Ep. 829: Who Will Save the Columbia River's Salmon?

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast

Ep. 829: Who Will Save the Columbia River's Salmon?

Host: Steven Rinella
Guests: Doug Hatch (Deputy Manager, Fishery Science, CRITFC), Donella Miller (Fishery Science Manager, CRITFC)
Release Date: February 2, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores the crisis facing the Columbia River’s once-legendary salmon runs, tracing their near-collapse and examining who—if anyone—can save them. Host Steven Rinella welcomes Doug Hatch and Donella Miller of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC). They discuss the historic abundance of salmon, the impact of dams, tribal treaty rights, modern restoration efforts, predator problems (especially sea lions), the politics of dam removal, hatchery vs. wild fish management, cultural connections, and signs of hope.

With a focus on science, history, and indigenous perspectives, the conversation also candidly addresses misconceptions, shifting environmental baselines, regulatory complexities, and the daunting path forward.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Historic Context & Collapse of the Salmon Runs

• Historic Abundance and Cultural Significance
  • Columbia once saw up to 10–16 million salmon return annually (03:00–06:00).
  • Salmon were “inconceivable” in their numbers; Celilo Falls was a major trade hub for millennia.
• Collapse Causes
  • Overfishing (canneries, fish wheels), hydroelectric dams, habitat loss, and development led to a decline—now just a fraction of historic runs (12:30–18:00).
  • “There was a never ending series of mistakes, intentional actions, accidental actions…” —Steven Rinella (03:20)
• Treaty Rights and Broken Promises
  • Four treaty tribes (Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, Nez Perce) have rights to fish, yet the resource was devastated after treaties were signed (06:00–08:00).
  • "Those rights mean nothing if there’s no fish to catch. The right isn’t just to dip our nets in empty waters.” —Doug Hatch (07:38)

2. Dams: The Central Problem

• Scale and Lethality
  • There are 8 major mainstem dams before reaching headwaters, with some tributary runs passing over 8–9 dams (13:00–14:00).
  • At every dam, 7–15% of juvenile salmon die, not including extra loss from reservoirs, predation, disorientation (12:31–14:18).
  • Mortality “should mean there shouldn’t be any more fish left. And it’s just amazing that we still have fish coming back.” —Doug Hatch (18:46)
• Historical Knowledge vs. Modern Reality
  • Dams were built knowing their destruction; memos described anticipated fish losses and described salmon as an "Indian problem" (115:38–116:20).
  • Modern upgrades for fish passage are slow, costly, and often insufficient.

3. Tribal Leadership in Restoration

• CRITFC’s Formation & Purpose
  • Tribes frustrated by the states’ and federal government’s “minimal approach” (mostly just to avoid extinction, not true recovery) formed their own organization to pursue active, holistic management and recovery (29:04–33:00).
  • “We don’t want museum relics... we want healthy and sustainable [populations] and we would love more than to work ourselves out of a job.” —Donella Miller (31:20)
• Innovative Methods
  • State-of-the-art genetic labs, “gravel to gravel” management (ocean to headwater to home again), diverse staff with a cultural stake (33:00–37:20).
  • Reject “ten-year studies before action”—applied science is key.

4. Social Dynamics & Misconceptions

• Blame Placed on Tribes
  • Widespread (and erroneous) idea among non-Native anglers: tribal fisheries or commercial gillnetting are to blame for the salmon’s decline (44:00–47:58).
  • “People look past the dam and see you... and that’s the problem. They can’t picture what happened.” —Steven Rinella (46:44)
• Disproportionate Burden
  • Tribal fishers face harassment, even violence (“We’ve been shot at... The cops didn’t even show up.” —Doug Hatch, 45:43).
  • The majority of harvestable fish are caught by non-tribal fisheries in the ocean or lower river.

5. Complexity of Predators: Sea Lions, Birds, and Non-Native Fish

• Sea Lion Explosion & Federal Laws
  • Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972) worked “too well”—now 300,000+ California sea lions, many feasting at Bonneville Dam instead of their depleted coastal range (61:38–71:44).
  • Annual predation can remove 5–50% (!) of some salmon runs before fish even pass the dam (81:03–83:09).
  • Removal efforts require identifying—and then trapping and euthanizing—specific individuals under strict protocols (branding, observation, trap-and-euthanasia, cumbersome red tape).
  • “It's really inefficient, the laws that are put upon us to be able to do this work... we could be doing a lot more.” —Doug Hatch (92:11)
• Other Predators
  • Cormorants, gulls, pelicans, and non-native fish (walleye, smallmouth) are also major issues, but nearly all are protected by other federal acts (94:41–98:45).
  • Bounties on native pike minnow are mostly ineffective; walleye and smallmouth cause far more juvenile salmon losses but are now valued 'gamefish,' leading to further conflict within the fishing public.

6. Dam Removal: Dream or Reality?

• Political and Economic Barriers
  • Though models show fish rebound dramatically after dam removal (White Salmon, Klamath), such removals are rare (130:05–131:37).
  • The major Columbia dams are unlikely to fall within the century, but severe environmental impacts (toxic algae, water shortages) may finally push action (136:06–136:52).
  • Even with dams, running the river more like a river (better flow scheduling, spill, habitat restoration) could help.
• Tribal & Legislative Battles
  • Funding is perennially lacking; the “billion-dollar backlog” is never closed, and the cost of electricity never includes ecological losses (115:13–120:10).
  • Tribes often must sue, lobby, and then "hold the agencies' hands" to get even basic restoration or compensation.

7. Success Stories and Hope

• Innovations
  • Steelhead “spa” reconditioning: capturing post-spawn wild steelhead, reconditioning them in tanks, and releasing them for additional spawning runs (161:08–164:53).
• Salmon Population Rebounds
  • Snake River fall Chinook rebounded from under 100 to up to 90,000 thanks to innovative integrated hatchery programs.
  • Coho and sockeye reintroductions, despite initial state opposition, have succeeded in bringing these fish back to former habitats.
• Lamprey Restoration
  • Native lamprey, a critical “First Food,” are being restored with new passage and translocation techniques, benefiting river health and tribal culture (149:16–156:45).
• Collaboration
  • The Six Sovereigns model (four tribes + Oregon and Washington) shows that Native/State partnerships can lead to joint progress.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dam Impact:
  “You add it up, there shouldn’t be any more fish left. And it’s just amazing that we still have fish coming back.”
  —Doug Hatch ([18:46])

• On Treaty Rights:
  “Those rights mean nothing if there’s no fish to catch. The right isn’t just to dip our nets in empty waters.”
  —Doug Hatch ([07:38])

• On Blame and Misconception:
  “They look through the dam or past the dam and they see you. And that’s the problem, you know? They can’t picture what happened.”
  —Steven Rinella ([46:44])

• On Sea Lion Predation:
  “The highest observed consumption [of salmon] was 10,000 fish... That represented almost 5% of the spring Chinook run.”
  —Donella Miller ([81:03])

• On Regulatory Gridlock:
  “There’s no act amongst the acts. There’s no hierarchy... we have these fish on the brink of extinction and these sea lions exceeding carrying capacity.”
  —Doug Hatch ([96:55])

• On Cultural Loss:
  “We refer to ourselves as salmon people...we were displaced by the construction of the dams. They painted the homes that would be underwater, took an inventory, and that was it. We've never received our Columbia river housing for the villages that were flooded. It’s just like—your house is gone.”
  —Doug Hatch ([53:48])

• On Hope:
  “If you open the door, [salmon] are going to find the resources and return to those areas.”
  —Doug Hatch ([131:54])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Historic Salmon Abundance & First Impacts: [02:56–15:19]
• Dam Impact and Fish Mortality: [12:11–14:18]
• Tribal Treaty Rights & Management: [06:26–08:24], [29:04–33:00]
• Formation and Role of CRITFC: [29:04–37:20]
• Dam Removal & Political Challenges: [115:13–131:37]
• Sea Lion Predation Problems & Management: [61:38–83:09]
• Non-Native Fish, Birds, and Other Predators: [94:41–98:45]
• Cultural and Social Dynamics: [44:00–50:46], [53:48–56:04]
• Lamprey & Other “First Foods”: [149:16–156:45]
• Success Stories & Signs of Hope: [161:08–173:15]

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Takeaways

• The Columbia’s salmon crisis is vast and multi-layered: historical exploitation, habitat loss, dam impacts, and shifting public/cultural attitudes have all played a role.
• Tribes lead much of the most innovative, science-driven, and culturally rooted restoration in the basin—often against political, financial, and social headwinds.
• All recovery efforts face a web of federal regulations originally designed to protect one species but now impeding management of ecological balance.
• Restoring salmon isn’t just about the fish—it’s about cultural survival, food sovereignty, and ecological health for an entire region.
• There are real successes—population rebounds, lamprey restoration, cross-jurisdictional cooperation—and reasons for measured hope if adequate funding and willpower can be found.

