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Joel Kawahara, fishing for coho salmon while trolling on his boat the F/V Karolee, out of Sitka, Alaska, in September 1994. Kawahara testified before elected leaders about the impacts of hydroelectric dams on salmon, volunteered at streamside tree plantings and often fed his community with fresh-caught fish and oysters from his beach on Hood Canal or treats from his garden. He died at sea this month at the age of 70. (Courtesy of Karen Ducey)

August 21, 2025
By Isabella Breda
Seattle Times staff reporter

A lifelong fisherman, tireless advocate for salmon recovery and a friend to many, Joel Kawahara died at sea this month. He was 70.

Kawahara left Neah Bay on Aug. 8 in his fishing boat, the Karolee, on a trip for salmon, but after his family and friends didn’t hear from him over the weekend, they reported him missing.

The Coast Guard boarded the Karolee near Northern California last week. Nobody was aboard. The search was suspended after covering nearly 2,100 square miles off the West Coast in cutters, aircraft and with small boat crews.

When he wasn’t on the saltwater, Kawahara was often fighting for the future of salmon and fishing families, his friends and colleagues shared.

They remember him as a bit of a Renaissance man, in touch with the water and deeply invested in his relationships and his duty to advocate for his industry, the salmon and habitat they rely upon.

Kawahara testified before elected leaders about the impacts of hydroelectric dams on salmon, volunteered at streamside tree plantings and often fed his community with fresh-caught fish and oysters from his beach on Hood Canal or treats from his garden.

“He was both a fisherman who took and he saw the responsibility that was associated with taking of giving,” said Joseph Bogaard, the executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for policy and actions to restore Columbia-Snake River basin salmon runs. “It’s that principle of reciprocity, which was just part of his DNA.”

‘Where else can you go and be part of nature?’
Joel and his brothers, Ken and Karl, grew up in Lower Queen Anne. Their dad owned a fishing tackle store on 2nd Avenue.

They spent most weekends at their grandparents’ home on Dabob Bay on Hood Canal — fishing for salmon in front of the house, collecting oysters and cooking them over a bonfire.

The three brothers all went different directions after leaving home, but it was clear Joel would always be a fisherman, Ken Kawahara said.

Their dad retired and would spend his summers fishing in Alaska, and Joel would always be with him. “My dad decided, well, if I just keep doing this, Joel’s never going to do anything else. So he sold the boat,” Ken Kawahara said.

He spent a few years at Boeing, but the work on military contracting conflicted with his values.

“I was and am pacifist in my philosophical core,” he described in an email interview with The Seattle Times in 2023. “ … I kept my mouth shut, saved money and bought Karolee in 1987 so took vacation time to fish in Alaska.”

It was clear he belonged on the water.

“What else can you do that keeps you in the open spaces for half a year and still make enough to live?” Kawahara wrote. “Where else can you go and be part of nature, at the whim of nature for your livelihood and when weather gets bad for your life?”

Tele Aadsen, of the fishing vessel Nerka, met Kawahara when she and her partner were both kids growing up in the fleet.

Kawahara never hesitated to take on a mentorship role, Aadsen said, recalling when Kawahara took her partner, Joel Brady-Power, to the bar to break down “in a human way” what to know to serve on boards needed to keep the fishery going.

He always wanted to help.

His friends and colleagues shared stories of him lugging big batteries onto a young fisher’s boat, trading notes, talking about the lure or plug that was working well for him and sharing his deep understanding of how ocean conditions and the weather influenced the movement of salmon.

Kawahara stayed invested in everyone he met, said Dan Ayres, a former shellfish manager at the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

He remembered personal details and checked in with people he seldom saw, baked a pie for a friend in the Karolee’s tiny galley and offered salmon to his former deckhand to ensure the health of her unborn baby.

Kawahara never seemed too concerned about his own fishing, Aadsen said. He caught fish, Aadsen said, but he seemed more focused on ensuring everyone else had the access and opportunity to harvest, that salmon were abundant and protected.

The Seattle Times: Joel Kawahara, 70, lifelong fisher, dies at sea after leaving Neah Bay

Kathy Criddle photographs birds from the Columbia River within the Hanford Reach National Monument on July 9. The national monument, established in 2000, is a haven for birders, anglers and others who enjoy the natural wonders around this free-flowing stretch of the Columbia. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

Aug. 3, 2025 at 6:00 am

By Gregory Scruggs

ABOARD THE CAN DO III ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER, Benton County — Todd Steele learned the river from his father, Rich. He got the boat, the Can Do III, from his dad, too. And back in 2000, Todd helped launch the Can Do II when Vice President Al Gore came to the Reach.

Gore’s visit on June 9, 2000, coincided with President Bill Clinton signing an executive order at the White House designating the Hanford Reach National Monument, preserving more than 196,000 acres and 46.5 miles of the Columbia from future dams, dredging and agriculture.

