WDFW, county pursue chum salmon project

Wahkiakum County commissioners and biologists from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are making progress in their plan to create a chum salmon spawning channel at the Elochoman Salmon Hatchery.

WDFW Biologist Bryce Glaser presented a conceptual plan Tuesday with three options to create for the channel, each larger than the previous.

"The key is money," said Regional Habitat Biologist Pat Frazier. The department would like to submit a proposed plan to Bonneville Power Administration for funding through one if the agency's salmon habitat restoration programs. The funding application process is competitive, he added, with projects that favor more than one salmon species scoring higher than those with fewer species.

The department also needs to determine how much, if at all, it will use the hatchery in the future. The department closed the hatchery last year as part of a program to eliminate hatchery salmon from the tributaries of the lower Columbia River and restore wild spawning stocks.

The proposed project would serve only chum salmon, Frazier said, but Bonneville and other agencies do favor chum projects. A chum enhancement project on the Elochoman seems like a logical effort to expand the range of the endangered species, he said.

Glaser said the project would start with creating a chum channel in a stream bed that starts at the upper end of the hatchery. The stream leads to a J-shaped rearing pond, and that could be a second section. A third section could be created in a small stream flowing into the Elochoman just downstream of the J-pond, he said.

A key component in the project is involvement of students in Wahkiakum High School's environmentally oriented biology and Vocational Agriculture classes. Instructor Kyle Hurley said it would be good subject matter for students to maintain the channel.

Frazier suggested that he and other WDFW staff could find short term projects to involve students with fish projects this fall.

If the project proposal is successful, it could take until 2012 to complete channel construction. The department will submit the grant application this summer, and Bonneville will award grants in September, Frazier said. Design and construction would follow.