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For Listeners & Further Support

• Get Involved / Donate: www.critfc.org
  “The only time we make actionable change is when we set aside our differences... and also connecting as people. If you want to donate, you can—just go to our website.”

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This podcast offers a thorough, moving, and technically rich look at a legendary river’s past, its struggles, and the ways—practical and philosophical—that the salmon might still be saved.

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Note: Segments, quotes, and topics have been attributed by timestamp where possible. Some time references are approximated due to organic conversation flow.

Transcript

[Doug Hatch]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Donella Miller]

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[Doug Hatch]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Donella Miller]

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[Steven Rinella]

All right, welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast. Today we're going to dig into something of great importance that we touched on a bunch of times in the past is what in the world happened to and what is going on with the Columbia river and the salmon runs. I mean this is a story that's played out over centuries historically the Columbia. I pulled this from your guys website. The guests I'm going to introduce in a minute. I had always read that historically the Columbia had runs annual runs of 10 to 12 million salmon. I was reading today it could have been some years as high as 16 million salmon ran the Columbia. Our good old boys Lewis and Clark who come up every time you're trying to describe something from the old timey days describe salmon in the Columbia as being inconceivable. The numbers that fish salmon species running from March to October, steelhead in there all winter. And then as we'll get into just a never ending series of mistakes, intentional actions, accidental actions have led it to be where it is. Just small fractions of that, small fractions of those numbers running up and down the river. And we're going to talk with a couple guests today who have been involved in salmon recovery on the Columbia river from a inter tribal perspective. So the Columbia river flowed through. How can you guys. I'm leading up to my intro here of you guys but can you remind me how many miles of river are in the Columbia Basin? I think I was reading about it today but I can't remember the number.

[Donella Miller]

Well, the Columbia river itself, like where it's coming from Canada is about 750 miles from the ocean but half of the Columbia is north of Canada. And then you've got all of the major tribs, you know, from the Yakima, the Wenatchee, the Snake, the Willamette, you know, just all up and down the river. So you're looking at even now in the high water years a half a million CFs flowed down by Bonneville Dam. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So half a million cubic feet per second of water flowing through there. And the folks we're going to talk to today about tribal efforts to recover fish, the tribes acknowledging that the states just aren't doing it at the speed they would like and with the, the vision that they would like them to have, the feds aren't doing it at the speed they would like and they're not pursuing the vision they would like them to pursue. So increasingly the tribes, Native American tribes have been getting involved in this. And we're going to speak today with Doug Hatch who's the deputy manager of the fishery science Department. Of the Columbia River Inter Tribal Fish Commission. And also Donella Miller is the fishery science manager. And real quick, before we dig in too much, can you tell people what tribes are in the intertribal organization?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, we're a consortia. We represent. We're a technical arm of, of course, the Yakima Nation, which I'm a TR Member of, and also the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, which my grandmother was from. So I'm also part Umatilla as well, but also the Warm Springs tribe in Oregon and the Nez Perce in Idaho.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Doug Hatch]

So we work with those four tribes on Columbia Basin issues. And all four, you know, treaty tribes. We signed treaties with the government in 1855 to retain our hunting, fishing, and gathering rights throughout our usual and accustomed areas. And that's really key because we ceded land to the government in exchange for the set boundaries of the reservation and also to hunt, fish, and gather in perpetuity throughout our natural areas.

[Steven Rinella]

And then that right is infringed on by the fact that then the people you signed the treaty with went ahead and destroyed the fishery.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, and that's really key. The work that we do is, you know, those rights mean nothing if there's no fish to catch. The right isn't just to dip our nets in empty waters. It's actual catch fish. And there's language in the treaty that talks about our ability to maintain a modest living, and people can't support themselves on it anymore. Our people, unfortunately, live in poverty up and down the Columbia river at treaty access sites that aren't meant to be lived in. It's more or less boat ramps. And, you know, they don't have water power or just a bathroom. But it's not what. Not definitely not what we signed up for.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna tell that story first. I gotta. I want to do. What did. When did the thing drop that we made in Texas? When did I. Because I explained this all big time in Texas.

[Doug Hatch]

It already dropped, but we're trying to hit it multiple times, just being cognizant.

[Steven Rinella]

Of the fact that. So we record a showdown in Texas. Talk about taint and meat skunks nuts on a cat in that. We explained that there's. If you subscribe to the show, you're going to see. If you subscribe to the podcast, you're going to see some changes coming up in March 9th. So starting. Is it March 9th, that's what this is gonna happen?

[Doug Hatch]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Starting in March 9th, you're gonna start seeing every week. You're gonna see two meat eater podcast drops. The, the regular Monday thing you subscribe to now stays the same. And that's like the interview show. So that would be like what we're doing right here, right now. We're sitting around with fish tribal fisheries managers having an interview with them about their area of expertise. That's like the interview portion of the show. And that will always drop at the same time. In addition to that, there's going to be a weekly news show, news and commentary drop. As I explained, it's like Spencer's concept. We cover our news, your news, and the news on the news show. Okay, Three kinds of news that will drop sometime during the week. It'll vary to when it comes out. The. The, the. The. The folks you know and love and the kind of material you know and love from Radio Live, that stuff will move on to this new show. Radio Live won't be like a set. It won't be a live thing anymore. And it won't occur at a set time anymore. It'll just. It'll be the news and commentary show, which comes out. When it comes out, stay tuned for all that. There'll be some new artwork. You'll know what happened because there'll be new artwork. That'll be the best way you'll know that it happened. You'd be like, oh, new artwork must mean this thing happened.

[Doug Hatch]

And Please subscribe on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps a lot.

[Steven Rinella]

You know what word I learned today from you guys? Website? I'm gonna do a trivia test. Don't, don't, don't, you know, you guys notice. But don't tell anybody. I'm gonna trivia test these guys. So I was on the Columbia River Inter Tribal Fish Commission site today. What is the word? I'm like Spencer here. What is the word for a fish that spawns once and dies? It's in the same vein of like anadromous. Catadromous. It's like that flavor of a word, but you spawn once and die.

[CJ Toledano]

I've heard.

[Doug Hatch]

Is it diadromous, like a scientific name? Fun name? No, like die?

[Steven Rinella]

No, no, not a joke.

[Doug Hatch]

No, sorry.

[Steven Rinella]

Are you being clever? Die?

[Donella Miller]

No.

[Doug Hatch]

Oh, I thought he was.

[Steven Rinella]

I thought he's being clever too. I didn't think at first I didn't think he's being clever. Then I thought, he's being clever. No, it's like, it's that flavor. What is that, Latin? I don't know. Is it Latin? Diadronous? Catagenous.

[Doug Hatch]

I don't know. I should look that up.

[CJ Toledano]

Monogurous.

[Steven Rinella]

No, no.

[CJ Toledano]

I know I've heard it before, but I don't remember.

[Steven Rinella]

Dude. I have never encountered the words. I didn't know there was a word. You ready? None of you guys got it? I never even heard the damn word.

