrome describes a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment, in this case wild steelhead. Scientist sometimes fail to identify what the correct “baseline” population was before human exploitation. Fisheries were typically evaluated by experts who used the state of the fishery at the start of their career as the baseline, rather than the fishery in its non-utilized state. Over time even angling generations perceptions are skewed regarding real abundance accepting where we are at when it comes to current steelhead numbers which hamstrings our ability to accept or make changes.

For all of the damage done to these fish and their home rivers, it is remarkable that we have any wild steelhead returning at all. Each wild fish is proof of the species’ astounding resilience, diversity, and adaptability. As anglers and conservationists, we need to build on their time-tested will to survive and let it inspire our fight for their future and home waters.

Wild steelhead need complex habitat, cold water, and connected ecosystems to thrive. Our task as steelheaders in the 21st Century is to restore watersheds and protect the remaining fish. We have great faith in the diversity of wild steelhead and functioning ecosystems. If we work together to rebuild what they need, then sustainable fisheries will follow.

“Each wild fish is proof of the species’ astounding resilience, diversity, and adaptability. As anglers and conservationists, we need to build on their time-tested will to survive and let it inspire our fight for their future and home waters.”

We know this works. Look at the powerful proof of collaboration in the recovery of the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. For over a century, steelhead and salmon runs were blocked by a pair of dams that had been illegally built without any kind of fish passage. (A hatchery had been promised to replace the lost salmon and steelhead, but it failed soon after construction.) For decades, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe fought against the dams choking the watershed to death. Conservationists, scientists, and anglers eventually joined the fight. After years of advocacy, the dams were breached a decade ago in the largest dam removal and river restoration project in world history.

The entire watershed is healing, but the most inspiring aspect of the restoration has been the immediate resurgence of wild summer steelhead populations. The genetic instinct to migrate to the Pacific was preserved in the population of rainbow trout trapped above the dams for over a hundred years. When the barriers were gone, some of their offspring were once again able to reassert this life history. After only a few years, the Elwha soon had the largest population of wild summer steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula. It is probably bigger than any other river on Washington’s coast, maybe even Puget Sound.

The Elwha is a remarkable example of what wild steelhead are capable of if given protection and connection to intact habitat. It shows us the way forward, but there are other encouraging stories across steelhead country.

The Skagit River’s wild winter steelhead have benefitted from years of closure, conservative angling seasons when re-opened, and the important removal of Chambers Creek hatchery plants. The Sol Duc River on the Olympic Peninsula, since being protected as a Wild steelhead Gene bank, has shown more wild winter steelhead population stability than the other rivers comprising the Quillayute System and many others on the coast. After the massive Christmas flood of 1964, California's Eel River was ignored for decades and populations of wild fish have been rebuilding. The Rogue River in Southern Oregon has seen a number of dams removed and ongoing habitat restoration and its wild steelhead populations seem to be holding on much stronger than nearby river systems. Winter steelhead on the North Umpqua have seen their populations grow after harvest restrictions were put in place and hatchery stocking was ended. The wild steelhead run on Alaska’s Situk River had been nearly ruined by a weir blocking access to upstream spawning grounds and rearing habitat, and since its removal the populations have rebounded. Wild steelhead numbers surged on Washington’s Toutle River in the years following the devastation caused by the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Oregon’s Sandy River has seen dramatic wild steelhead improvements after Marmot Dam was removed and habitat continues to be restored throughout the basin. Even on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, rivers that had been ravaged by past large-scale poaching have shown incredible resurgences of wild steelhead populations once the fish were protected and allowed to utilize the incredible habitat that still remains.

All of these examples offer a clear path forward in a landscape where closures and crashing run counts have become the frustrating norm. But they all remain tenuous recoveries that still require ongoing advocacy from dedicated anglers and conservationists to become durable.

