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2025 Will Be an Above Average Year for Columbia River Salmon, Says NOAA Report by Henry Brannan The Columbian, March 18, 2025

The good news comes amid long-standing declines in salmon stocks

The number of salmon returning to the Columbia and Snake rivers this year is expected to beat the 10-year average return. That's according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The positive projections for this year are a rare piece of good news amid a long-standing and dramatic decline in numbers of the keystone species regionally -- a pattern that's especially true for wild fish.

While NOAA's 2024-2025 California Current Ecosystem Status Report mostly focuses on West Coast ocean conditions, it also contains significant data and projections about salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin. "California Current" refers to a cold water Pacific Ocean current that moves south from Canada to northern Mexico.

Rachel Hager, a spokeswoman for NOAA Fisheries, said that recent ocean conditions and a strong El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific in 2024 indicate that Chinook salmon returns to the Columbia Basin will improve in 2025.

Though she noted important factors for salmon's success, like ocean temperatures, young fish's weights and the fish's food stocks were all average in 2023. That year's indicators are important because Chinook salmon spend two or more years in the ocean before returning to the Columbia Basin, Hager explained.

The projections mirror predictions that Washington and Oregon released earlier this year.

While NOAA's findings are good, Hager cautioned that average returns over the past decade are "much lower than some of the returns we've seen over the past 25 years. So the forecast for 2025, while seemingly positive, likely does not represent the numbers of returning adults required to recover salmon populations."

The report contains data dating back to 1980. From then until about 2000, spring Chinook, fall Chinook and steelhead populations all increased by roughly three to four times over. By 2020, however, returns fell back to their previous lows. Since then, the numbers have increased to about half or a third of their 2000s highs, before starting to decline again.

Earlier this year, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council announced it had fallen more than halfway short of its longtime goal of 5 million fish returning to the Columbia River Basin each year. Historic runs were 15 to 20 million.

Neither NOAA's recent report or the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's counts differentiate between fish that come from hatcheries and wild or natural origin fish. But fish that aren't from hatcheries are especially threatened, despite $9 billion in conservation spending in the years since 1980, a 2023 Oregon State University study found.

A 2022 NOAA assessment found the number of wild salmon spawning in Columbia River tributaries declined substantially for nearly every salmon run in nearly every river measured between 1990 and 2019.

Hager said NOAA expects salmon and steelhead returns to the Columbia Basin to return to their recent baseline in the coming years.

"Overall, we're not seeing tremendously positive or negative conditions for salmon over the past few years, so we expect average marine survival and about average adult returns in 2025 and 2026," she said.

NOAA's recent report noted that advances in ocean modeling will improve short-term fishery forecasts. It is unclear if those advancements will survive dramatic cuts to the regulatory and scientific agency.

Related Pages:
Count the Fish, 1977 - 2024 by GAO on Nation's Salmon Recovery Efforts

Flatlining Salmon and Steelhead Numbers in the Columbia Basin are a Success and a Cautionary Tale by Nika Bartoo-Smith, Oregon Public Broadcasting, 8/4/25
Columbia River Spring Chinook 2025 Forecast About Same as Last Year's Actual Return by Staff, Columbia Basin Bulletin, 1/10/25
Officials Fall Short of Salmon Return Goals in Columbia River Basin But See Signs of Progress by Mia Maldonado, Washington State Standard, 12/13/24
Columbia River Salmon, Steelhead Returns Average 2.3 Million Each Year by Matthew Weaver, Capital Press, 12/13/24