[Doug Hatch]

Catadromous comes from Greek roots.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, it's Greek. This is probably Greek. Semel Paris.

[Yanni]

So it's not like those words really at all.

[Doug Hatch]

How do you spell?

[Steven Rinella]

When I say same flavor, I mean like a foreign language sounding deal, you know, I guarantee it's Greek sound assemble. Paris. I never heard that word. Is it in my note? You know you got like a notes function on your phone. I keep words that I need to incorporate into my vocabulary on a little list like so those.

[Yanni]

But those are only the fish that die after they spawn.

[Steven Rinella]

So not steelhead, not Atlantic steelhead, not.

[Doug Hatch]

Ocean run, cut, Semel Paris. I should know this because I took Latin. It does have Latin roots. It combines semel, meaning once or a single time, and pario, meaning to give birth or produce.

[Steven Rinella]

Another thing I learned. We're gonna go way back deep before we get to this. Another thing I learned on your site that kind of blew my mind is those dams. The dams on the Columbia system did a way to think about it. When baby salmon, when smolts are coming back down the river, it's basically you lose 7 to 15% of them die at each dam.

[Doug Hatch]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

It's an incredible way to think about it.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Can you.

[Yanni]

And how many are there? How many dams are there?

[Steven Rinella]

I have no idea.

[Doug Hatch]

Well, there's four.

[Steven Rinella]

Stay up close to your mic.

[Doug Hatch]

Oh, there's four on the lower part of the main stem Columbia, and then you have the four in the lower Snake River. And then there's also privately owned dams that are owned by the Mid Columbia public utility districts. So there's four right in the midsee. So there's eight on the mainstem Columbia before you get to Roosevelt. Right.

[Donella Miller]

Or Grand Coulee. Yeah. Chief Joseph is impassable. And then Grand Coulee is upstream of that. But yeah, if you're going to the headwaters of the Columbia, which would be the Metal river, if you're up there, you're going to go over nine dams on the main stem. More if you go on up the tributaries. If you go up the Snake, you're going over eight dams before you ever get to the the Salmon river or the Naha or any of those big rivers.

[Steven Rinella]

And the snake eight times 15 that's a big number.

[Donella Miller]

It's big.

[Doug Hatch]

I mean then we can do the Math. More than 100, let's say.

[CJ Toledano]

Yeah, yeah, there is the deal.

[Donella Miller]

And then there's mortality coming upstream too. You know, not just every adult, just because there's a fish ladder. You got to find that fish ladder and you got to negotiate it. You got to get over it, you got to avoid the predators. You've got, you know, lots of stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Can, can you guys lay out a little bit? Like what did the system look like before the first major impact, before the first major negative impact came to it, which I guess was the cannery, fish canneries. Like what did like just try to help people visualize. Like nowadays people think about salmon runs and it's like Alaska, right. When they think about Sam runs, it's. It's Bristol Bay, right. This was a bigger salmon run than those. The biggest salmon run. The biggest salmon run in the country. The biggest salmon run in the world was the Columbia. Yeah, it would. You wouldn't have been that you had to. You wouldn't go to Alaska to see big salmon runs. You like the Columbia was the big salmon run. Like what did that look like? Like what fish were there, you know, to what quantity? Is it even possible? No, I know one scientifically measured it, but like what did it look like it was?

[Doug Hatch]

Well, that's why Celilo Falls, right? That's historically that was the major trading hub of the Pacific Northwest. You know, that people came from, you know, the, the Midwest to trade buffalo and the ocean area to trade salt for. For. For salmon. We had. It was even obsidian and tool making and things like that. It was inconceivable. And that's why the over exploitation happened because, you know, like you said, you read the old timey descriptions and they thought it was an inexhaustible resource, that there was so much that people were able to gather what they needed and that's what sustained life in our region for millennia. And it was just, you know, the, the trading and the tribal people living amongst the land is, you know, intrinsically a part of nature. And you know, it's just a complete. It was a completely different way of thinking of, you know, like exploitation and things like that. But that, I don't know, that's why it seems so that thought process was different from the way that we lived as, you know, taking and being a part of this system versus coming in like how you said the first major negative impact would have been the fish wheels and even the seining and things like that. And so those types of things happened. And you know, when you look at different, everything is always viewed as a resource. And how can that benefit man? And, you know, you hear about the salmon, but even further down the road, the salmon kind of became a problem to development in the. Of the Columbia river system when they were looking at the placement of the hydro system. Because then they would have to incorporate fish ladders and deal with the salmon. It would have been easier if they did away from. With all these natural runs and we could retain salmon, but you retain it in the lower river below the dams. So they didn't have to do all these extra steps to maintain the stocks. That's why you see a lot of those hatcheries are below Bonneville Dam. And it's unnatural, you know, spring chinook and coho and things like that. And those hatcheries still operate, but the tribes have been working to try to restore and bring them back into their natal areas throughout. And even to me, I think those numbers that you read are actually kind of low.

[Steven Rinella]

The 10 to 16 million estimates.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Because even today you could get. You know, there's been a lot of work in the Okanagan basin and Lake Okanagan and Canada where they've. We've seen sockeye returns, up to 800,000 adult Sakai returning past Bonneville. And just to think that's just one lake and there's all these other blocked areas in the tributaries. And if today we could get back almost a million of just one stock, that. And a lot of that work was done. It was exhaustive estimate. And they looked at a lot of the cannery records and what they were able to process. But I think there was more waste than there were fish actual processed. You see those old pictures where, you know, you have salmon four feet deep and they're just working those cannery lines. Well, when that obviously went bad, every day they'd just shove it out and bring in more. So there was.

[Steven Rinella]

Because you'd never run out.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, yeah. That's the way it was viewed. And just kind of going back to what we were talking about, the 15% at every project. That's only the impact of what that dam itself causes, like fish going through the turbines or, you know, like in the spillway, they get disoriented and things like that. But that's not adding in all of the other factors that those dams create. The reservoirs and the slack water and the water quality and the predation and all those types of things. So the impacts are huge. And you're right, you add it up, there shouldn't be any more fish left. And it's just amazing that, that we still have fish coming back.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I should clarify on that percentage. I was making a joke about 15 times 8. But the estimate is 7 to 15%. So it's not all, you know, 15% is the high end of what the.

[Donella Miller]

Estimated loss is just direct dram dam mortality. But that doesn't take into account the slack water. It creates the habitat that creates for, for piscivorous predators to eat. The fish, they get disoriented when they go through the damage. Birds pick them off. So all of that predation part isn't part of that dam mortality. That's just the direct mortality from the dam. And kind of quickly, I guess historically by the numbers it was. Right now you've got a spring chinook run, right. That's like 80 to 150,000 fish. And then it drops way off for the summers down to 10 or 20,000. And then in the fall, that's the big run now. And it's going to run a couple hundred thousand fish, you know, in our really good years, half million or something.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Donella Miller]

And historically it was, it was a big curve. It was a big mountain. That summer Chinook run, that's so low, that was the peak.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh.

[Donella Miller]

So all of these impacts have split it into these three different groups of Chinook. And so you've got the fall chinook, which seems like, which is the biggest now. But historically that was the tail. You know, it was those summer run and that's what they were going after. The early canneries and stuff was the most abundant, you know, group. And so they made those big impacts on that. And that was the June hogs that included all of the really big fish that went up, you know, into the lower Snake river up in the upper Columbia. You know, the fish that were 130, 140 pounds, jeez, that's a big fish, dude.

[Yanni]

It's like, yeah, yeah, we catch those like eight 10 pounders in, in Southeast.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, yeah, they gotta be 28. Where we fish, they gotta be 28 inches. You're always like, Sweet, he's 28. And like you go into the bars, you know, you go into old bars, you know, and you always see these kings, you know, from whatever.

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Half century ago. And you're like, dude, are they, you know, are they there anymore? These 100 plus pound fish? But just like there's not. And there's fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer.