The presidential pen stroke protected the Chinook salmon gravel beds, the pelican roosts and the striking geology of the sagebrush steppe in one of the last relatively undisturbed pockets of the Columbia Basin. This parcel adjacent to the Hanford nuclear site in Central Washington is beloved by anglers and birders but also coveted by farmers.

Press accounts of Gore’s visit that day claim the vice president toured salmon spawning grounds on the Columbia near Richland. But Todd Steele insists Gore never even made it inside the boundaries of the national monument. Rich Steele ferried Gore, Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Gary Locke around the Reach, but Secret Service agents nixed a proper river trip, Steele said. A photo op would have to suffice.

Todd chuckled at the memory of his father on a searing July afternoon as the cobalt Can Do III drifted downriver in the shadow of the imposing White Bluffs, thin layers of sediment piled 600 feet high over millions of years. Pelicans soared overhead and deer lapped water from the riverbank.

The evening light hits a portion of the Ringold Formation, part of Hanford Reach National Monument’s White Bluffs. The national monument was established in 2000, protecting one of Washington’s most unique natural areas. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

The broiling heat, the boat, the scenery, the flora and fauna — a quarter-century later, the scene felt similar, with one noticeable absence: Rich.

Until his death in July of last year at age 89, Rich Steele was an indefatigable defender of the Reach and these waters, the last nontidal, free-flowing stretch of the mighty Columbia south of the U.S.-Canada border. He was a giant from the generation of conservationists who saved the Reach. 

Across a half-century of advocacy, Rich led hundreds of river jaunts at his own cost for visiting politicians, hosting representatives from county governments in the Tri-Cities, the governor’s mansion in Olympia and even the White House. The blue-collar environmentalist earned the respected nickname of “the Riverkeeper” for his efforts to persuade powerful people across partisan divides to protect the Reach.

Todd Steele navigates the Columbia River within the Hanford Reach National Monument on July 9. Guarding this free-flowing stretch of the Columbia is a family business for the Steeles. 

Todd, the youngest of three, tagged along often, lending a hand and quietly absorbing his plain-spoken father’s passion for this free-flowing stretch of the Columbia, whose cold, clear current has cleaved a braided channel of islands. It’s a stretch that feels like a river — a marked contrast to the reservoirs that stretch along most of the Columbia, tamed by hydroelectric dams.

“I was just there to support him,” Todd said.

Todd, 63, is now driving the boat — at a time when once-permanent protections for public lands seem less ironclad. The first Trump administration sought to shrink national monuments, and the current Congress has floated proposals to sell public land.

Later this month, Sen. Murray is booked to travel through the Reach by jetboat, stopping at Murray’s Beach, a sandy perch just upriver from the White Bluffs. It’s named for the senator, a longtime advocate for the Reach on Capitol Hill. She’s made this journey several times before, observing ongoing impacts on the river’s ecology from irrigation and agriculture.

The sprawling nuclear campus, which relied on cheap hydroelectric power and abundant river water for coolant, created a conservation paradox: Security concerns kept development off the Columbia as the Department of Energy established a buffer zone around its top-secret Cold War facility — and wildlife flourished in the vicinity of what some consider the world’s most contaminated environmental site.

When science company Battelle opened the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 1965, Rich worked on a boat as a lab technician, collecting water samples from Hanford Reach to test for radioactivity and monitor fish stocks. Motoring up and down the river, he learned every twist and turn.

“He was a self-made guy who surrounded himself with smart people,” Todd said.

An avid fly fisherman, Rich was roused to action when the Army Corps of Engineers proposed building the Ben Franklin Dam on the Columbia in the 1960s. While the dam would have generated enough power to cover 40% of Seattle’s annual electricity usage, it would have flooded Hanford Reach.

A coyote pup walks across a road in the Hanford Reach National Monument on July 8. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

American white pelicans soar above the Columbia River on July 9. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

Rich had already lived through the erection of the Snake River Dams and John Day Dam, the combination of which eliminated coveted spots where he had fly-fished for steelhead on the banks of the Columbia and Snake.

“You could already see what damming a river does,” said Todd, tanned from a life under the desert sun, with a fuzzy red fly tied to his wide-brim hat. “We know what it takes away and the ecosystems it destroys.”

Rich founded the Columbia River Conservation League in 1968 with his neighbor Jack de Yonge — an editor at the Tri-City Herald and later editorial writer at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer — and Richland Rod and Gun Club President Lowell Johnson. They fought the dam, which the Corps shelved in 1970 and officially took off the table in 1981, then a Corps dredging proposal in the 1980s to make Wenatchee an inland port. Those threats prompted the Save the Reach campaign of the 1990s, calling for permanent protection from dams and dredging. The Washington Environmental Council bestowed its Citizen Environmental Hero Award on Rich Steele in 1995. 

