The Seattle Times posted this story about Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s steelhead broodstock program efforts recently:
Tribe reviving wild Elwha steelhead
In an effort to keep the wild steelhead in the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula from disappearing forever, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is hard at work raising them in a hatchery.
The fish being raised at the tribe’s hatchery aren’t hatchery fish, but are part of the tribe’s captive wild steelhead broodstock program.
“We’ve found that wild steelhead tend to emigrate to the ocean as 2-year-olds, so we’ll try to rear them to that age before we release them,” said Larry Ward, a fisheries biologist and hatchery manager for the tribe. “We’ve been successful at raising the 2005 stock to spawning maturity, so things are going well so far.”
The program was designed to make sure wild steelhead remain in the river during the 2011 deconstruction of the Elwha River’s two dams, 210-foot Glines Canyon and 108-foot Elwha.