[Donella Miller]

Fewer and fewer we do. We do sampling at Bonneville Dam. So we. We sample all of the fish runs coming through Bonneville. And we'll get a text from, From. From the texts that are sampling. It's like, here's a really big one. And a big One now is 60, 70 pounder.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Donella Miller]

Those are pretty rare. And it used to not be even, you know, a mere 35 years ago when I started, it was. We'd get a lot more of those than we do now. So definitely the size of maturity or the size of the adult fish has gone down.

[Doug Hatch]

The largest I've caught was £63. And that seemed like a monster.

[Yanni]

Well, that is a monster.

[Steven Rinella]

How did you catch that?

[Doug Hatch]

Gill netting.

[Steven Rinella]

Gill netting?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, in our fall fishery. But I had a really. Had a. Aha. Moment back when. So I think I was 18 as a technician working in the Metau River. We were doing spring chinook spawning ground surveys. And it was getting later in the season, and so there was this portion of the main stem that would float on the. On the Metau river. And there's. It runs into a wall. There's a big pool. And we floated our raft down, and it was just. There was a group of probably about 30 big June hogs. Some are chinook. They were huge. Of course, you get the magnification of the water, but they were still huge. And we just floated around in there and watched them. They were just holding up, waiting to head up to spawn. But it's just so amazing to see those things. And you were talking about how many miles inland. Also, when I worked up in the Methow, I think I looked at it, I looked on the map to see it was like 840 miles or something.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, they had come that far in.

[Doug Hatch]

This little bitty tributary to the Metau, where we were doing a spawning ground survey. And I was like, just like. We had to hike in and then walk down the creek is like, how did this fish even make it back here? It's amazing. And then we were walking down another section, and there's portions that get dewatered in the fall. And we found a couple of spring chinook in this pocket by this boulder. And so my coworker, he takes off one side of his hip wader, and then we fill it with water and put that fish in there. And we just ran it like a.

[Steven Rinella]

He was stranded.

[Doug Hatch]

He was stranded. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Cause pulling out because irrigation dropped.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. So we ran it back to. So he could reconnect with the river. It's like, you can't make it this far and not live. You gotta.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh man, really?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. So the things you run into being out there, it's just that that's what really helps people's connection to understand and you know, just thinking and realizing how much they've gone through to get back, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

Limited Time Offer Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to central semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services By Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures [e-mail] disclosures all right, big news.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Liquid IV's got something huge coming this February 8th. Have you heard about it?

[Julian Edelman]

Yeah, you just told me a second ago.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Fair enough. I'm guessing it has something to do with fighting dehydration.

[Julian Edelman]

Speaking of, do you know seven potential signs of mild to moderate dehydration?

[Rob Gronkowski]

There's thirst, obviously, and six more.

[Julian Edelman]

Right. Fatigue, brain fog, nausea, headaches, irritability.

[Rob Gronkowski]

And there's one more that I can't remember. Does that mean I'm dehydrated?

[Julian Edelman]

Maybe. But I think I'm dehydrated because you're irritating me right now.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Then drink some Liquid iv. I like the sugar free raspberry lemonade, but mango pineapple is great too. Liquid IV Sugar Free is the only sugar free hydration product on the market clinically demonstrated to hydrate faster than water alone. And there aren't any artificial sweeteners or colors.

[Julian Edelman]

You gotta stay hydrated.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Well, that's my crash course on dehydration. But no doubt Liquid IV will have something more to say on February 8.

[Julian Edelman]

Anything else happening that day?

[Rob Gronkowski]

I don't know. I'll have to check the calendar.

[Julian Edelman]

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[Steven Rinella]

Can you a little bit explain the process or I guess just the evolved thinking that led to the creation of a tribal organization that would get involved in fisheries management. I know, like in some notes Corinne had from pre interviews, she talked about that there was a growing frustration that the states and the feds weren't moving the way. Weren't moving this the way you wanted to move. And the goal was set in a way that the tribes weren't comfortable with. The goal, like say basically the goal being let's save the fish from genetic extinction.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And. And that wasn't. That doesn't satisfy native peoples on the river.

[Doug Hatch]

No, unfortunately the. A lot of the fish are managed on ESA levels. Right. That's holding things on the brink of extinction. And that's one of the issues with the ESA itself. Well, for one, it's not proactive. And two, they have protections when things get really bad to save them from extinction. But there's nothing in the act that's binding. It's recommendations towards recovery. There's no requirements to recover a species. So it's just the minimal amount possible that you could do to keep this species from going extinct. And you know, that's not acceptable as a society, not just with tribes of allowing species to go extinct or, you know, we don't want museum relics that in the river that we look at, you know, we want to be able to enjoy the bounty and continue our way of life and you know, kind of getting what we signed up for in the treaties. And that's where the really, you know, sustainable, healthy and sustainable populations that we're able to harvest. Because, you know, we've talked about treaty rights and our ability to harvest, but that's a shared right that we have with, with the public right, the treaties. There's been two big court cases that kind of led to the formation of our organization and really the formation of the tribes taking a leading role. First was USV Oregon. And that was really the tribes being established as a co manager of the resource because it was a treaty. Right. So it's our, you know, we have the obligation to ensure that it persists for future generations. And then several years later, we had U.S. v. Washington that made the determination that the tribes were entitled to 50% of the harvestable run. Not just 50% of the total, the 50% of the harvestable run. And so we have the, you know, that unfortunately, you know, I've heard others, you know, what I've learned is unfortunately, we operate in gavel. The gavel fish management. Because you talk about gravel to gravel, like, right. You're inclusive of the entire life cycle. But unfortunately we work in gavel to gavel because it's just court ruling to court ruling. Yeah. And that's. I saw that you have a show out that talks about the recent litigation on the hydro operations of the, on the Snake River Dam. And that's kind of been pulled in really kind of unfortunately became just a breach campaign. But it's. To us, it's a lot more than that because with our culture, everything, the importance, everything has a purpose, a place and a purpose. And so we really have that holistic management aspect. And you know, we don't really have the silos that a lot of the state and federal agencies work for, work under. That's why, you know, we have people that want to work for tribes that really care about, you know, the resource and things like that. Because everything that we do is so broad and you know, like, I'm wearing the sturgeon hat and you know, like, all species are important to us, not just the salmon, but sturgeon, lamprey Even you know, trout and bridge lip suckers and all of those things that are a part of nature. But you know, we hold all of those things sacred as our first foods. And so that's the way we, what we bring to the table in our management aspect because you know, we're not about ESA level. We don't want museum relics, we want healthy and sustainable and we would love more than to have work ourselves out of a job. That's what I've heard one of my other bosses say. But just you know, the tools that we have to work with along the way, like you know, hatchery production. I know there's a big, a lot of issues between hatchery versus wild and the tribes do do a lot of supplementation hatchery production. But we try to bring in non conventional methods. It's not just fish factories pumping out numbers, we're you know, using. We have a genetics lab, state of the art genetics lab that we have in cooperation with the University of Idaho that's located in southern Idaho in Hagerman. So we're kind of leading the way on the genetic side. And then also the way we implement our hatcheries is not just releasing them all directly from the hatchery but taking them out to acclimation sites so they could return to areas that have suitable spawning habitat and things like that. And as Doug mentioned, we do all the monitoring at Bonneville Dam of all the stocks that are coming through. So we're able to take that information which also aids in harvest management. And just our work is so broad and diverse. We have ocean, you know, estuary program that we've acquired about five years ago now. So we're really looking, you know, like I said, gravel to gravel and bringing in all aspects and you know, the tribes have, I'd say were a lot less risk averse I think because we take that approach to be careful to do things. It's like we don't want to study things to death. You know, things get wrapped up in 10, 10 plus year studies before you could actually even do anything. It's like, and you know, myself being the fish science manager, that was kind of, I kind of thought twice about taking this job. It's like I don't want to be just a research scientist but the approach that the tribes have been taking is like applied research. You're taking actionable measures and measuring the success of those actions and you know, you use what's working and advance that and yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. And you know, we've really grown a Lot like I mentioned, those two court cases, USV Watch Washington, USV Oregon, where you know, the tribes sued the states over harvest and you know, co management and things like that. But we've came a lot a long ways in even just recently during that litigation on the Snake river, the hydro operations litigation informed the six sovereigns, that's with our four tribes in the states of Washington and Oregon and come together. And that's how we entered into a stay in litigation. It was meant to be a 10 year stay with a set of commitments over the first five years. Then there was a check in and then it could have rolled over to another five years. And we were just getting started rolling in that and it was bringing commitments to the basin and also giving us a voice to look for appropriations. It's not like we weren't trying to upend energy prices or anything like that. It's just like, okay, can you pay the true cost of the cheap electricity that you're benefiting from? And it's not really grandma's electricity or the common person, it's corporate. Right. It's industrial customers that have really the huge benefit of our cheap power in the region. And that's why like we're talking about fish in the Columbia Basin. But really it's, it's a global, a global thing. Right. Because of all of the industry that our region attracts because of the cheap power. Like back in the 80s and whatnot, we had all of the big aluminum smelters where we have none of the natural resources to make aluminum. But they were all there because it was so cheap to process because of that cheap power. And then now we're seeing the new onslaught of that is data centers. We have data centers a lot.