Murray attempted to shepherd a Wild and Scenic River designation for the Reach through Congress, but ultimately pivoted and lobbied Clinton to declare a national monument, which would not require a bill. She entered tributes to Rich into the Congressional Record three times, most recently on Sept. 9, 2024, to acknowledge his death. In her first entry, from 1996, she referred to him as “not your average environmentalist” who was “brought up the hard way in the Tri-Cities.”

A fish’s dorsal fin reflects the sun as it swims in the Columbia River within the Hanford Reach National Monument on July 8. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

The Riverkeeper’s son 

Rich’s persistently positive demeanor served him well as he sought support for conserving the Reach. Championing an environmental cause in politically conservative Central Washington required keeping up, as the boat name suggests, a can-do attitude. 

The area’s Republican House representative, Doc Hastings, opposed the national monument’s establishment as federal overreach, arguing for local control of public lands. Reached by phone at his home in Pasco, the retired congressman hasn’t changed his tune in 25 years. The Washington Farm Bureau picketed Gore’s visit on the premise that the monument would remove future prime agricultural land from cultivation.

Todd is hospitable but not exuberant; he shines as a caregiver. Like his father, he began working odd jobs out of high school before landing at Hanford in the waning years of plutonium production — and then as part of the gargantuan cleanup effort. 

Warning signs mark a hazardous area of the Hanford Site nuclear production facility on July 9. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

Now retired, today he helps care for his autistic 5-year-old grandson, and in the last seven years of Rich’s life, Todd took care of the Riverkeeper, too. Not that the lifelong fisherman was content in a rocking chair. Todd, who keeps mules and horses on his Richland property, saddled up the animals to take his father on pack trips to alpine lakes. They hunted elk, deer and turkey together, too.

“We did all of those things that the Pacific Northwest has to offer,” he said.

Even late in life, Rich kept tabs on the river’s changing fortunes. When the first Trump administration initiated a review of national monuments with an eye toward shrinking or rescinding some of them, Rich intimated that he may come out of retirement to defend the area. Ultimately, Hanford Reach was dropped from the review.

Todd professes intimidated admiration for his father’s recall of political relationships and his ability to maintain a Rolodex of gubernatorial and senatorial aides. “He remembered all of the congressmen and local politicians that he had run-ins with, how he dealt with them and what their true ideals were,” Todd said.

An intuition for working the levers of power is not Todd’s forte, but he’s building confidence. A July river tour for The Seattle Times was Todd’s first time guiding an out-of-towner, a dress rehearsal for when he’ll have Murray’s undivided attention aboard the Can Do III later this month. Todd wants to show the senator the proliferation of invasive milfoil and star-grass that are choking prime salmon spawning grounds and to press her for more permanent protection of Hanford Reach, like elevating its status to a national park.

Fortunately, the Riverkeeper’s son doesn’t have to go it alone.

Karyn and Michael Wiemers, both in their 70s, were part of the Save the Reach campaign in the 1990s and remain active to this day as members of the Hanford Reach Citizens Committee. They’ll be on their own jetboat traveling upriver alongside Todd and Murray.

“He is so like his dad,” Karyn said. “The potential is there. He just needs a little bit of encouragement and support.”

Mike and Karyn Wiemers boat on the Columbia River within the Hanford Reach National Monument on July 9. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

The Wiemers are providing those nudges from experience as confidants of the elder Steele. At points, Rich worked for Michael, one of the many Ph.D.s at Hanford. He preferred having Rich as a colleague on projects because of his strong work ethic.

“Todd doesn’t raise his voice, but he delivers a message effectively,” Michael said. “He’s an unassuming leader.”

The support network is also multigenerational, as the Steeles seek to uphold Rich’s family legacy. 

“We were bystanders, but all the work that he did now can’t be for naught just because he’s not here anymore,” said Todd’s wife, Jackie. 

Their daughter, Savanna, who works at Sound Transit and formerly for Rep. Suzan DelBene, will be on the jetboat tour as well. “She’s really good about bringing things out in Todd that he doesn’t think he can do,” Jackie said.

The next 25 years

As you float Hanford Reach, the river almost seems pristine near the Columbia’s northern and eastern banks. 

Fish are few and far between in midsummer, but the gravel shores still nurse a fall run of “upriver brights” that accounts for 70% of all Chinook salmon in the entire Columbia River system. Sagebrush carpets Saddle Mountain to the north while the White Bluffs to the east showcase the scars of Central Washington’s remarkable geology, forged when the glacially powered Missoula floods raged at the end of the last ice age. The landscape brings to life the exhibitions on display at Richland’s REACH Museum, a natural history and science museum serving the Tri-Cities and one of the most tangible legacies of the establishment of the monument.

 Children take notes while participating in a scavenger hunt at the REACH Museum on July 8 in Richland. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

Looking south and west yields a different vantage. 

