Fitting in the Cracks of a Mitigation Facility: Conservation Program Uses Settling Pond

Similar to many Snake River Basin tributaries, the summer Chinook salmon population in Johnson Creek Idaho, a tributary to central Idaho’s East Fork South Fork Salmon River, experienced dramatic declines and was nearly extirpated in the mid 1990’s. The declines prompted the Nez Perce Tribe to develop a hatchery supplementation program with a goal of population preservation/conservation.  In an attempt to jump start the project, it was determined that the project could be initiated utilizing existing hatchery facilities at a production level of 100,000 juveniles during the permitting and development stages of the project.   The Tribe utilized space in an existing mitigation-based hatchery facility with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to accomplish the first step in the program.  Following consultation with NOAA Fisheries, the project would not be expanded from the 100,000 to the proposed 300,000 release group.  Since 1998, the Nez Perce Tribe and Idaho Department of Fish and Game have creatively implemented both programs   We will present examples of how the Johnson Creek supplementation program has worked within the confines of a larger mitigation facility to achieve success, and a specific example of how it applied its adaptive management process to realize improvements in juvenile survival.