Baker River Sockeye Returning to Spawn in Record Numbers, PSE Says.

News Editors

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 12, 2003

Sockeye salmon are returning in record numbers this summer to the Baker River, further evidence of the fish stock's ongoing recovery.

With a few weeks still remaining in the 2003 adult-sockeye migration, the river's once-scant stock of red salmon already has posted its highest return ever, according to Puget Sound Energy fish biologists.

As of today (Aug. 12) 19,429 adult sockeye had entered the utility's Baker River fish-transport facility just below Lower Baker Dam, near Concrete. The previous return record -- set in 1994 -- was 15,991 fish.

"We're thrilled about the size of this year's return," said Cary Feldmann, manager of environmental strategies for PSE. "It's extremely gratifying to see that our stock-recovery efforts are continuing to pay off in such a big way."

Numerous river systems in the Northwest have had strong returns of adult salmon in the past few years, a development largely attributed to a cyclical improvement in ocean conditions for salmon and their food supply. No other large river in the region, though, has seen the kind of increase in runs that the Baker River has posted over the past decade, Feldmann said.

Between 1925 -- the year PSE built the first of two Baker River hydroelectric dams -- and the late 1970s, an average of about 3,000 sockeye returned each summer to spawn in the Baker watershed. In the early 1980s, however, the river's adult-sockeye population plummeted, dropping to a record-low 99 fish in 1985. The federal government responded by nominating Baker sockeye for possible listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

"These fish were considered one of the most threatened salmon stocks in the Northwest," Feldmann said. "But within the past decade, we've had six of the ten best returns on record, averaging 8,892 fish per year. That's almost three times the historic average. And this year, the return is more than six times the average. By any measure, the recovery is impressive."

The decade-long rebound has been so successful, in fact, that Baker River sockeye no longer are a candidate for ESA listing.

Feldmann said Baker sockeye, like other Northwest salmon stocks, probably have benefited from the past few years' favorable ocean conditions. But the dramatic, longer-term turnaround of Baker runs, he said, is mostly attributable to two decades of cooperative fish-recovery efforts by PSE, state and federal natural-resource agencies, and the tribal Skagit System Cooperative.

Two years ago, he noted, their collaborative fish-propagation work helped produce the largest out-migration of juvenile salmon from Baker Lake since the 1960s. Those young, naturally spawned salmon are now contributing to this summer's record return of adult sockeye to the Baker River.

To boost the Baker's sockeye-recovery effort, PSE constructed a new trap-and-haul system in 1987 for more effective transport of juvenile sockeye downstream past the utility's two Baker dams. The system includes 280-foot-deep nets strung completely across Baker Lake to the lake bottom. The nets guide young salmon to an area where they can be trapped and loaded into water-filled trucks for transport around PSE's hydro projects, then released into the lower river.

In addition, PSE built a series of "spawning beaches" around Baker Lake that have greatly increased the number of young sockeye hatching out in the lake and tributaries of the upper Baker River. Also, a separate PSE trap-and-haul facility below Lower Baker Dam enables the utility to safely transport migrating adult sockeye upstream past both PSE hydropower dams into Baker Lake.