How First Nations are bringing Chinook salmon back to the Arrow Lakes - Grand Forks Gazette

How First Nations are bringing Chinook salmon back to the Arrow Lakes

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Chinook salmon, long disappeared from the waters near Revelstoke due to the damming of the Columbia River, may be returning to the Arrow Lakes thanks to Indigenous-led reintroduction efforts.

Since 2019, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (CTCR) and the Sinixt Confederacy, one of its member Nations based in Nelson, have been helping adult Chinook bypass Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams in Washington. Since the 1940s and ’50s, these hydroelectric dams have prevented the free flow of salmon between B.C. and the Pacific Ocean.

But for the past eight years, CTCR has manually released hundreds of adult Chinook farther upstream from locations such as Northport, Wash., about 16 kilometres along the Columbia downstream of the Canadian border.

With aerial drone monitoring, acoustic fish tagging and reports from anglers, it’s confirmed that these salmon are making it into B.C. without further help or direction from humans. From Northport, they swim unimpeded for more than 70 km, before hitting their next obstacles, Hugh Keenleyside Dam near Castlegar and Brilliant Dam on the adjoining Kootenay River.

Some of these salmon have managed to spawn between the border and these two dams.

“They’re going to places where they’ve historically been — that is great news,” Cindy Marchand, CTCR chairwoman and former fisheries chair, told Black Press Media. “We need to focus on building the numbers up.”

The number of Chinook that CTCR has brought into the Columbia upstream of Grand Coulee Dam each year is based on salmon run size and other logistics. In 2025, for example, 4,361 salmon were released upstream of Grand Coulee Dam, including 879 let out near the border.

READ: First Nations bring 3K more sockeye fry to Revelstoke waters

It’s unknown how many of those salmon reached Canada last year, and what number survived until spawning.

“We did count 60 salmon redds (the gravel egg nests made by female salmon) and 85 salmon during aerial census from (Hugh Keenleyside) Dam to the border,” Marchand noted. “Our salmon reintroduction efforts are always determined by how many salmon are making it upstream for us to work with (and learn).”

From the ocean, CTCR estimates that 2,000 adult Chinook so far this year have made it to Chief Joseph Dam — downstream of Grand Coulee Dam — unassisted. But considering the Sinixt use salmon to supply a range of needs, including subsistence and cultural practices, “really when we look at it, that’s not a lot,” Marchand reasoned.

Since it started its reintroduction efforts in 2019, CTCR has relied on trapping and trucking. That involves capturing adult Chinook from the hatcheries at Chief Joseph Dam and nearby Wells Dam, using methods such as fish ladder traps, and driving them in water tanks upstream of Grand Coulee Dam — a road trip upward of 65 km.

Using this resource-heavy but minimally invasive method to establish a consistent flow of Chinook above these dams dams, “our ultimate goal is volitional upstream passage at these facilities to get salmon back to their historical range,” Marchand explained.

It’s not just a one-way solution, either. Important for CTCR is maintaining a fine balance of salmon on both sides of these dams. If too many Chinook are placed upstream of obstacles, under current circumstances most of their offspring still won’t make it back downstream to the mouth of the Columbia and Pacific Ocean.

“We’ve just got to watch the (salmon) run sizes,” Marchand emphasized.

In the last couple years, thanks to releases upstream of Grand Coulee Dam and a boat lock system in place at Hugh Keenleyside Dam, CTCR has confirmed that a number of juvenile Chinook have snuck their way through intermittent opening of the locks to reach farther up the Columbia — into the Arrow Lakes.

READ: Adult salmon makes historic swim into upper Columbia River system

Marchand said they haven’t so far confirmed adult Chinook to have also made it this far north, because no adults tagged with transmitters for acoustic monitoring have reached the Arrow Lakes via the Hugh Keenleyside Dam locks. That said, “not all adult salmon are tagged with an acoustic transmitter,” and the boat lock “allows the potential for adults to move upstream,” she noted.

Upstream of Hugh Keenleyside Dam, any Chinook that have made it through the locks will have free range in the Arrow Lakes for about 260 km until hitting their next obstacle, the Revelstoke Dam.

This has prompted some anecdotal reports from local anglers in the last year to the Revelstoke Rod & Gun Club about encountering possible stray Chinook in the Columbia near town. This includes a reported catch and a fish carcass that could have been a Chinook. Due to lack of verifiable photo evidence from these reports, it’s been difficult for CTCR to confirm Chinook are making it this far north.

But the more evidence it can gather on the whereabouts of Chinook in the Columbia, especially upstream of Hugh Keenleyside Dam, the more CTCR can focus on monitoring specific tributaries the salmon are using to spawn.

Anyone around Revelstoke or the Arrow Lakes who believes they’ve caught a Chinook or observed one spawning is asked to report it to james.baxter.fnw@colvilletribes.com. Location, approximate fish length and pictures are especially appreciated by CTCR. Photos are most helpful when a measure of scale, such as a net, is pictured with the salmon.

“We assume they’re in (the Arrow Lakes)… but the more pictures we have, we know they’re in there,” Marchand said.

For identification, pre-spawning Chinook have a blue-green back and head, silvery sides and white bellies. Their upper body and tail fin feature irregular black spots, and they have a distinct black gum line. During spawning, their colouration changes to olive brown, red or purplish, especially in males, who also develop a hooked nose. Spawning Chinook weigh between 10 and 20 pounds.

“Please note it is not legal to target salmon in the Columbia River or its tributaries in Canada,” Marchand advised, though acknowledging some are inevitably caught unintentionally.

READ: 2nd straight year of low salmon returns expected: Okanagan Nation Alliance

Over the years to come, CTCR hopes to see Chinook navigating all the way back upstream to Columbia Lake and Canal Flats at the river’s headwaters. After the challenge of consistently getting these salmon past Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams, it will have to consider viable solutions for navigating the final two barriers: Revelstoke and Mica dams.

“It will be a long process, but we are seeing progress already,” Marchand reflected.

Prior to the damming of the Columbia in the mid- to late 20th century, the Sinixt had accessed and fished the waters north of the border to Revelstoke (Skxikn̓) since time immemorial.

“Salmon has always been a part of the Sinixt people,” Marchand said.

She said this includes their creation story, where pitiful two-legged humans unable to fend for themselves are gifted salmon from the Food Chiefs.

Once unobstructed from headwaters to river mouth, Chinook (n̓ty̓tyix) provided a primary food source and trade item to all First Nations that accessed the Columbia (Sn̓x̌ʷn̓tkʷitkʷ). Marchand said that major inland fisheries once operated at Kettle Falls, Wash., and the Slocan Pools off the Kootenay River, while a major fishery was likely also run at the Columbia headwaters (k̓m̓qin̓).

“Salmon were a key component of the ecosystem,” she said, whether as eggs, fry or returning adults. “Salmon fed all levels of the food web, and the returning adults provided marine nutrients that increased the productivity of the water and the forests.”

Today, salmon thrive in cool, clean waters and act as bioindicators for healthy river ecosystems. If Chinook can survive in the Columbia under current conditions, “we know we’re doing our job as stewards of the land,” Marchand said. Their carcasses furth