The Skokomish Tribe is eagerly awaiting the return of spring chinook salmon to the South Fork Skokomish River this year.
For the past four years, up to 80,000 chinook subyearlings have been released annually into LeBar Creek, a tributary to the upper South Fork, as part of the Skokomish River chinook recovery plan.
“This is a gap in our fisheries this time of year and there is a great deal of meaning to having fish available during the spring season,” said Joseph Pavel, the tribe’s natural resources director. “These would be the first salmon returning to the watershed in each year’s cycle of renewal. There is a spiritual and cultural heritage, I think, that it fulfills in our fisheries traditions, our customs and in nature.”
This effort is part of the tribe’s agreement with Tacoma Power, signed at the 2009 relicensing of the hydroelectric project at Lake Cushman, when a chinook production program was created, Pavel said. The population was extirpated from the river in the second half of the 20th century after 80% of the South Fork River basin was severely impacted by legacy forestry practices, impacting salmon habitat.
Each year, up to 400,000 eyed-eggs are brought from the donor stock at Marblemount Hatchery on the Skagit River, to the Tacoma Power’s North Fork Salmon Hatchery in October, where they are coded wire tagged and raised to subyearling and yearling release groups.
These eggs supplement the eggs that are collected from the adult spring chinook salmon that return to the North Fork hatchery each year, which has been happening since 2018.
The release goal for the facility is 375,000 fish, and any fish in excess of that are released at the juncture of LeBar Creek and the upper South Fork. Typical releases into the South Fork have ranged between 60,000-80,000 since 2022, when the first release took place.
Because these outplanting numbers are modest, as typical hatchery production releases are in the hundreds of thousands, the tribe doesn’t expect to see huge schools of chinook returning from the spring 2022 outplanting but know it’s an important start, Pavel said. The objective is to establish a self-sustaining population of naturally reproducing spring chinook returning to the Skokomish River.
While the South Fork is a difficult river for fish to navigate, the tribe has been working on remedying that with salmon habitat restoration projects in the upper South Fork, giving the chinook recovery effort every chance to succeed, Pavel said.
Juvenile chinook salmon are released into LeBar Creek, a tributary to the South Fork Skokomish River, as part of the Skokomish River chinook recovery program. Story by Tiffany Royal; Photo courtesy of Tacoma Power