Nuclear reactors cocooned in steel, like oversized Monopoly pieces or a forgotten work by contemporary artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, are monolithic reminders of the seemingly endless Hanford cleanup, currently slated to last into the 2070s. The national monument wraps around the Hanford site like Todd’s horseshoe mustache, and one day, in theory, the Department of Energy will declare the site decontaminated. 

(The Department of Energy declined an interview request on postcleanup plans for the site.)

For today’s riverkeepers, however, agricultural runoff is a more worrisome toxin than nuclear contamination. Irrigation channels threaten the stability of bluffs on the river’s edge more than heavy machinery operating inland at the Hanford site. Lush green fields of grapes, apples and cherries hug the river outside the monument boundary. Todd fears that agricultural interests would encroach farther along the river if given the chance, like if the recently aborted congressional effort to sell public lands came back on the table.

“They wouldn’t care about these White Bluffs,” he said. “It’s not in their makeup. Their makeup is making money.”

Grower and agricultural researcher Alan Schreiber, who bought his farmland 3 miles from the monument in 1999, notes that the area was farmed before the federal government evicted residents for the Manhattan Project. “It’s some of the best farm ground in the Pacific Northwest,” he said. “That land returns very little to the economy and it could have been an agricultural powerhouse. But it’s also a fantastic place for wildlife and it wouldn’t be if it had been farmed.”

While he believes that local agricultural interests have made peace with the monument they once fought, he said the farming community has not forgotten federal promises to return the land and would eagerly turn it into farmland if given the opportunity and irrigation rights.

In the meantime, Hanford Reach National Monument remains under the management of the Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agency that is more conservation- than recreation-oriented. 

The agency’s official stance is that there are no maintained trails in the monument (although several are noted by Washington Trails Association). But public access to the area is limited to a few road-accessible overlooks and a couple of boat launches. There’s no campground partway, something that would make float trips more feasible. Despite legislative efforts by Hastings before he retired, potential hiking destinations like Rattlesnake Mountain remain off-limits to the public because local tribes — the area’s traditional inhabitants are the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Wanapum and Yakama — consider the site sacred.

“Once you build public trails and access starts to happen, that’s another hurdle in our way to be able to reclaim our tradition and culture as Wanapum people,” said Wanapum leader Clayton Buck, whose great-grandfather was promised by the federal government that the tribe, displaced by the Hanford site, could one day return.

The sun sets over the Columbia River within the Hanford Reach National Monument on July 8. (Nick Wagner / The Seattle Times)

As for a national park designation, Murray laid out that potential path in a phone interview from the Capitol, a few weeks before she was scheduled to board the Can Do III. A new national park may be a longshot, but like every conservation effort along Hanford Reach, it will help to have a smooth operator manning the jetboat.

“I would want to make sure that I sat down with people from the region and there was a broad local consensus from everybody that’s what they want for the future,” Murray said, referencing “the tribes, the community leaders, the businesses, and certainly the passionate river advocates, the fishermen, the environmentalists. Because you cannot pass something back here without a broad coalition.” 

WA national monument, made in 2000, is still protected by this family

Aug. 3, 2025 at 6:00 am

By Isabella Breda

BAKER RIVER, Skagit County — Scott Schuyler cut the motor on his skiff as the driftnet traced the current. White corks keeping the net afloat began to vigorously tremble through the emerald waters.

“See those?” Doreen Maloney, his mom and general manager of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, said from the riverbank, pointing to the corks. “There’s fish in there.”

The river was alive with thousands of sockeye salmon, fresh with energy from the saltwater: leaping, dashing through the riffles and crowding in a pool as the pristine waters called them home.

Schools of sockeye congregate in the Baker River near Puget Sound Energy’s Baker River Upstream Fish Trap near Concrete, Skagit County. A record number of sockeye returned to the river this year. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

Scott Schuyler, standing, policy representative for natural and cultural resources for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, fishes for sockeye with relatives on the Skagit River. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

As other salmon runs edge toward extinction, the Baker was beckoning in a record run this summer. At least an estimated 90,000 sockeye will return from their high-seas journey to feed the land, forest, bears, osprey, human families — and spawn the next generation.

It was an extensive intervention over decades after Puget Sound Energy’s largest hydropower operation nearly drove these fish to extinction. The complex series of concrete ponds, chutes — and even an elevator, a fish taxi and a hatchery — that the salmon need to navigate are far from what the river’s original runs traversed, but it’s working.

The path for Baker River sockeye

Through ponds, an elevator and a truck, adult sockeye pass Puget Sound Energy’s dams to spawn.

In general, sockeye are not doing well toward the southern end of their range, where the effects of climate warming are much more pronounced.

