First Nations share salmon eggs across Canada-US border to bypass dams

First Nations fish hatcheries on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are celebrating 10 years of a collaboration to help salmon blocked from migrating by dams and other threats.

Earlier this month, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington state transferred more than 6,200 chinook salmon eggs from their Chief Joseph Hatchery to the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s (ONA) kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery in Penticton (snpink’tn), nearly 200 kilometres north.

This year marks one decade since the two tribal hatcheries started working together to restore the fish’s population throughout the Columbia River Basin.

The partnership has seen Colville Tribes send more than 115,000 eyed chinook eggs to the ONA over the past 10 years. One year alone, 2019, saw 40 per cent of those eggs transferred north.

“They don’t have to do that; they don’t have to give us anything,” said Tyson Marsel, a biologist at kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ hatchery and member of Lower Similkameen Indian Band.

“But for them to recognize that this is for the betterment of the environment and conservation, it’s not only helping us, but it’s also helping them.”

As salmon grow in their eggs, the dark spots of their eyes become visible through its shell – a stage early in their development known as the “eyed eggs” period.

Salmon have been a vital source of sustenance for Pacific Northwest Indigenous nations for thousands of years. 

But several salmon species, particularly sockeye and chinook, have seen their runs and populations severely depleted across the Columbia River Basin in the last century. 

As settlers built numerous dams along the waterway, they effectively blocked the fish from migrating up-river and into its tributaries. 

Salmon populations have also been impacted by habitat loss, overfishing, and warming water temperatures linked to climate change.

Whether it’s sk’lwist (summer-run chinook) or ntitiyx (spring-run chinook), the fish have for decades become stuck at the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River in Washington, which lacks a fish passage route.

Opened downstream to the dam in 2013, the Chief Joseph Hatchery catches adult fish blocked by the dam to collect their eggs. It’s part of a broodstock, or fish-breeding, program that spawns nearly three million young chinook each year.

“They’ll be collecting millions of chinook eggs in a year,” Marsel said. “Versus us, our best year is 10,000 that we’ve collected from the Okanagan River here.”

The salmon eggs sent from the Colville Tribes’ hatchery roughly doubled the ONA hatchery’s chinook population compared to last year, when it had just 6,500.

kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery stores the transferred roe in an incubator, where water temperatures are gradually increased from 3 C to 10 C over the course of a few weeks, to help support their development. 

The fish are expected to hatch around the end of this month, and will remain housed at the hatchery until June. Once they weigh between three to five grams, the ONA plans to release them into Osoyoos Lake (suwiw̓s).

The adult fish are expected to return between 2029-31.

Although much of the Okanagan River has been channelized — engineered to straighten the waterway — there’s a more naturally flowing portion north of Osoyoos Lake, in the town of Oliver.

It’s there that Marsel said the fish like to spawn. 

Even if the fish can’t make it upriver past Osoyoos Lake, they’ll still reach the Chief Joseph Dam and Colville hatchery downriver.

“Some of our fish that we’ve released from our facility have gone into Chief Joseph Hatchery’s program,” Marsel said.

He added that “every fish counts,” especially when it comes to chinook. The species is a key cultural figure for the syilx Okanagan Nation, being ntytyix (Chief Salmon) of the Four Food Chiefs.

“People don’t realize how rare they are, and a lot of people don’t even know that there’s chinook in the system,” he explained.

While much attention has been paid to sockeye salmon restoration efforts, Marsel said chinook hold a particularly important place in the culture.

“For the syilx Nation and all the people here, it means so much more,” he explained. “Not that sockeye aren’t important, but ntytyix holds a lot more meaning.”

The partnership to help chinook recover by sharing eggs hasn’t just transcended the border, however. It might also be helping transcend some political divisions between First Nations.

In recent years, the Sinixt Confederacy of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation has at times been at odds with ONA, over legal and territorial claims related to the historically displaced Sinixt Nation, and which tribal council represents its descendants.

In recent years during the hatchery partnership’s decade, the tensions have resulted in chinook egg transfers being withheld, Marsel said — but he firmly believes the two tribal governments realize working together for salmon outweighs their inter-governmental disagreements. 

“We have this same common goal,” he said. “Working together is what’s going to make it better.

“To have the collaboration is extremely important, not only for the people but definitely the environment, the salmon [and] everything that thrives off the salmon.”

But long before the two modern-day tribal organizations were formed, Marsel said Indigenous communities in the region always supported and traded with one another.

“We have family down in Colville Confederated Tribes,” he said. “There was trading constantly across that imaginary line that’s now put up.

“It’s not like this is a new thing where we’re working with Colville Confederated Tribes — but it’s exciting that now we’re working together for a common goal, and that’s conservation.”

— This article was originally published by Indiginews