Unprecedented recovery of threatened spring run chinook
Years of efforts initiated by Fish and Game are reaping huge rewards on Butte Creek in the form of Spring Run Chinook Salmon. Since 1995 the runs have been consistenly successful at spawning and juveniles have been very successful passing the maze of diversions to return to the ocean. Most of the upper diversions have been recently screened to prevent the take of juveniles and the populations have jumped dramatically in response. 1995 was an unprecedented return with over 8000 fish. The successful spawning and outmigration lead to the record busting 20,000+ fish recorded by snorkel survey in 1998. Following the three year cycle, 2001 was also a huge return. Snorkel surveys in August counted around 10,000 fish but a followup carcass count yielded nearly that many carcasses with only a fifty per cent return on tagged and recovered carcasses. This result indicates that the snorkel count was greatly undercounting salmon, partriularly in pools holding hundreds and in some cases thousands of fish. An interesting note from the Fish and Game survey is that there appears to be a significant number of fish returning on a four year cycle as instead of the typical three year cycle for spring run. Tagged fish from 1997 were recovered in 2001 and although there were only 2 recovered, there were very few tagged at all in 1997 due to the flood. This means there could be a large return of four year olds from the 1998 run. In addition there will be a good return of three year fish from the 4000 fish 1999 run. All in all it looks like a another banner year.
Agencies working to recover spring run salmon, in particular the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have suggested that doubling of the historic average would constitute full recovery. Their average from 1954-1998 was estimated at 1,557. Since 1995, the numbers slipped below this average only once, in 1997. In five of the last seven years there have been from 2X -14X this average. Indications are the 2002 run will also more than double the average.