To rebuild the Coquille River’s struggling run, the tribe and state are removing invasive predators and raising young salmon.
Starting around 2018, salmon returns in many of Oregon’s coastal rivers crashed.
“There was a sharp drop-off, kind of coast wide, and over the next couple of years, other coastal basins recovered,” said Ed Hughes, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s acting fish district biologist in Charleston. “But in the Coquille here, they didn’t bounce back.”
Hughes said the Coquille’s failure to rebound helped biologists connect the decline to invasive smallmouth bass, which prey on young salmon. Warmer river temperatures, low flows and changing ocean conditions have also hurt salmon survival.
The state wildlife agency brought its concerns to the tribal council, said Brenda Meade, chair of the Coquille Indian Tribe.
“We talked a lot about what the issues were and how we were going to fix it,” Meade said.
In 2022, the tribe and the state formalized a co-management agreement covering fish and wildlife across five southwest Oregon counties.
Their work has included removing invasive bass, improving the collection of adult salmon for breeding and expanding hatchery efforts. In 2022, they also developed a conservation hatchery program to rebuild the Coquille’s wild fall Chinook population.
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