The Path from Conflict to Collaboration, Scarcity to Abundance

 

According to The Morning Astorian of April 21, 1947 in an article entitled “Wildlife Director Says Dams to End Fish In Columbia,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requested an appropriation of $350,000 for studies aimed at minimizing fish losses at proposed Columbia River dams. The House Appropriations Subcommittee with jurisdiction over the matter recommended $100,000 stating that such services provided to industry without cost “are not justified.”

“If there is sufficient demand, they should be financed by the fishing industry,” the subcommittee report added.

Eight months later, the Oregonian of November 25, 1947 reported that a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman stated that the Truman Administration was requesting $13 million for a lower Columbia River fishery program proposed by the Service and the states of Oregon and Washington.  The article further stated that members of the Interior Department Appropriations Subcommittee from Oregon indicated “a strong interest in the program” and “they are in a favorable position to guide the appropriation through Congress.”  The lower Columbia River program called for transplanting fingerlings from hatcheries to lower river runs.  Read More

This stunning policy reversal was the result of an agreement reached on October 8, 1947 by the Pacific Northwest States and the federal water management agencies as well as the Fish and Wildlife Service in which fishery interests and the fishery agencies agreed to support dams above Bonneville and cease management of upriver salmon runs in return for appropriations for hatcheries in the lower Columbia that were intended to maintain lower river fisheries. The agreement and decision of the Columbia Basin Inter-Agency Committee also included a recommendation to compensate treaty fishing tribes on the Columbia for the loss of their fisheries. At the time of hearings on the proposed recommendation in June of 1947, Milo Moore of the Washington Department of Fisheries testified that the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Tulee v. Washington holding that Washington did not have authority to license Indians would allow tribal fisheries to harvest salmon migrating to spawning grounds upriver. The implication was that an Indian fishery that was uncontrolled by the states should not be allowed to continue. This conclusion meshed nicely with the desire of the Columbia River ports to facilitate barge and railroad traffic on the Columbia and shift Inland Empire shipping to and from the Port of Seattle across the Cascades to the ports on the Columbia including Vancouver and Portland.

The inundation of Celilo Falls by closure of The Dalles Dam was expected to bolster commerce while ending the treaty fishery because of the loss of fishing sites as well as the cessation of management for salmon in the upper Columbia. However, tribal fishers on the Columbia mainstem continued to fish despite state and federal prosecution that included a major sting operation led by the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1981 and 1982. Eventually, the tribes secured federal district court jurisdiction that enjoined the states and ordered harvest plans be prepared jointly with tribal co-managers.

However, federal court jurisdiction didn’t address the lack of management resources to protect existing upriver runs or to rebuild and restore runs diminished by dam construction. In 1980, the tribes, coordinating through the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, sought amendments to the NW Power Act that would mandate salmon protection, mitigation, and enhancement using Bonneville Power Administration revenue from hydroelectric power. Once the Act was passed, the tribes began to implement plans funded by Bonneville to restore their fisheries.

The result has been over 30 years of successful salmon recovery efforts by the Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce Tribes that are restoring upriver salmon runs for the tribal fishery and creating economic benefits for upriver communities when sports fishers return to the mainstem and upriver tributaries as fishing opportunities increase.

The effort to reverse the decline of salmon in the upper Columbia has been intense and often quarrelsome but the tribal elders who initiated the effort following their service during World War II did so with a knowledge and an understanding of the historical events that paved the way from abundance before settlement to the scarcity caused by river development that provided the incentive for them to utilize cultural knowledge to restore salmon. This website is aimed at deepening that same knowledge and understanding among the generations that are succeeding them and among the non-Indian public who also cherish the resource.