Drought: It ain't over ‘til it's over
by Jeffrey Koenings, Ph.D., WDFW Director
The Trout and Salmon Leader, Director's Column
Fall 2001

Last month, a survey team reported that more than 700 pink salmon were blocked from migrating upstream by a rocky passage in a section of the Gray Wolf River on the Olympic Peninsula. Low flows caused by this year's drought had turned a small waterfall into an impassable barrier for humpies spawning in the Dungeness River system, where they are listed by the state as a depressed stock.

Responding to the report, a work crew from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) hiked into the Gray Wolf to find a way to get the spawners moving upstream. The answer was a bypass channel, which the WDFW crew constructed around the falls using riverbed cobbles and burlap bags filled with gravel.

Fish began using the bypass channel immediately and more than 3,000 were observed spawning above the project the following week.

For most anglers, 2001 will be remembered as a banner year for salmon fishing, beginning with hatchery spring chinook and continuing through summer with great action on hatchery coho, fall chinook and Skagit River pink salmon. Credit Mother Nature, who provided favorable freshwater flows for smolt out-migration in the late 1990s and recent improvements in ocean conditions, for some of the highest salmon returns our state has seen in years.

But this is also the worst drought year since 1977, and that could have some serious implications for future salmon runs. The Gray Wolf River project is just one of dozens of examples of WDFW's efforts to protect salmon from drought conditions that continue to threaten adult and juvenile fish on both sides of the Cascades.

Since last March when Gov. Locke first declared a drought emergency, the WDFW Drought Team has logged hundreds of hours removing barriers to salmon migration, rescuing stranded fish and facilitating the purchase of water rights to improve instream flows. In many cases, those activities have been closely coordinated with other state and federal agencies, treaty tribes, public utility districts and local volunteers.

On the Wenatchee River, for example, WDFW biologists worked side by side with engineers from the Chelan County PUD in late July to correct a problem at Tumwater Dam that threatened to scrub this year's sockeye fishery at Lake Wenatchee.

Low flows, together with the design of the dam's spillway, delayed the migration of thousands of sockeye salmon, summer chinook and other fish which were unable to climb the dam's the fish ladder. Spillway modifications recommended by WDFW's Habitat Program staff and implemented by Chelan County PUD allowed the fish to move up the ladder, opening the door to the first Lake Wenatchee sockeye fishery in eight years.

On the Yakima River and its tributaries, which were especially hard-hit by this year's drought, members of the Drought Team worked throughout the summer to correct fish-passage problems caused by low flows and disfunctional irrigation diversions.

WDFW staff also worked with the state Department of Ecology to lease 5,000 acre feet of water from upstream dams to help flush millions of out-migrating chinook and other juvenile salmon down river.

As it turned out, the juveniles got a break just when they needed it most. After weeks of temperatures in the 80s and 90s, a mid-summer snow melt and some well-timed rainfall sent "pulses" of water down the river that carried millions of fry to the Columbia River. At WDFW's request, the Bureau of Reclamation will release the stored water leased by the state to increase stream flows over the next two and a half months, improving spawning and incubation conditions for this year's record run of spring chinook.

Despite these and other efforts, this year's drought has clearly taken a toll on future salmon runs. Millions of juvenile and adult salmon and resident fish species have been subjected to high water temperatures, de-watered stream reaches, stranding, predation and poaching, throughout the spring and summer, resulting in a significant number of known mortalities.

Perhaps the single biggest loss was on the Columbia River, where at least 1.6 million wild chinook fry died last spring after being stranded in the gravel along a 17-mile section of the Hanford Reach. Low-water conditions amplified the effect of fluctuations in water flows caused by dam operations, resulting in fry mortality 16 times greater than in the previous two years.

The silver lining here is that estimated fry production was up by 6 million fish over last year in that section of the Columbia, which could offset losses from the drought. There, as elsewhere in the state, we won't know the true impact of the drought on future salmon runs – and fisheries – for two or three years when the first fish from the 2001 brood return.

Meanwhile, the Drought Team's work continues.

Seattle Mayor Paul Schell recently declared an end to the need for water conservation by the people of the Emerald City, which relies on the Tolt and Cedar rivers for its water supply. But while the city's reservoirs may be full, flows on those rivers and others in many areas of the state are still well below normal, posing a significant risk to future generations of fish.

For WDFW and the state's fisheries resources, the Drought of 2001 won't be over until the rains return and the rivers are back in shape.

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