Willard,Washington-On Thursday, September 15, at 1:30 p.m., the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will dedicate its new Lower Columbia Fish Health Center at 201 Oklahoma Road in Willard, Washington. Dr. Mamie Parker, the Services Assistant Director of Fisheries and Habitat Conservation, will be the keynote speaker.
The new state-of-the-art facility features the latest technology and a staff of scientists with expertise in bacteriology, virology, parasitology and "DNA-ology." It is a reflection of how much fish health science and technology has changed over the past 50 years.
In 1953, Harland Johnson, the first hatchery biologist in the Services Pacific Region, staffed the Little White Salmon Lab, the predecessor to todays Lower Columbia River Fish Health Center. He was armed with little more than a microscope as his weapon to prevent disease outbreaks in the fish of the Columbia River hatcheries.
The Lower Columbia River Fish Health Center is one of nine fish health centers operated nationwide by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Together, these centers have revamped the Services Fish Health Policy, written a handbook that standardizes national fish health methodologies and created a public-access national database ( http://www.fws.gov/pacific/wildfishsurvey/ ) that catalogs the first concentrated efforts to discover the unknowns of wild fish and disease.
For more information about the new Fish Health Center and the dedication please contact Cheri Anderson at 509-493-2934 or by e-mail at cheri_anderson@fws.gov. Dr. Parker will be available for media interviews directly following the dedication.
