Reintroduction of Spring Chinook into the Walla Walla River

Spring Chinook were extirpated from the Walla Walla Basin more than 75 years ago due to over appropriated stream flow, loss of habitat and inadequate fish passage.  Today, the Umatilla Tribe and others are working with the local community to restore the subsistence, economic, religious and cultural values of salmon.  The Tribes spring Chinook re-introduction program is modeled after its successful Umatilla Fisheries Restoration Program and consists of: 1) habitat and flow restoration, 2) best hatchery management practices, 3) monitoring and evaluation and 4) adaptive harvest management.  The Tribes management goal is to reintroduce natural spawning spring Chinook populations to the Walla Walla Basin in order to provide Tribal and sports tributary harvest.  The Tribes spring Chinook reintroduction goal is to meet a return average of 5,500 adults back to the mouth of the Walla Walla River to produce about 2,800 spawners.  Benchmark criteria include: 1) a mean adult productivity or adult to adult return (AAR) of 1.35 and 2) a mean juvenile productivity or smolt to adult return (SAR) rate of 0.55%.  Our early results seem promising, suggesting that reintroduced spring Chinook can successfully rear, return and spawn in the basin.  Adult replacement (1.11 +/- 0.33) was achieved for the 2005 brood; while the mean SAR for both natural and hatchery spring Chinook was similar (0.30%).  Perhaps most significantly, in 2010 nearly 1,200 fish returned to the upper basin and the Tribe opened their first spring Chinook fishery on the South Fork Walla Walla River in over 85 years marking an early milestone towards restoration.