[Steven Rinella]

Wall net, electricity.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And water. That's the bad thing is like there's always extraction. And then we're already like operating in a deficit, but yet we're planning for a future that we don't even have the resources for. And that's why the tribes really bring that to the table of like, who's looking out for the resource and what's best for the environment. And that's why we talk about salmon being a keystone species, because it's good for everyone. What's good for the salmon is good for the environment and for the people and us looking out for that in that holistic manner.

[Steven Rinella]

I got three observations I want to hit you with. One is you don't need to take this on, but you know, people like to look at sort of singular things that had global Impacts. And there's this argument that the reason we won World War II is because the dam's on the Columbia system. Because we could out. We could produce aircraft. We had enough power to smelt enough aluminum, and we out aircraft, the Germans. And so, you know, whether that's true or not, it always, like, sticks in my head, like, thinking about what a mistake those ultimately, what a mistake those dams were. And I think about that question and always like, it's just a complication in there. We had on second observations we had on RFK Jr. When he was running for president, and, you know, he went and took over Health and Human Services under the Trump administration. But when he was, he was on. He's talking about his career and litigate environmental litigation. And he said when you look at these big, these big corporations and they think that they're these free enterprise organizations, he says they never ever pay the cost. They don't acknowledge that they don't pay the cost. But in producing that electricity or producing those metals, they never had to account to the American people of what they took from you to make those things. Like, no one's ever billed them for the cost of an annual run of 12 million salmon. No one's paid that. You know, he's like. He's like, they don't admit it, but they're subsidized. They're subsidized by what they take from everybody in terms of fish or in terms of anything Clean water. Like, has anyone ever build them for. Do you know what I mean? Does anyone build them for what the clean water should be worth? They'll never pay that shit.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, we have mitigation goals of the impacts of the hydro system that have never been met 50, 60 years. And they've never met them by millions. I think we're barely even at half of what we should have been getting 60 years ago. Imagine how much that would add up to what the tab is. The, the way that gets wiped clean is they're working toward interim goals. Fifty years later, we're still just working towards interim goals. And even today, the interim goals that we're working towards, towards restoration, that we actually have the teeth to push on is 5 to 8 million. And that was determined by the Northwest Power and Planning Council of that is the direct impacts of this hydro system is the 5 to 8 million. And then that's when you. Then the other losses are due to, like, irrigation and the tributaries and other types of urbanization and things like that. So we'll never get fully get back what we had, but, you know, I know we could do better. And a lot of that too is just people's resistance to change. And, you know, that's the way we've always done things. And the status quo continues and until they, I don't know, it's hard. And like you said, you will never get back. We don't pay the truth cost for power. And a lot of this stuff is for export. Foreign companies that come in and exploit our resources. And you still have communities that, you know, they were promised jobs, but that's only during the construction. And what's ongoing is minimal. Like even with Google and the city of the Dalles, you know, they came in and updated their waste treatment plant, but then they built a data center and then two more data centers. And now they're overwhelming that infrastructure that they promised. And they were taking groundwater. And so they have communities just south of town that are coming up with dry wells and things like that. And now they want to buy land in, in the national forest to be able to create a reservoir to extract more water.

[Steven Rinella]

And then like Sam Altman and Elon Musk, they'll never, they'll, you know, he'll emerge as the world's first trillionaire and there will never be a reckoning. There will never be a reckoning for the cost of what they did. Yeah, never.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, it was funny. We applied for a grant from Google because they have this. They want to be green by 2030 or something. And then we have a delta project where the Klickitat river comes into the Columbia that needs some major work. It's never had any maintenance. Like you could practically walk halfway across the Columbia because that sandbar is so big, because you don't have the freshets that flush it out. And that's one of our big issues that we're working on is predation hotspots and warm water and things like that. But we applied for that Google grant. It's just downstream, just across the river. We didn't even make it past the pre proposal phase. And when we asked why, like, why wouldn't this qualify? It has good merit and everything, they gave us an AI response.

[CJ Toledano]

It was just man.

[Doug Hatch]

Generic.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So you paid for your own response. I want to get in like.

[Donella Miller]

One.

[Steven Rinella]

Of the things that I want to talk about, we want to talk about is like, what can, like what are things that can be done? You know, and I want to get into that like, like sea lions and all that. But there's, there's a thing I want to. There's a third thing I wanted to bring up. And I'm almost, I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but all these guys here can vouch for me on this. It's like I was raised in the Great Lakes, okay? And I was raised to know that like the real villains in fisheries management, it's always the natives. Because people can't reconcile. They're like, they're like, how could it be that they're conducting commercial fishing? You know, so they run like in the Great Lakes, natives will run fish traps for whitefish, which white people don't. I mean like generally speaking, white people don't fish whitefish. Generally some do, but it's not like a top tier fish. People don't travel like to go there to fish whitefish. People want the non native shit or like large mouths, native fish, all the salmon, introduced salmon. But you'll go and be like the reason you didn't catch anything today is because of natives, right? And you'll hear it so much from guys in the Pacific Northwest where they'll be like you mentioned earlier, having a gill net. They'll be like, that's the problem with the fishery. And it's like, but, but that's what you're, you're raised to believe that because it's always like a blame game. And you look at. But Bahamut, they fished here for 20,000, 10,000, 16, like thousands of years. Supported a people on the fishery. Then European culture, like Euro American culture came in and destroyed the fishery. The things we did destroyed the fishery. But now you look and there's some native people catching some fish in a net and that's who's like, that's who's to blame. It's pervade. I don't even know if you realize how pervasive that thinking is because it's like they can't click. Like how could they be commercial fishing when I can only keep one fish or I can't keep any fish, but they can commercial fish. That's who killed all the fish. It's out there. Like that perspective is just out there.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And I've lived it, you know, like growing up fishing on the Columbia, you do get a lot of hate. People come out and yell at you and things like that. We've been shot at at night in the dark. We were out and I called the cops. The cops didn't even show up. You could see the muzzle flash. It sounded like a.22. And we were like, what the heck? We're good thing, we're a Ways from shore in that kind of like a bay area. And the 911 operator, well, you see what they're wearing. And I'm like, no, it's dark. I see a muzzle flash and well, can you let us know? And it's like we got down and had to drive out of there. And another time, I always remember there was a older gentleman, he followed us because, you know, we're tied off of the bank. It was two and a half hours. He stood on the shore and yelled and cussed at us. Like, I called the cops. Like, I think you might need to. I don't want this guy to have a heart attack. That's how worked up he was. And you know, like chucking rocks at us and things.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, picture the long history. They like, they look through the dam. They look through the dam or past the dam and they see you. And that's the problem, you know, I mean, like, they can't picture what happened. Yeah, you know.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. I guess we're so visible, right? There's. There's plenty of non native gillnet fisheries that are happening in the lower river and a lot in the ocean, but it's just, we're visible and that's like.

