Study: Salmon do fine in Klamath waters

Research suggests salmon recovery likely when Klamath dams are removed.

If chinook salmon can get past the dams blocking the Klamath River, they'll do fine in the waters of the upper basin, a study has found.

A series of small hydroelectric dams have blocked salmon from Upper Klamath Lake and its tributaries for a century, but talks are under way now between the dam owner, PacifiCorp, and state and federal agencies over a proposal to remove them.

Concerned that water quality and habitat in the upper basin had deteriorated to the point salmon could no longer survive there, biologists put young fish from the Iron Gate Hatchery on the Klamath River in California in net pens in Upper Klamath Lake and the Williamson River in Oregon in 2005 and 2006.

The biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Oregon State University found the fish went through the biological changes needed to migrate to the ocean, known as smoltification, and were not infested with a deadly parasite called Ceratomyxa shasta, which attacks young fish lower down in the basin.

Meanwhile, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is to vote Friday on whether to amend its management plan for the Upper Klamath Basin to allow reintroduction of salmon in the 300 miles of Oregon rivers above the dams.

Roger Smith, Klamath district biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said he expects once fish passage is restored, either through fish ladders or dam removal, chinook salmon, steelhead and lamprey are likely to find their way upriver to spawn without help from man.

"With regards to steelhead, it should happen very rapidly," Smith said. "With regards to chinook, lamprey and to some extent coho, it is somewhat of an unknown."

Upper Klamath Lake may be a problem, because it represents the only instance on the West Coast where salmon migrate more than 100 miles upriver, then have to find their way through a large lake to the tributaries beyond, Smith said.

Due to those concerns, state, tribal and federal biologists will develop plans for reintroducing young chinook salmon from a fish hatchery to the lake to get a population going more quickly, Smith said.

"It could take 10 years, it could take 100 years to re-establish fish to upper Klamath Lake," he said. "Our hope is through man's intervention, we can at least jump-start it and then let Mother Nature take over from there."