Fraser River runs are declining and becoming more variable from year to year. For over a decade, Columbia River sockeye have been increasing, but elevated water temperature delays migration, at times, causing mortality before they reach their spawning grounds. Lake Washington sockeye continue to struggle amid heat, disease and predators that thrive in the warmer waters.

Yet here, in the glacial-fed Baker, the sockeye are booming.

The Baker River, at the Upper Baker River Dam, is seen last month. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

“Getting people out on our ancestral river and reviving the fishing culture — the fish made this possible,” said Schuyler, policy representative for natural and cultural resources for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe. “The fish are amazing. They have a will — they just need a little help from us.”

Fish camp

Fish camp was abuzz soon after sunrise.

Upper Skagit community members Leela Mathias and Sherman Williams-Griffin racked a green driftnet in undulating folds in Upper Skagit Vice Chairman Edmond Mathias’ boat as the Swainson’s thrush trilled from the river banks. Fishers Ricky Emmsley and Mike Pfluger, Upper Skagit tribal members, shoveled ice in totes to keep their catch cool.

Jason Fernando, left, and Janelle Schuyler fish for sockeye on the Skagit River in July. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

“It’s our way of life,” said Upper Skagit tribal member Joe Rodriguez, who learned to fish from his dad. “It’s more than just making money, it’s culture. It’s just carrying on our way of life, spending time with family.”

Many generations ago, Upper Skagit people made a village here named S.báliuqʷ to protect the people and resources of the Baker Valley.

Then the dams were constructed. The runs came crashing down. Before the Boldt decision, tribal members exercising their treaty rights to fish in their usual and accustomed areas faced the threat of violence and arrests by the state.

Decades passed without a sockeye fishery.

As a fisheries technician in the mid-1980s, Schuyler would climb in Puget Sound Energy’s adult trap to count and sample adult salmon. There was a fish passage system and hatchery already in place intended to mitigate the impacts of the dams.

“Obviously none of this stuff was helping, because in 1985 the run went nearly extinct,” Schuyler said. Fewer than 100 fish returned that year.

There were ongoing disease problems in the hatchery that led to fish kills. Many young fish weren’t able to migrate out of the lake because of the previous inefficient passage system. When the dams’ relicensing came up, Schuyler met with Puget Sound Energy executives at the negotiating table.

Upper Skagit’s first priority was saving the sockeye from extinction. That meant updating the smolt fish passage system for the Upper and Lower Baker dams to improve outmigrant efficiency and building a new hatchery, in combination with wild spawning.

Schuyler would run some back-of-napkin calculations of what a meaningful fishery might look like to the Upper Skagit people and outlined a goal of 75,000 to 100,000 returning sockeye annually. 

“We’re going to hit it, aren’t we?” Maloney asked Upper Skagit field coordinator Mike Bartlett on the river bank in July.

“I think so,” Bartlett confirmed.

Maloney pumped her fist, a grin washing across her face.

And the fish kept on coming. 

Help from humans

After growing for about a year in Baker Lake or Lake Shannon, young sockeye likely head out through the straits and up the continental shelf, and scientists think they spend summers in the Gulf of Alaska or the Bering Sea and winters in the Gulf.

On the return from their journey, those that narrowly escape the grasp of hungry seals, sea lions and orcas and fishers’ nets follow the scent of their home waters — heading up the Skagit to its confluence with the Baker River.

Ospreys and eagles lurk in the towering canopy as the sockeye make their final burst, following the flows through human-made ponds.

Inside Puget Sound Energy’s Baker River Upstream Fish Trap, sockeye travel down a chute, where they are counted, identified and then sent, via another chute, to sorting ponds. The fish will then be transferred by fish taxi to Baker Lake. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

On a recent summer day, the floor of a water elevator raised the sockeye from river level to a metal chute.

Staff tallied the fish one by one as they came clanging down. 

It’s taken a century to fine-tune the machine river to better accommodate fish. 

The Baker River hydroelectric project is PSE’s largest, with four turbines that can churn out enough electricity to meet the peak needs of 96,000 homes. The first dam, Lower Baker, was completed in 1925.

Today, alongside electricity, the system provides what many describe as state-of-the art fish passage and hatchery production. The adult fish that enter the trap will be drained into trucks stationed below the raceways and taxied to Baker Lake or the hatchery. 

A fish taxi carries sockeye from Puget Sound Energy’s Baker River Upstream Fish Trap past the dams and transfers the fish into Baker Lake. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

The fish released to the lake will spawn at seeps and springs in the upper Baker River above the lake.

At the hatchery, some sockeye will be cut open, eggs poured out and mixed with milt by human hands. Others will be released into four human-made spawning beaches, where they can naturally select a mate and conditions mimic the wild.

Fry from the hatchery are released into Baker Lake and Lake Shannon where they can rely on an abundance of daphnia, or water fleas, to grow big before heading to the saltwater.

