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Report says Snake River Chinook and Steelhead Still in Peril by Eric Barker Lewiston Tribune, May 31, 2025

"When you start seeing fish and wildlife agencies doing crazy stuff like that,
you know a population is in trouble."

Wild spring chinook and steelhead from the Snake River continue to struggle while fall chinook are one of the bright spots in a biennial report from Washington's Salmon Recovery Office.

The report concentrates on salmon and steelhead that spawn in the Evergreen State and says Snake River spring chinook are in crisis. There are only three populations of Snake River spring chinook that spawn in Washington. The Asotin Creek population is functionally extinct and the Tucannon population is dangerously close.

Last year, 250 spring chinook returned to the Tucannon River that spills out of the Blue Mountains and joins the Snake River near Starbuck. Only 67 of them were wild. While those numbers are poor, they are an improvement over other recent years. In 2023, 30 chinook including nine wild fish returned to the Tucannon. In 2019, 22 fish returned with just eight of them being wild, according to the report.

The Nez Perce Tribe and Washington Department of Fish and Game have taken desperate measures to save the fish, including releasing 50,000 smolts raised at the Tucannon Hatchery below Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. They hope bypassing the need for the juvenile fish to pass through the Snake and Columbia River dams and reservoirs will result in higher survival. Any adults that return to the release point will be trapped and trucked back to the Tucannon Hatchery.

"When you start seeing fish and wildlife agencies doing crazy stuff like that, you know a population is in trouble," said Chris Donley, fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at Spokane.

He noted this year's run might be slightly larger.

"We've got about 300 fish in the system which is double what we have seen in the last five years in any given year," he said. "But the vast majority of those are of hatch origin."

The third Snake River spring chinook population that spawns in Washington does so in Butte Creek, a tributary of Oregon's Wenaha River in the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness Area. The report did not include spawning information on the population.

Wild Snake River spring chinook are protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The bulk of the Snake River population spawn in Idaho and 42% of the Snake River populations had crossed the quasi-extinction threshold -- defined as having 50 or fewer spawners for three consecutive years -- according to a 2021 analysis by the Nez Perce Tribe.

Related Pages:
Chinook Fishery to Stay Open After All by Eric Barker, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, 5/15/25
Chinook Anglers Get Seven Days Per Week by Eric Barker,Moscow-Pullman Daily News, 5/14/25
Spring Chinook Fishery on Snake River to Close May 16 by Staff Daily Fly, 5/13/25
Salmon Counts at Bonneville Allow Reopening of Sportfishing by Bill Monroe, The Oregonian, 5/7/25
Anglers Get a Brief Crack at Chinook by Eric Barker, Lewiston Tribune, 5/2/25
As Chinook Run Surges, So Does Uncertainty by Eric Barker, Lewiston Tribune, 5/19/23