Oregon Conservationists Win Recovery Champion Award for Restoring Threatened Bull Trout to the Clackamas River After a Nearly 50-Year Absence

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced recipients of the 2011 Recovery Champion award, which honors Service employees and partners for outstanding efforts to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species of fish, wildlife, and plants. One of the awards was given to five Oregon public employees for taking bull trout restoration in the Clackamas River from concept to reality over a period of several years. Not only did the team lay the groundwork for the successful initial reintroduction of more than 100 bull trout last year, some of the fish are already spawning in their new home waters.
 
The bull trout reintroduction effort begun last summer put the coldwater, wide-ranging fish back into the Clackamas after a nearly 50-year absence. The Clackamas River Basin Bull Trout Team includes Chris Allen and Dan Shively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Jeff Boechler with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Jason Dunham with the U.S. Geological Survey, and Brad Goehring with Mt. Hood National Forest.
 
This team of biologists had the foresight to undertake a multi-year, scientifically rigorous, multi-agency funded and implemented study of the feasibility of reintroducing bull trout into the Clackamas. The biologists quietly demonstrated that reintroducing bull trout to this habitat was possible, and then worked with a long list of other partners, stakeholders, interested parties, private companies, tribes and others to bring about the reintroduction. While the ultimate transfer of the first bull trout was the work of many dedicated people too numerous to name, it would never have happened without the foresight, creativity, scientific rigor, and continued efforts through the implementation phase by this team of five.
 
Starting in June 2011, the Clackamas bull trout team and other partners began transferring bull trout from a healthy population in the Metolius River to the Clackamas River within Mt. Hood National Forest. The project is expected to include additional fish transfers annually for at least seven and possibly up to 15 years.  The goal is to reestablish a self-sustaining population of 300-500 spawning adult bull trout within 20 years.
 
Bull trout have been extirpated from four sub-basins in the Willamette River Basin, including the Clackamas River since 1963. If the reintroduction effort continues successfully, it could be a model for other bull trout reintroductions to reestablish and reconnect now-isolated populations. A draft multi-state recovery plan for bull trout, now under development, will identify other potential reintroduction sites throughout the bull trout’s range.
 
Bull trout need extremely cold, clean water and specific habitat features, as well as connectivity from river, lake, and ocean habitats to headwater streams for annual spawning and feeding migrations. They were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 1999.  Bull trout are primarily threatened by habitat degradation and fragmentation, blockage of migratory corridors from hydroelectric and diversion dams, poor water quality, the effects of climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change , and past fisheries management practices, including targeted eradication through bounty fishing and the introduction of non-native species such as brown, lake, and brook trout.
 
Once plentiful throughout the coldwater rivers and lakes of the Northwest, bull trout populations in the U.S. are now scattered and patchy in portions of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada. They occur in the Columbia and Snake River Basins, extending east to headwater streams in Montana and Idaho and north into Canada, and south into the Klamath River Basin in south-central Oregon. Though still wide-ranging, many of the remaining populations are small and isolated from each other.
 
To view NewsChannel 8 (KGW)’s coverage of the initial bull trout reintroduction into the Clackamas, visit http://www.kgw.com/video?id=124829994&sec=547977.
 
Nationwide, the Service honored a total of 56 teams and nine individuals as Recovery Champions for work to conserve species ranging from the polar bear in Alaska to the Appalachian elktoe mussel and spotfin chub in North Carolina. “Recovery Champions are helping listed species get to the point at which they are secure in the wild and no longer need Endangered Species Act protection,” said Service Director Dan Ashe. “These groups and individuals have done amazing work in helping to bring dozens of species back from the brink of extinction, while improving habitat that benefits many other species and local communities.”
 
For more information about the 2011 Recovery Champions, please visit: http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/recovery-champions/index.html.
 
America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources belong to all of us, and ensuring the health of imperiled species is a shared responsibility. To learn more about the Service’s Endangered Species program, go to http://www.fws.gov/endangered/.