Smolts are gathered from the lakes at collectors for truck transport around the dams.

This year, over 1.5 million smolts headed out for the saltwater.

The lakes offer pristine, ideal conditions for the growth of these young fish, but some worry about the future.

“We have this cold water that supports these fish. All these other things that we’ve talked about, those can be all fixed,” Schuyler said. “But the potential for losing our glaciers? That’s the concern I have.”

Recreational anglers travel by boat on Baker Lake, in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

Changing climate

As Baker River sockeye find their groove with some human intervention, their slightly southern neighbors from Lake Washington continue to struggle.

Perhaps it’s disease, the deadly 2021 heat dome or Lake Washington’s general warmth, or the walleye, bass and other predators that have grown accustomed to a juvenile sockeye feast.

Baker Lake doesn’t have the urban issues that Lake Washington runs have to face, said Leeroy Courville Jr., chair of the Muckleshoot Fisheries Commission. About 70% of the adult sockeye counted at the Ballard Locks are not making it through the lake to their spawning grounds, Courville said.

Their survival may hinge on a trucking operation by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Some Columbia River sockeye are also being trapped and trucked past hot water blocking access to their spawning habitat, as part of a pilot program led by the Okanagan Nation Alliance Fisheries and Grant and Chelan County Public Utility Districts.

Sockeye aren’t as vulnerable to climate impacts as steelhead, but aren’t as well off as pink and chum. That’s because pink and chum spend so little time in freshwater.

Meanwhile, steelhead are surface-oriented and migrate farther out, making them more susceptible to ocean heat waves.

Sockeye happen to be thriving where their habitat is still intact in the northern end of their range, and where a little bit of warming can actually boost their chances of survival.

Members of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe use driftnets to fish for sockeye at the confluence of the Skagit, left, and Baker rivers last month. The milky hue of the Skagit River is colorized by glacier melt. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

Bristol Bay sockeye appear to be benefiting from warmer conditions where they enter a more productive Bering Sea, said Laurie Weitkamp, a research fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

And, rising lake temperatures in the Bristol Bay watershed have helped juvenile fish grow faster than they did some 30 years ago. Bigger smolts are correlated with higher survival rates in the ocean.

About 56 million Bristol Bay sockeye have returned this year, said Daniel Schindler, professor in School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington.

“As a long-term solution, trap and haul systems, sure they work,” Schindler said, “but I really think it’s important that we emphasize maintaining, protecting, restoring the habitat that fish need over their entire life cycle.”

Baker River sockeye storm back in record run — overcoming 2 dams

July 11, 2025 at 6:00 am

By Amanda Zhou, Seattle Times staff reporter 

A group of five Northwest energy and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court over Bonneville Power Administration’s recent decision to join Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+, a power market operator.

The lawsuit is the latest development in an ongoing debate among public and private utilities centering on how to keep electricity affordable and reliable in the Pacific Northwest amid worsening weather events, spiking prices and ever increasing demand.

The petitioners, who are represented by Earthjustice and include the Sierra Club and NW Energy Coalition, allege that BPA, a federal agency that provides around 32% of the power generated in the Northwest, improperly rushed to join Markets+, an energy trading market, violating laws and leading to more expensive electricity for customers.

BPA declined to comment, citing active litigation.

As heat waves and cold snaps have grown more frequent and extreme from climate change, power prices have spiked. Hydropower, which historically has powered the bulk of the region’s electricity, has also grown more variable each year due to drought.

These changes along with increased demand from data centers and electrification mandates and more variable energy from wind and solar have led local utilities to look at joining broader market pools that cover a bigger geographic footprint. Utility managers hope that joining these pools, which typically optimize energy trading, will result in more reliable access to electricity and at lower rates.

In March, BPA announced plans to join the Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+ system based in Arkansas over the California Independent System Operator.

The nonprofit federal agency is a major wholesale provider of electricity for the region and the decision had been closely watched by local utilities like Seattle City Light, some U.S. senators, energy guzzlers like Amazon and Google and some environmental and energy advocates, who had urged BPA to pump the brakes on a decision.

However, not all utilities agreed, and Chelan, Grant and Snohomish County PUDs had indicated a preference for Markets+. Since then, utilities including Puget Sound Energy and Tacoma Power have announced decisions to join Markets+.

Opponents, including those who filed the lawsuit, argue that Markets+ will raise electricity prices, pointing to a study commissioned by BPA that the power market will be $79 million to $129 million more costly in 2026 for Bonneville — and its ratepayers — compared with business as usual under some scenarios.

BPA has countered that while initial costs in the first few years of Markets+ participation are higher, those costs will level out and will ultimately be financially beneficial for customers.