Ecologists and conservationists have learned a great deal about regenerating river ecosystems in recent decades. All of these watersheds offer important lessons, as do many individual habitat restoration projects and dam removals throughout the Northwest. The work for steelheaders today is to help repair as much of the ecological damage caused by the Five H’s as possible, as fast as possible.

The steps required are practical and already underway in many watersheds, but need to become more ambitious, comprehensive, and widespread to counteract years of degradation and race against the growing impacts of climate change.

We must remove dams and barriers and reconnect the thousands and thousands of miles of habitat blocked behind dams. The four Lower Snake River Dams need to be breached immediately. We must reconnect rivers to their floodplains, get logjams and wood back into our streams and rivers, and protect and restore riparian zones from the headwaters to the estuaries.

Wherever reckless logging, land development, or new dams threaten the habitat that does remain, anglers must be pounding on desks to demand responsible protections. Overallocated irrigation withdrawals and water pollution from agriculture and urban areas have been allowed to continue for far too long and should be reined in. Steelheaders should be at the forefront of efforts to protect cold water supplies and provide fish sanctuary in crucial refuges.

We must protect more rivers where wild steelhead are free from the impacts and genetic damage caused by hatchery fish. Interbreeding with domesticated hatchery stocks degrades the inherent diversity of wild fish populations and diminishes survival and viability. Wherever these programs remain for political reasons, expanded efforts to monitor and limit their negative impacts must be required, especially whenever hatchery stocks are dumped on top of populations protected by the Endangered Species Act. Hatchery fish should always be marked and retention should be required to prevent them from spawning with wild fish. Resources spent maintaining expensive, stumbling hatchery programs would be better invested in habitat restoration, game wardens, selective commercial fisheries, and programs to monitor fish populations. Open-water fish farming and the excessive stocking of pink and chum salmon into the Pacific to support commercial fisheries must end.

When runs are low, it must be anglers who lead the charge for cautious, low-impact wild steelhead fisheries and even closures when they are necessary. A steelheader’s first priority must always be how many fish reach the spawning gravel, not how many we catch in the short-term. We must protect resident rainbow trout because they are a critical safeguard for a watershed’s unique genetic lineage. Likewise, to protect juvenile steelhead, it must be steelheaders who demand aggressive measures to remove invasive predatory fish species, like walleye, smallmouth bass, crappies, striped bass, and channel catfish, from wild steelhead rivers where they do not belong. Commercial fisheries should be required to account for wild steelhead bycatch and all mixed-stock commercial fisheries should be utilizing selective gear instead of indiscriminate methods whenever wild steelhead, or other endangered runs, are present.

Wild steelhead co-evolved with wild salmon and, like many native species throughout the Pacific Rim, their fates are locked together. Wild steelhead need healthy salmon runs to thrive. Steelheaders can be forgiven for focusing on our beloved wild fish, but the marine nutrients delivered by the annual influx of wild salmon fuels the entire ecosystem - from insects to bears to the tallest trees - of coastal and inland watersheds. The fate of both species is intertwined and a profound reminder that the work to restore wild steelhead and their home waters is really about recovering the larger synergistic ecology of salmon-bearing watersheds throughout coastal and inland North America. Fortunately, efforts to restore wild salmon and steelhead overlap and support one another, and, depending on the river system, can also benefit salmon, sturgeon, bull trout, resident rainbows, lamprey, and other native species.

The investments and interventions required to stem our losses and rebuild wild steelhead populations are substantial, but there is no time left to wait. Across much of their native range, wild steelhead are down to single digit percentages of their historical numbers. We are fortunate that scientists and conservationists have provided a roadmap for what must be accomplished, but now it is time for all steelheaders to get to work.

Working together, we need to ensure that policy-makers, managers, and agencies are forced to do what it takes to recover wild steelhead, wild salmon, and their home watersheds before it is too late. Anything else is unacceptable.

Continue reading: Chapter 3: New Steelheaders for the 21st Century →

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