75th Celebration: Saving Salmon and Steelhead

The return of spring Chinook adults to their native waters in Idaho every May is an annual reminder of the long and prolific history of salmon and steelhead in Idaho. Reports from the early 1800s note the Boise River as the "Émost renowned fishing area in the countryÉ" and a place "Éwhere incredible numbers of salmon are taken". Large numbers of salmon and steelhead were harvested by Native American Indians in the Boise, Bruneau, Owyhee and Payette rivers and other river basins in the 1800s and 1900s as a source of food and to be traded for other goods. The Salmon River and Redfish Lake were named for the fishes that were once very abundant there. As hydropower and irrigation were built on tributaries to the Snake River , some stocks of salmon and steelhead such as those returning to the Boise River basin were eliminated, and numbers of wild salmon returning to the Salmon and Clearwater basins were on the decline. While hydropower development continued in the basin, hatcheries were being built to enhance populations of salmon and steelhead in the Salmon and Clearwater basins. By 1974, returning numbers of wild salmon to Idaho had become dangerously low. Harvest of wild stocks was no longer allowed after 1974, but hatchery production was growing stronger, and the science behind it was getting better. Today, hatcheries operated by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game annually release about 10 million spring/summer Chinook salmon, 1 million fall Chinook salmon, 4.1 million steelhead and 300 thousand sockeye salmon juveniles. Most years, with the exception of sockeye salmon, those releases allow Idaho anglers to continue to enjoy participating in an Idaho sportsman's legacy; fishing for salmon and steelhead. While hatcheries in Idaho provide the opportunity for anglers to carry on this tradition, Idaho's wild stocks of salmon and steelhead are returning in numbers that are dangerously low. Today, except for spring Chinook salmon in the Clearwater River, all naturally produced salmon and steelhead returning to Idaho are listed as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. For more on this story and other stories about Fish and Game's 75th Celebration visit our website; www.fishandgame.idaho.gov