After the lawsuit was filed, Seattle City Light said in a statement that it had been “deeply disappointed” in BPA’s decision to join Markets+ and that the decision will cost ratepayers $20 million to $40 million each year. The Save Our Wild Salmon coalition also applauded the lawsuit in a statement.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals alleges that BPA’s choice to join Markets+ violates its obligations under the Northwest Power Act to ensure cost-effective and reliable power for the region and to protect fish and wildlife in the Columbia Basin. The lawsuit also alleges that BPA failed to consider and properly study environmental impacts, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Environmental groups sue BPA over power market choice

Fish face a ‘triple threat’ in the Columbia River: Rising temperatures, stagnant water and toxic algae

By Henry Brannan, Columbian Murrow News Fellow

Published: July 11, 2025, 6:10am

Environmental group Save Our Wild Salmon released its first Columbia River Hot Water Report of the year Wednesday, as water temperatures throughout the basin this year have already surpassed the key 68-degree threshold for salmon health.

The report compiles water-temperature data with a summary of research to highlight the challenges that endangered salmon and steelhead face throughout the Columbia Basin. Its first installment this year comes as Washington is in drought, the already-low snowpack is quickly melting and once-rare toxic algae blooms have already started up for the season.

“The initial signs are another year, like previous years, where we’re going to have extended hot-water episodes in the reservoirs that have been created by the lower Columbia and the Lower Snake River dams,” said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of the group.

Bogaard has been in the role for about a dozen years and at the organization for about three decades. During that time, he’s seen the problem of increasingly warm water worsen.

“Salmon and steelhead and other native fishes in the Columbia Basin today are facing a sort of triple threat that is heat, stagnant waters and toxic algal blooms,” he said.

But the issue is much older than the 10-year-old Hot Water Report. The Great River of the West warmed about 4 degrees between 1853 and 2018, a 2023 study found. The research also noted that the number of days when water temperatures surpassed 68 degrees increased about 12-fold to 60 each year.

That 68-degree threshold is crucial for salmon survival, said Doug Hatch, a scientist who has worked at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission for 35 years. He was not involved in the report.

“The basic thing to remember is that they’re coldwater fish, salmon,” he said. “If it’s below 68 degrees, it’s not optimal — something closer to 50 degrees would be optimal temperature — but they can survive up to maybe about 72.”

Water temperatures in the 70s have caused salmon to die in recent years.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which runs most of the federal dam system, said it is taking action with other federal agencies to try to reduce temperatures in the Columbia River system. Regional spokesman Tom Conning cited their work cooling fish ladder water temperatures and releasing cold water from Dworshak Dam in Idaho between July and August.

“It’s helpful to remember that historical water temperatures in the Columbia and Snake rivers, before major development of dams, frequently exceeded modern state and federal temperature standards,” he added.

But the hot water’s impacts extend far beyond just hurting salmon. Clark County Public Health officials issued a warning that algae growth in the Columbia killed two dogs last year.

Over the past five years, the Washington State Department of Ecology has given nearly $1 million in grant money to municipalities to battle blooms in lakes around the state.

The warmer conditions also favor fish species such as northern pikeminnow, which harm the river’s ecology and cost the government millions of dollars in creative population-management schemes like fish bounty programs.

Over the course of the 20th century, the federal government built the hydropower system. It transformed the river from a natural system revolving around massive, ice-cold spring runoff into a finely tuned series of controlled reservoirs enabling billions of dollars in power to be generated and goods to be moved each year.

The 2023 study found those dams were a key cause of the Columbia’s 4-degree warming, and broader government research has found that’s true for most dams.

Other drivers of that warming include dwindling snowpacks and hotter air temperatures — both caused by climate change. Human-made causes, such as water withdrawals for farm irrigation and spawning habitat destruction, also compounded the problem, the study said.

The warmer temperatures extend throughout the basin — a problem that both Hatch and Bogaard said complicated the challenge salmon face.

The most recent Hot Water Report shows water in all four of the lower Columbia reservoirs has already crossed 68 degrees this year. And half of the four Snake River dams crossed that same threshold, with the other two not far behind.

Last year, the reports show, temperatures routinely crossed 70 degrees and often surpassed 72 degrees behind most of the eight dams that salmon must cross before accessing the hundreds of miles of pristine spawning grounds on the Snake River.

The hot temperatures on the lower Columbia slow down fish, draining their reserves even before they face four more dams on the lower Snake.

Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead returns were between 10 million and 18 million fish before the hydropower system. Recently, they’ve numbered about 2.3 million.

Wild fish, in particular, have suffered. Most wild Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead runs are less than 5 percent of their pre-1850s levels, a 2022 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report found.

Currently, 13 Columbia Basin runs are under Endangered Species Act protections.

For Bogaard, the purpose of the Hot Water Report is explaining the extent of the crisis salmon face and highlighting solutions that government research has found will increase their survival, like removing the Lower Snake River dams.