[Steven Rinella]

If it wasn't for that little handful of fish, everything would be better. It's like, no, dude, it wouldn't be better. You're not talking about the problem. You don't want to talk about the real problem.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You don't want to talk about the real problem.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. The glass half full thing is, I think it's awesome that people are starting to realize like, you know, the work that we do, it benefits everybody, not just the tribes, it's everybody. And so like, I've been at places like, like a trade show or whatever. And then, you know, somebody will come up, look at my tag, like, I want to shake your hand. You know, they're, you know, part of the. They're a fishing guide or something like that. And they'll say, we wouldn't have salmon if it weren't for the Indians.

[Steven Rinella]

And you know, so people do see that connection.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, a little bit of that. So they're, you know, we're starting to realize and you know, just the outreach and the partnerships that we have and that the benefits that we bring is for all and not just us.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

So it's crazy. I mean, we have commissioners that had spent time in federal prison for fishing, exercising their right to their treaty reserved right to fish. And they were arrested, sentenced, spent time in prison for fishing. So it's a crazy deal. I'm from Idaho. I saw this. The same thing you're talking about, Steve, with the salmon, what happened in the salmon fisheries in the Columbia. But you know, that led to those court decisions and then that formed, you know, out of that, the tribal co management that formed the Columbia River Inter Tribal fish commission in 1977. And so this, the tribe started building staff from then and now we're like at 150 to 170 people at Crypvik in Portland, each of the four member tribes, the Yakima, Warm Springs, Umatilla and Nez Perce combined, we have like 750 people working on fish recovery. And I think that's where we get our. The tribes get their power is that they're co managers and they had a singular focus on. It's the Fish Commission, right? It's not the, it's not the Fish and Irrigation Commission. It's not. We don't have the things that the states are, you know, they've got to look after all these other interests and this is singularly focused on fish recovery. So we're not what we want to do. We'll provide more fish to our constituents. Our, you know, the tribal fishermen that are out there exercising their treaty right and they're entitled to half of that harvestable fish. And however they take them, they decide how they're going to take them. States decide how much they're going to split their 50% into sport fishing versus commercial fishing, however they want to divide it. And the tribes don't, you know, they're party to that, but they don't tell the states how they're going to allocate their fisheries and, you know, kind of should go the same way. For the tribes, this is a big conservation effort. And they run hatcheries, about 10 hatcheries that are run by the tribes to get the money for it. And they don't catch all those fish. I mean, those fish are going out to the public. Everybody's catching them from here to the Gulf of Alaska.

[Doug Hatch]

We're kind of the end users on some of that. There's some stocks of fish like the Klickitat. The majority of those are caught in Alaska and by, you know, the other ocean fisheries along the West Coast. And, you know, we have a pie chart and then it shows all of the take and the tribal harvest is just this little bitty sliver.

[Steven Rinella]

But that's the people putting them in.

[Doug Hatch]

And doing all the work to the habitat restoration. Because the work that we do goes beyond just Fish. And that's what, you know, like, being in management now of, like, getting people to understand, like, the things that we do. Like, you know, energy production is fish issues because of the. The hydro system and habitat restoration and even roads. Like, we have our habitat staff that they've worked with the DOT to, like, move. Move a highway and. And, you know, putting in better fish passage and just, you know, reconnecting rivers, which helps, you know, floods and flood management, flood risk and. And then also, especially in the face of climate change and how things are changing. Like, you were just talking about the weather here. You know, we're seeing that we're, you know, potentially in our three years of drought, and this year isn't looking much better. And so we definitely have our work cut out for us, and it goes a long ways. And like Doug was saying about how the tribes choose to allocate. The other thing that our jobs are so great to me and why it means so much is on the cultural side, you know, how much that these things are natural resources and salmon. We refer to ourselves as salmon people, you know, and it's cultural preservation. And that's really what. Because I grew up in a traditional home with, you know, like, my mother and my grandparents and practicing our, you know, hunting, fishing, gathering and, you know, our tribal religion and all of the things that go along with that. All of our ceremonies are centered around our natural resources, around the salmon and things like that. And, you know, sadly, we're losing that. And then that's how, you know, people get led astray. You know, you have, you know, the effects of drugs and alcohol and stuff. But if we really had those things that for us to be able to continue, I think we'd be better off and. Well, I know we would, because, you know, living in those communities and it's just like, we're lost. We're still lost because we were displaced by the construction of the dams on the river. We weren't relocated or subsidized or anything. It's just they came and spray painted on the houses, like at Celilo Falls, took inventory, and that was it. We've never received our Columbia river housing for the villages that were flooded. It's just like, your house is gone.

[Steven Rinella]

They painted the ones that were going to be underwater.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Just took an inventory. And then people had no choice but to. To move to the reservation or drown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny even me realizing that now. Like, you know, I was born on the reservation in Toppenish and lived at my grandparents house. But I was even as. Just as an adult. A couple years ago, I realized, like, that wasn't my grandpa's home. My grandpa was born and raised at Celilo, and he went to the war. It's so funny. Like, my grandpa's older sister, she used to tell us this story. And even as an older lady, she would cry about it. It still gets to me. She was born with cataracts, so she was legally blind. And so she couldn't help do all the work. So she took care of my grandpa. And she said one day at Celilo, the government, the military, police, everything, they just pulled in with cattle trucks and they took the children by force and took them to a boarding school. And she said people were beaten, arrested. And she said that she held onto him and was dragged across the ground crying, no, don't take him. He's just a baby. And she cried as an adult that she said, if I could have just held a little longer, maybe they would have gave up.

[Steven Rinella]

Then he went on to fight in the war.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. He was four years old, taken to the boarding school in Warm Springs, Oregon. He didn't get to come home for two years. And that was only because they were moving them to the boarding school at Fort Simcoe, which is on the Yakima reservation. And then he was there through like elementary school. And then he got shipped to Chemawa, which is in Oregon. That's a high school. You know, boarding school. High school. He graduated from there when he was 17. And then he enlisted in the Navy and fought in World War II.

[Steven Rinella]

You're kidding me.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And his home now sits underwater.

[Doug Hatch]

That's the home that he came back to from the war. Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S P500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIP Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures this week.

[CJ Toledano]

On Point Game with me, CJ Toledano.

[Steven Rinella]

And Isaiah Thomas, it had a lot.

[CJ Toledano]

Of great stories about D. Rose and his retirement weekend. But also he had this hilarious one.

[Steven Rinella]

About his love for candy. Take a listen. If you don't know D. Rose, you know he's a candy guy. I can't say if he's still a candy guy. I've always heard this, but he always had a bag of candy. Every road trip, he would just hand me a candy that I never seen before. Like I never, whether it be some gummies, some hard candy. It was like to a point where I'm like, where are you getting these? Like, I'm a candy guy too, but I don't. I've never seen these flavors. I've never seen these bags. And it sucks. Cause I can't even tell you the like, the brand of candy. It was just every time he, like, we sit right next to each other, he'll be like, here you go. It. I'm like some candy that I'd never seen. So it was just, it was super dope because he got the backpack full of just pulling out different candies at all times. Download the DraftKings sportsbook app and use code Pointgame. New customers can bet just $5, and if your bet wins, you'll get $300.

[Doug Hatch]

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[Donella Miller]

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[Doug Hatch]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

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[Doug Hatch]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Doug Hatch]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

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[Steven Rinella]

For additional terms and responsible gaming resources.

[Doug Hatch]

See DKNG Co Audio limited time offer.

[Rob Gronkowski]

This is Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman.

[Julian Edelman]

From Dudes and Dudes with Gronk and Jules.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Rob, I've never asked, are you a dips guy?

[Julian Edelman]

Like the workout? You can't tell.

[Rob Gronkowski]

No, I mean for your chips.

[Julian Edelman]

Oh, I knew that. Yeah, of course.

