This was originally published here on Underscore News and is shared with permission.
The fishing ban established in 2021 came after Chinook salmon in the Coquille River were at near-extinction levels, according to John Ogan, the Coquille Indian Tribe’s executive director of natural resources. Ogan has worked with tribes in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 30 years and said the diminished salmon population was unlike anything he’s seen.
“This is, I submit, the largest unknown, unrecognized salmon collapse and disaster on the Pacific coast,” Ogan said. “But it’s out of sight down here in southwest Oregon.”
Prior to 2018, the state’s monitoring indicated there was an average of nearly 11,000 fall Chinook salmon that would make it from the ocean into the spawning grounds annually. But that year, government officials estimated that only around 900 fish made it back into the Coquille River. Over the next few years the levels dropped consistently until only 600 fish were estimated to be returning to the area— making it nearly impossible to fish.
When the tribal council learned of the diminishing numbers they immediately took action, passing a formal declaration of emergency which streamlined their ability to gather the tools and meet with people and government entities which were needed to start the salmon population’s rehabilitation.
“Trust us and stand with us”
The journey to restoring the Chinook salmon population in the Coquille River was met with support from surrounding communities — but it didn’t start off that way.
Southwest Oregon has a natural resources based economy, intertwined with forestry, fishing, and more recently, tourism. But when the Chinook salmon disappeared, the economy started to dwindle. When the tribe proposed they enter into a co-management agreement with ODFW, Ogan said there was a concern that if they were to give the power to the tribe that they would hoard natural resources and limit non-tribal fishing.
“We had to manage through that,” Ogan said. “It was just us saying ‘trust us and stand with us.’”
The tribe sought to build community trust through robust discussions and proposals leading to support from local government, port authorities, watershed associations, businesses and other groups from the southern Oregon coast who wrote letters to former Oregon Gov. Kate Brown in an effort to encourage her to support the co-management between the tribe and ODFW.
“This tribe embraces this community, the non-tribal community. It really does,” Ogan said. “When the fish and wildlife resources prosper, it’s not only the Coquille people that prosper, but this community.”
Although fishing and natural resources are the backbone of the economy in Southwest Oregon, Coquille Indian Tribe chairwoman Brenda Meade said the tribe had a duty to raise the salmon population, not just for the benefit of the local economy, but to honor their culture and sacred duty.
“Coquille people have a sacred duty to care for fish and wildlife that aligns with the mission of the ODFW well,” Meade said in a press conference in Bandon, Oregon on July 31. “Our shared vision is that the Coquille and Coos systems will be widely recognized as a premier salmon and steelhead fishery and a cornerstone of the cultural, social and economic well-being of the region.”
After continued push from the tribe to hold stewardship in their traditional lands, ODFW and the Coquille Tribe signed a memorandum of agreement in June 2022 making them co-managers of the land. The agreement restored the tribe as stewards of the fish and wildlife across their entire congressionally recognized service area as well as the adjacent territorial sea which is around 10 million acres. For Ogan, the partnership wasn’t just about gaining the ability to steward the land, but it was also about ODFW taking accountability for the mismanagement of the Coquille’s ancestral land.
“It was about recognizing that the state, for whatever reason, could not manage these fish in the Coquille River, could not manage the watershed to support the abundance that the Coquille have known forever by themselves,” he said. “The tribe needed to step up, step forward, and bring its knowledge and resources to bear as well, and to call upon this community in full to join in.”
Eliminating the threats
When the Coquille tribe set out to bring their Chinook salmon population back from near extinction there were two main questions, ‘how did this happen?’ and ‘what can we do to save our salmon?’
After studying the Chinook salmon decline, ODFW estimated the number of fish were so low that it would take at least a decade before visiting the idea of fishing for Chinook salmon in the Coquille River. The tribe and its partners did it in three years by addressing predatorial threats, climate change and the need for habitat restoration.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife cited the illegal introduction and spread of the invasive smallmouth bass into the river.
Chinook salmon are particularly susceptible to smallmouth bass because of their strategy. When a Chinook salmon in the Coquille River emerges from the gravel in late winter or early spring, they’re only a few inches long. With their tiny bodies they start making their way towards the estuary in the ocean almost immediately. But they were previously passing through the invasive bass population and were being consumed at large rates.
Warming river temperatures, low water flows and poor ocean conditions also played a role in the decline of the Chinook salmon population, but without bass removal there was no way for them to recover.
