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41 °F 5 Day Forecast Thursday, December 4, 2003 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | eSouthernOregon | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend November 23, 2003 regon Department of Fish and Wildlife technician Jim Brown places a threatened wild coho salmon into a holding pen before transporting the fish above Elk Creek Dam. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Trapping and hauling wild fish past Elk Creek Dam will change under the system the Corps plans By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune TRAIL — Jim Brown gets about as low-tech as he can get while sorting salmon in the Elk Creek Dam fish trap that was never meant for 21st-century work. Standing inside the concrete trap, Brown fastens a metal gate called a "crowder" across the concrete walls, using wooden wedges to hold it snug. He then holds a similar gate across his legs and walks forward in the thigh-high water, herding a small school of fish into what becomes a five-foot-square pen. "Now we’ll see what we got," he says. Brown then nets a salmon from among the swirling school. It’s a wild coho, a threatened species, with blazing red sides showing it’s ready to spawn. He slips this federally protected fish into a pen for eventual loading into a tank and trucking upstream past the half-built dam. This hand-sorting of salmon dates as far back as the 1800s in the Pacific Northwest. Advertisement "Back then, they had dirt ponds instead of square concrete," biologist Mike Evenson says while watching the action. "But it’s pretty close." Trapping and hauling salmon around the half-built dam is about to get high-tech. The manual crowding and hand-sorting will give way to an automated system as early as 2007 as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepares for something it never intended to do — haul fish past the mothballed dam forever. The Corps wants to notch the dam so salmon and steelhead can swim unimpeded through the area where court challenges halted construction 15 years ago. But Congress has ordered the Corps to eschew the notch, leaving the current structure in place so it may one day be finished. Congress instead ordered the Corps to trap and truck fish to upstream spawning grounds permanently, so engineers are in the midst of designing a multi-million-dollar facility to do just that. The new-look trap will feature electronic capturing and corralling of salmon, sorting by eye and not by hand, and transferring to a tank-truck without the fish ever leaving water. "This will be totally automated, water-to-water transfer with no handling of fish," says Bernard Klatte, a Corps lead fish biologist on a multi-agency team working on the project. "This facility is going to be as high-tech as possible." Klatte says doing so will greatly reduce the stress these salmon suffer, thereby ensuring more survive and spawn in the upper Elk Creek watershed, a key upper-Rogue spawning territory for threatened coho. The antiquated trap there now was meant only to catch returning fish for five years, providing brood fish for spawning at nearby Cole Rivers Hatchery along the Rogue River at the base of Lost Creek dam. But the trap has limped through 12 years of fish-catching, requiring manual corralling and handling of salmon. "I don’t like this, as far as all the fish stress and handling," Klatte says of the current set-up. "It’s very labor-intensive. But it’s the best way, with that facility." While standing inside the trap, Brown nets the fish one at a time. Chinook, wild coho and wild steelhead are sorted for hauling. A NOAA-Fisheries permit that directs how wild coho are handled at Elk Creek requires that no hatchery coho be trucked upstream, says Evenson, who oversees the program for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The few hatchery coho that stray into the trap are killed and sent to Cole Rivers Hatchery for eventual placement in streams as part of a stream-enrichment program, Evenson says. Those set for hauling are herded into a watery tower. Water is pumped into the tower, raising the water level and the fish to the top. The fish are nudged down a tube into a tank in a pickup, which hauls the fish about two miles upstream. Once there, the truck is backed up to a deep spot in Elk Creek. Brown tugs on a handle, opening the gates so fish and water flop through a tube and into the creek. "That’s how it works," Evenson says. Not for long. The new trap will be affixed to the base of the half-built dam, about 200 yards upstream from the current trap. That will eliminate the need for a metal weir, which spans the creek and forces salmon into the current trap. Eliminating the weir will mean those fish that get past it in high water, or drop down through the dam, will no longer get stranded in an area where they cannot spawn effectively. "I see removing of the weir as one of the biggest improvements of the new design," Evenson says. The trap itself will use gravity to feed it water, and not pumps like the current structure. That means power outages and pump failures will not dry up the trap and kill any fish stuck in it, Evenson says. Klatte says the new design likely will use a series of gates to corral the fish and force them into Plexiglas tunnels where they can be identified without any handling and herded into separate water tanks before they are loaded into the tanker-truck for hauling. "What we’re looking for is zero handling of fish," Klatte says. Cost of the trap-and-haul make-over has not been determined, but the Corps in 2001 estimated it at $8 million, with an initial annual budget of about $150,000. Under federal guidelines, the traps are checked daily Oct. 1 through May, and fish are hauled when necessary. The new trap’s design is about 30 percent done, but stalled this year because Congress gave no money for it in the current 2004 federal budget, Elk Creek project manager George Miller says. The Corps is working on a proposed 2005 budget, but it was unknown if the trap-and-haul facility will be included, Miller says. Until then, men like Brown will continue to herd wild coho with metal gates and sort them by hand. "This facility is old and it’s definitely not made for (long-term work)," Klatte says. "But we’re going to do the best we can." Corps takes over moving wild fish from ODFW, then contracts it out By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Elk Creek Dam’s trap-and-haul program soon will get a change in operation, but some of the faces will remain the same. After 11 years of operation by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the trap-and-haul program at the dam was privatized this fall after the ODFW informed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers it wanted out of long-term trapping and hauling there. The Corps went out for bids, and beginning Dec. 1, a private company will take over the trap-and-haul program. It’s primarily a change of hats but not of people. Mike Evenson, a former ODFW biologist who oversaw the program’s operation the past three years, was awarded the contract to finish this year’s trapping and hauling. Evenson, who retired in June after almost 33 years with the agency, formed Rogue Fish Bio Services and on Nov. 14 received the $118,664 contract to run the operation. Evenson was one of two bidders for the contract, but he was the only one to meet the Corps’ qualifying criteria, says George Miller, the Corps’ Elk Creek project manager. "We’re happy we were able to get this operational (after) the ODFW pullout," Miller says. "That’s the piece of good news — we’re up and running seamlessly." The cost is almost identical to what it was when ODFW ran the program, Miller says. Evenson’s contract can be renewed annually if he meets performance guidelines. Evenson has hired Sean Wilson, one of the ODFW’s current trap-and-haul seasonal workers, to continue on. Rene Pellesier, the ODFW’s part-time fish-counter for Gold Ray Dam, will join the pair. The third and final employee is Eric Negus, a former fish-transportation manager for Desert Springs, a private hatchery near Summer Lake. Evenson, 55, retired in June because of changes to his PERS pension. He was re-hired by the ODFW as a temporary employee while the ODFW finds someone to fill Evenson’s old job as Rogue District fish biologist. He’s been overseeing the Elk Creek program during his temporary status, which ends Nov. 30. "I knew this operation intimately and I live only 5 minutes away, so I decided to go for the opportunity," Evenson says. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! ADVERTISERS SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Real Estate Showcase Food for Thought Hike of the Week Wellness Connection Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Openings Prime Times