[Rob Gronkowski]

You gotta try this new Daisy's French Onion dip goes great on Sundays.

[Julian Edelman]

Daisy like the sour cream brand?

[Rob Gronkowski]

Yup. That's how you know it's gonna be fire. I use their sour cream all the time. Goes perfect with my taco Tuesday dinner.

[Julian Edelman]

Oh, Jules the chef. I love it.

[CJ Toledano]

Yep.

[Rob Gronkowski]

And now I've added the daisies French onion dip to my Sunday spread. They make it with all natural herbs and spices.

[Julian Edelman]

I like the sound of that. Everyone knows you need a good dip for game day. Personally, I like to dip everything I can. Veggies, crackers, chips. Heck, I might even dip a buffalo wing in there.

[Rob Gronkowski]

That reminds me, they also have Daisy's ranch dip.

[Julian Edelman]

Now you're speaking my language. Sundays on the couch just got even better.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Yup, seems like a no brainer on game day. So get out there and give the French onion dip a try. You won't regret it.

[Steven Rinella]

You know when I was talking about the conflict between like white dudes that fish and the perspective that native peoples are taking fish, it's like everybody's fighting over crumbs. In some regions, everybody's fighting over crumbs and they don't even know what happened. Like if it's breadcrumbs, they don't know what happened to the loaf of bread. There's, you know, I mean, it's, it's just gone. And now they're gonna like, fight for crumbs. And one of the ways that that like fighting for crumbs and it's, it's. I guess it's important because once those crumbs are gone, everything's gone. You know, to think of it like in terms of fish, right. If they, if we lose the fish, if you lose all the memory of the fish and all the runs and all the historic areas, it's less that you can build up someday when you get it back together. But what turned me on to even wanting to talk to you guys is this idea. And Heather, my friend Heather Duville sent me some links about it was, was like the sea lion issue. And I want to talk about that for a minute. Or have you guys explained the sea lion issue for a minute? Just to sort of demonstrate this idea of that to fix the problem is like impossible or seemingly impossible. Dam removal is so hard. And so you got to look like, well, that's what would like there's these huge things that would occur and you could slowly rebuild the whole thing. But in the meantime, you gotta like fight for crumbs. And it's even gotten to what we're fighting for crumbs with sea lions. Can you talk about that, that issue a bit like how sea lions play into this thing?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, sure. So sea lions were, were heavily managed in the late 1800s and then from like 1915 or so to 1970 into Columbia, there's a bounty on sea lions. Bounty and a sea lion hunter. So the, the Oregon Fish Commission hired a guy that would shoot sea lions and cut their ears off and then get paid by how many sea lions he took care of.

[CJ Toledano]

And that was specifically to protect the salmon run.

[Donella Miller]

Protect the salmon, exactly. So that was the management that went on. And in that era, the early 70s, when all of the environmental laws got passed, you know, you had the Environmental Protection act, the Clean Air Act, Marine Mammal. Marine Mammal Protection act is passed in 72 and marine mammals were in terrible shape. I mean, it was really necessary. California sea lions were around 20, 25,000 coast wide. So it's managed as a single stock. It ranges from Baja California up to lower BC. So that stock was 20 or 25,000 animals. Now there's close to 300,000 animals and it's at carrying capacity. So the Marine Mammal Protection act protected marine mammals.

[Steven Rinella]

If you were a marine mammal, effectively man.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. And super successful. Right. But what wasn't part of the in, you know, you had sea otters, whales, all kinds, polar bears, all kinds of things that are super depressed. And there wasn't any thought put into management. You know, it's like, we're going to lose them, we need to protect them. And it worked really, really well on, on some populations, like California sea lions. I mean, they're way past recovered. They're at carrying capacity. It's the classic S curve. It's plateaued. We're at carrying capacity for sea lions coastwide.

[Steven Rinella]

Is there any talk of delisting?

[Donella Miller]

Oh, they're not that. Well, see, it's different because it's under the marine mammals. Exactly. So if you're a marine mammal, you're protected, period.

[Steven Rinella]

We've talked about this.

[Donella Miller]

There's no management, there's no management provision at all.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, we've talked about this a bunch of times in different management things. We're talking about this the other day. I can't remember what, in what context, but ways in which something gets so bad you can't picture it getting better. And then you draft regulation, like the wild. I always point out the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act. Things get so bad, you draft regulation because you can't picture the future ramifications. And then you wind up laying. You're like, damn, man, we should have thought of that.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

It's like this. It's like the sea otters up on POW that have exploded.

[Steven Rinella]

People like, well, they'll never be abundant. Why even make a provision for abundance?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. And I mean, it's just hard to see over the horizon. Right. I mean, you see what's there, and it's like, it couldn't happen. It gives you hope, though, for salmon, right? Maybe. Maybe we can do this. But then what happened?

[Steven Rinella]

That's a good point, man.

[Donella Miller]

With the Ballard Locks up, you know, the inlet or the outlet of Lake Washington in the 80s, all of a sudden sea lions started showing up at the Ballard Locks there. And Herschel, if you remember that, there's these particular California sea lions started preying on the steelhead run going into the Ballard Locks.

[Steven Rinella]

Like they figured it out.

[Donella Miller]

They figured it out. Yeah. And you've got this growing population. They're expanding, right, to different places where they really haven't been in years and years because there's no management. And they're decimating the winter steelhead run in Lake Washington. Well, that triggered legislation then to finally amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And they finally got that done in 94. And it was section 120 that they put into the act. So this was management. It's only on sea lions. And it's that they have to be individually identifiable and they have to be shown to have significant negative impact on listed salmon populations. And if you can meet that criteria and you have a permit, you can remove that sea lion.

[Yanni]

So it was like, we know this one's a bad egg. We gotta get rid of him.

[Donella Miller]

Right. And how do you know. Yeah, how do you know what that sea lion is? Well, you gotta catch him and you gotta put a brand on him and you gotta have an observer there that sees him eating a fish. Then you gotta get. Then you gotta trap him again and euthanize him, you know, and so it's very tough. And that was. The 120 was not successful at the Ballard Locks. The. The distiller population went extinct before, really, before the legislation was passed.

[Steven Rinella]

Extinct?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, they're gone. So then Bonneville Dam, that run of fish is kaput. Yeah, it's gone. And now there's actually a current problem, another problem, which is Sockeye Run in Lake Washington. And it's going down that same. That same route. And the only thing to manage there is this section120. So they would have to.

[Steven Rinella]

To.

[Donella Miller]

To get, you know, they'd have to submit an application to. To National Marine Fishery Service to get a permit through this 120.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. And that's all to do with the Ballard Locks. That's not even the Columbia.

[Donella Miller]

That's not Columbia.

[Steven Rinella]

Because in the Columbia system, I know this is true. I was reading that sea lions take more fish than humans.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Where are they doing that? Because, I mean, they're not getting past dams.

[Donella Miller]

Right. So what happened? In about 2000, we started seeing sea lions at Bonneville Dam, at the tail race of Bonneville Dam. And it was just a few.

[Steven Rinella]

And how far up the river is that?

[Donella Miller]

145 miles. Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

Those sons of bitches swim that part of the ocean.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. And I've got all kinds of stories. We've trapped, we've radio tracked them. And they will. They'll go back to Astoria and back upstream two or three times in a year. It takes them just a couple of days.

[Steven Rinella]

Are you serious?

[Donella Miller]

Are they're. They're pretty remarkable animals.

[Steven Rinella]

140 miles up the river.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Dude. Ain't a lick of salt. Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

No, no. Well, then this problem, once these animals saw, hey, this is. This is the buffet, right? Because you've got this concentration of fish at the tail race. They're trying to find the sea ladder or the fish ladder entrances. And so they're congregating. You get a collection of fish and the sea lions find that, and it's like, this is great. They come back every year, they bring their buddies, they become habituated with it, and they start taking out a whole bunch of fish. So then the corps of engineers who.