The tribe called on the ODFW to have its one electrofishing boat, which is shared statewide, placed in the Coquille river to start the removal of salmon. However, the smallmouth bass population was so large that one boat wasn’t enough. Through grant funding and funding the tribe secured new electrofishing boats. Today, a fleet of four full-time electrofishing boats are on the river with crews collecting bass throughout the summer.
Catching bass by using an electrofishing boat is relatively simple, Ogan said. An electrofishing boat is equipped with two electrodes that create electrical currents which ripple through the water and stun the fish, making them move to the top and easily scooped up with a net. To date, tribal members, ODFW staff and volunteers were able to stun, remove and dispatch over 45,000 smallmouth bass in the Coquille River. As part of their “no waste” policy, the tribe donates the bass to the wildlife safari in Winston, OR and a raptor rehabilitation center.
Bringing the population back from the brink of extinction
Over 70 years ago the state opened a hatchery Chinook program in the Coquille River with the goal of adding more fish to supplement the fishery. With the wild Chinook salmon dwindling, ODFW and the tribe looked to the hatchery for replenishing the salmon population but it was almost completely gone as well.
The first year ODFW decided it needed to collect 75 pairs of male and female salmon for its hatchery to collect the eggs, spawn them and grow the smolt (juvenile salmon) which would then become broodstock (reproductively mature adults in a population that breed and reproduce).
In 2020, the hatchery was only able to collect three pairs of fish. The tribe began trying to implement their traditional fishing methods — but it would take time. After looking at the salmon trap the tribe and its partners began redesigning traps that would be far more efficient.
“We said ‘we can do this better,’” Ogan said. “You know, tribes have been catching salmon for a while now. We’ve got some ideas.”
The following year, with the tribe’s help the hatchery collected 25 pairs while still building out their salmon traps. After the traps were designed, built and installed between the tribe and the Coquille STEP Association 155 pairs were collected, making it an all time record for broodstock collecting for the hatchery program.
With so many Chinook salmon eggs harvested, the state was concerned about the permits they had for their original 75 pairs of salmon. But the Coquille Indian Tribe refused to waste the resources.
Under the traditional program 75 pairs of salmon eggs were spawned and fertilized with the remaining eggs going to partners in the community to stream site incubator hosts.
“We said ‘we can do this better,’” Ogan said. “You know, tribes have been catching salmon for a while now. We’ve got some ideas.”
The hosts consist of low level technology that require no electricity or pumps. The eggs rest next to a stream bank and PVC pipe flows water over the eggs just like it would if the eggs were in their natural environment, gravel. When the eggs hatch the fish drop to the bottom and at their own pace and then they leave, exiting right into the river.
The success of the record-breaking broodstock collection was thrilling, Ogan said, but there was looming anxiety on the state’s side regarding political blowback from hatchery production.
“There’s a large community in the Pacific Northwest, non-tribal community, I would say, that have devalued hatchery salmon and steelhead. So the state was anxious, you know, we’re going to get political blowback,” he said. “We told them you have to be fearless. Be fearless with us and move forward.”
The next year the tribe, their partners and ODFW broke the record by collecting over 250 pairs of broodstock Chinook salmon and repeating the process.
It’s work for the grandchildren
From ridgetop to ridgetop, the Coquille have guided the ODFW on hatchery and fishery rehabilitation and the importance of establishing a healthier ecosystem for the fish to come back to. Alone, the tribe secured over $15 million dedicated to habitat restoration on a project in the North Fork of the Coquille river that will take place this year.
The project focuses on reconnecting historic side channels of the river that were destroyed with settlement, native plant restoration and creating the pools and the riffles that salmon need to survive.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s legacy work,” Ogan said. “It’s cultural work. It’s the work for the grandchildren. It’s work that’s honoring the work that our grandmas and grandpas did that got us restored as a tribe.”
This year, an expected 3,000 Chinook salmon are estimated to make their way upstream. A proposal led by the ODFW and the Coquille Indian Tribe will be heard by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission on Sept. 12 in Ontario.
The proposal, if approved, would mark the first Chinook fishing season on the Coquille River since 2021. Fishing would be allowed from September 13 to October 15, with a daily bag limit of two adult salmon, including a restriction of one wild Coho per day. Ogan said the tribe is excited to have Chinook salmon in the waters once again.
“We’re not going to get hatchery handouts that were from the Rogue River or from the Columbia River,” Ogan said. “They’re going to be Coquille fish and that is so meaningful.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story did not accurately state the number of years ahead of schedule the Coquille Indian Tribe and ODFW are for Chinook Salmon restoration, and has been updated to reflect the correct number of years.
This article first appeared on Underscore Native News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
