Thursday December 12, 2024
Moscow-Pullman Daily News —
The raw number of adult salmon returning to the Columbia River has increased over the past 40 years but is still not meeting regional mitigation goals, and wild fish protected by the Endangered Species Act remain at risk of extinction.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council reported Tuesday that an average of 2.3 million adult fish returned to the basin from 2014-23. That is on par with the 2004-13 average of 2.4 million but dramatically higher than the 1.3 million average recorded in the 1990s.
In some individual years, the returns were higher. For example, an estimated 4.6 million salmon and steelhead returned to the Columbia River in 2014. But in other years, like 2018 and 2019, the returns numbered only about 1.3 million fish and were reminiscent of the disastrous runs in the 1990s that prompted some wild runs being protected as threatened and endangered.
Just as adult returns to the basin have risen, so too has the number of fish bound for areas upstream of Bonneville Dam — another council goal.