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Tribes Optimistic About Returning Salmon To Upper Columbia Basin

Rick Bowmer
/
AP Photo
A tribal fisherman hauls in a salmon with a gill-net Wednesday,, Sept. 7, 2011, along the Columbia River, near Hood River, Ore.

Hydropower dams built without fish ladders have blocked migratory fish from the upper reaches of the Columbia and Snake Rivers for decades. Tribal leaders from across the region gathered this week in Portland to strategize how to return salmon to their full historic range.

Northwest American tribes and Canadian First Nations presented a united front to restore salmon above Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia and to southern Idaho via the Snake River. Shoshone-Bannock tribal chairman Nathan Small says on this he’s long felt like he was beating his head on a wall.

“Now I feel maybe my head is going to raise a little bit because there is that possibility to be talked about,” Small said.

Tribes and other fish advocates see opportunity to gain traction in two forums. One is the federal relicensing of Idaho Power’s Hells Canyon dams.

The other is the pending renegotiation of the 50-year-old Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada. But stumbling blocks remain. Those include ratepayer objections to the cost of getting salmon around very tall dams and degraded spawning habitat upstream.

Correspondent Tom Banse is an Olympia-based reporter with more than three decades of experience covering Washington and Oregon state government, public policy, business and breaking news stories. Most of his career was spent with public radio's Northwest News Network, but now in semi-retirement his work is appearing on other outlets.