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“Humans in recent decades have pushed them beyond their limits of resilience,” he said about the fish. “They’re able to endure spikes and short-term episodes of warm water, hot water. But they need to get relief, and they need to have refuges in this river system that allow them to recover.”

But that seems unlikely, at least in the near future, with the Trump administration gutting salmon recovery programs across the basin and ending the most viable path to an unobstructed Lower Snake River last month.

The Columbian: Columbia Basin’s salmon are in hot water, literally, says report from Save Our Wild Salmon

by K.C. Mehaffey
Mar 18, 2025

This month, salmon managers are releasing roughly 48,000 spring Chinook smolts from the Tucannon River—a tributary of the Snake River—in the far-flung Kalama River, more than 300 road-miles away.

The release marks the first year of a 14-year effort dubbed the Safety-Net Offsite Strategy to help preserve the genetic diversity of this dwindling population of Snake River salmon.

Despite their best efforts, salmon managers say they’re losing the battle to restore spring Chinook in the tributary, which flows into the Snake River between Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams.

And it’s not the only Snake River stock in trouble.

“I think that the Tucannon is the canary in the coal mine,” Dave Johnson, manager of the Nez Perce Tribe Department of Fisheries Resource Management, told a committee of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council March 10.

Johnson was joined by Chris Donley, Region 1 fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Jerimiah Bonifer, fisheries program manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The trio came to the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Committee seeking its support for the offsite program, which Donley described as “a fairly extreme action.”

The plan includes moving a portion of Tucannon River smolts from the Tucannon Fish Hatchery to the Kalama Falls Fish Hatchery each year for about six months before releasing them in the spring. Some of the smolts would also be moved to the nearby Lyons Ferry Fish Hatchery to be released in the Snake River.

Donley said the release of about 50,000 smolts into the Kalama River would result in roughly 250 adult fish coming back to the Kalama hatchery. Those fish would be trucked to the Lyons Ferry hatchery to be spawned. Chinook not needed for broodstock would be released into the Tucannon River to spawn.

Donley said efforts to restore the Tucannon River stock started with a supplemental hatchery program in 1985, using natural-origin fish from the basin. The stock did well until flood damage in 1996 and 1997 took out most of its spawning habitat, and production has been limited since.

Using scientific studies and adaptive management, fish managers have responded to every challenge, he said, adding, “We’re hanging onto these fish, but it’s not working.”

Donley noted, “One of the things that is puzzling to us as fish managers is there’s been a lot of work done here. Freshwater habitat looks pretty good in a lot of places.”

The Tucannon River flows out of the wilderness, and most of the spawning habitat is on public land. Habitat projects totaling between $25 million and $30 million have also been completed in the Tucannon River over the last 20 years.

Donley said it should be highly productive habitat, yet it’s not.

He said populations of spring Chinook upstream of Lower Granite Dam have survival rates that are double or triple the survival rate of Tucannon River spring Chinook, even though they are farther from the Pacific Ocean and have more dams to pass.

Scientists have identified some of the main problems.

One is that the Tucannon River is often warmer than the Snake River when adults are returning, causing a thermal barrier that prevents some Chinook from entering the Tucannon River. It also causes between 10 and 20 percent of the population to “overshoot,” or swim past the Tucannon River and continue upstream.

Predators pose another major problem for Tucannon spring Chinook.

Donley said birds and fish that eat salmon smolts have both increased in the Snake River basin. Last year, WDFW started analyzing the diet of walleye, a nonnative fish that is a popular sports fishing species.

The analysis found that walleye eat different things depending on the season. But at the peak of juvenile salmon migration, walleye bellies are filled with 100 percent salmonids, he said.

Tucannon spring Chinook are affected more because they are among the first species to begin the downstream migration to the ocean each spring. “They’re the only game in town for predators, and so they get picked off readily,” Donley said.

He said almost half of the smolts released from the Tucannon hatchery never make it to the Snake River. By the time the same batch of released smolts get to Lower Monumental Dam—the first dam they reach in their migration—more than 60 percent are gone. “That’s basically only 62 miles away from the release point,” he said.

Johnson said that Tucannon River spring Chinook have reached a quasi-extinction threshold, defined by 50 or fewer spawners on the spawning grounds for four consecutive years.

“We need to speed passage down to the ocean. We need to remove the injury and stress caused by physical structures—the dams themselves. We need to alleviate the artificial temperatures that are in the reservoirs, and we need to reduce the predation” that is unnaturally high because of the reservoirs, he told the Council.

Johnson urged the Council to consider funding safety-net programs in the Snake River as part of its Fish and Wildlife Program to help prevent the extinction of specific stocks, like the Tucannon River spring Chinook.

“The Tucannon [stock] is something that we all need to be concerned about. I hope that you as the power council take that as your real challenge going forth in the next 20 years,” he said.

News Data: Salmon Managers Begin Safety-Net Strategy for Tucannon Spring Chinook