[Steven Rinella]

Runs the dam, I gotta back up on that because this is an unanswerable question. A sea lion, like a sea lion, goes way to hell up the river. River, like a pioneer sea lion goes way up the river. He's like, holy smokes, this is the promised land. Right. And he goes back down. At some point, no one will know. No one can answer this. How. How is it conveyed? Like, how does it convey to another sea lion?

[CJ Toledano]

Wherever Billy was, he's looking good.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, honeybees have that deal. Honeybees have that idea where they come back and they have. They have like a. A thing they do. People call it a dance. And they don't, you know, they don't perceive it as a dance, I'm sure. But honeybees come back and they, they have a movement pattern that says, I'm into it. Heavy duty pollen that way.

[Yanni]

Couldn't it just be like a generation? Like, it's like generational learning. Like your kid offspring.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[CJ Toledano]

You bring your offspring yeah, you bring your mate.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[CJ Toledano]

You know, then you bring your offspring.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Because your mate's like, what are they doing? I guess they don't follow them. Yeah, just like. It's so hard to, like, imagine by the mechanism by which you come back and then there's more. But, yeah, like, you just bring your offspring. Then some generations down the road, everybody knows what's the honey pot.

[Donella Miller]

These. These sea lions that go to Bonneville Dam are like the biggest sea lions that. That have been recorded. So a California sea lion and. And it's only males. So the biology is the females, Brody's floss, they stay down in the Rotaries that are mainly in the. In the Channel Islands in California, so, you know, off Santa Barbara. So that's where the females stay. And they don't venture out of there. They stay very close to those islands.

[Steven Rinella]

The males that are going 140 miles up the Columbia are breeding with females in the Channel Islands.

[Donella Miller]

Amazing, huh? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

[Yanni]

So what it is, is it's like me telling. I found this really good hunting spot. You want to come and check it out with me?

[Donella Miller]

You can't.

[Steven Rinella]

But you can't talk, though.

[Yanni]

But obviously they talk. Yes.

[Donella Miller]

So there's photos of them at the rookeries, like on San Miguel island, where there's a male sea lion. Male sea lion. And then all of a sudden, there's this gigantic male sea lion. Oh, the brand on him, he was a Bonneville.

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[Donella Miller]

Oh, yeah. We have animals that we had captured, branded, and then recaptured. Two months. I think it was two months later, a month and a half later, and it gained 400 pounds.

[CJ Toledano]

Whoa, that's a lot of salmon.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, it's a lot of fish. And they do have. So this is the spring of the year. California sea lions arrive at Bonneville early April, and then by the end of May, they leave and they go. Because then it's time to go to the breeding grounds. So they leave the system and the stellar sea lions that are there now, which is a newer story, they also leave the system by the. By the end of May, and then the California sea lions show up back up the next. The next April.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, what are they. What are they feeding on specifically when they get there that time of year at Bonneville?

[Donella Miller]

Spring chinook.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, Spring chinook is the big. That's the big one. And a little bit of. There's probably some steelhead around as well. But it's primarily. Primarily spring chinook. They also eat sturgeon that lower the Columbia River. The lower Columbia sturgeon Population has really gone down and a lot of those would come up in a big congregating area would be the tail race of Bonneville. And they just got decimated by sea lions.

[Yanni]

So they don't.

[Steven Rinella]

No, no.

[Yanni]

This is like a two part question. Those sea lions don't have any impact on like non native game fish that are in there now like walleye and smallmouth. And then what kind of impact are the walleye and smallmouth bass having on salmon as well?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, so they're opportunistic feeders. Right. So whatever's the most abundant, that's what they're going to eat. And a sea lion that's at the ocean is going to have a really diverse diet. And then the further upriver they go, the more salmon centric their, their diet is. And when they get to Bonneville, it's. They're eating, depending on time, they're eating salmon, steelhead primarily. They're eating sturgeon now and then, and then they're eating some lamprey as well. And that's really it. We, we see a few other things. You'll see sucker, maybe an occasional walleye or whatever.

[Yanni]

But do you guys view that like walleye and smallmouth as a big problem for salmon or is it more like larger predators like sea lions?

[Donella Miller]

Walleye and smallmouth are a problem for sure. And it's probably a bigger problem upstream.

[Doug Hatch]

Of Bonneville in the reservoirs.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, the thing with the, the sea lion issue that I hadn't really put thought of before, but I mean that's almost, that's almost a dam problem. Like the dam is creating the fishery for the sea lions.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it's creating a holding pen for them where they can't get past.

[Donella Miller]

Right, right. And, and like you brought up Lewis and Clark when they went through Celilo, they, they talk about seeing Foca. Well, they'd never seen a sea lion, so they thought it was a seal. That was what they called seals. Oh.

[Steven Rinella]

So they were run. Okay. They ran into them way up the Hell river.

[Donella Miller]

So they ran into them there. And they were there in October. Right. Late September, early October at Celilo. And they shot one, but they weren't, but they weren't able to collect it. So they were trying to document it and stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

But so they had historically used the resources.

[Donella Miller]

So our tribal members are certain that they came up there in the fishery. They took care of the problem. The sea lions didn't stay long as a competitor there. Through the archeological stuff that they've done, they do find sea lion bones. But not in huge numbers. So they probably had hunts that would go down to get sea lions occasionally or trade or something. But it isn't like salmon bones that you just see everywhere. So it wasn't a, you know, nowhere near as important as. Plus like salmon or something like that.

[Yanni]

The competition factor would. When you've got 15 million salmon, like, there's room for the sea lions to take.

[Donella Miller]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Yanni]

You know.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You say the Stellars are coming up there too. They're coming from the north.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. So. So as the plot thickens and the story goes on by the states of Oregon and Washington put in for this 120 permit to remove animals at Bonneville.

[Steven Rinella]

I bet the animal rights people love that shit.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, it was a challenge. Yeah. And they got it. They got the permit in 08. And that was after documenting the presence of these animals for a long time. And how many animals are there, how many fish are they eating, how many days are they staying there? All of that stuff, all of that information was necessary to get the permit. As soon as they got the permit, then Steller sea. So they got a permit to remove California sea lions. And then two years later, Steller sea lions are in bigger numbers at Bonneville than California sea lions. And what had happened?

[Steven Rinella]

Who's bigger out of a Steller?

[Donella Miller]

Stellers are gigantic, stellar male. And again, it's males only. And they'll go a ton.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Can you.

[Yanni]

For people who don't know the difference, can you explain where the Stellers are coming from versus the California one?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. So California sea lions range from British Columbia to southern part of Baja. And the rookeries are primarily in Baja and along California. And then you got a couple of little places at California or along Oregon coast, but that's it. Steller sea lions are more northern. So they will range down into California, but they'll go up into British Columbia, probably up into. Into Alaska.

[Steven Rinella]

And you have them in southeast Alaska.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. And you have them broke into two stocks. This is the eastern stock, which is like the 144th latitude. Anything that's east of the 144th degree latitude is the eastern stock of Steller sea lions. And those are the ones that we're getting at Bonneville. To the west of that are the ones that are up in southeast Alaska, off the Aleutians and then further up.

[Steven Rinella]

So those dudes aren't calling all the way down to the Columbia.

[Donella Miller]

No, they're not. And they're not in very good shape. They're. They're listed. They're a Listed species, those western stock, the eastern stock.

[Steven Rinella]

I know a rock that would beg to differ.

[Donella Miller]

The eastern stock.

[CJ Toledano]

I was just thinking of that rock.

[Donella Miller]

The eastern stock was listed as threatened and then were delisted by 2013. 2012. 2013. So that was why they. You couldn't. Even if, even if they'd have been showing up at Bonneville and it would have been on the permit, we never would have. States never would have got a permit to remove them because they were listed. Now they're. Now they're unlisted and they are part of the removal program.

[Steven Rinella]

Now I want to get to that program. I got one little technical question you mentioned earlier. Catching them and branding them.

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Can you explain that? Catching them how? And branding them how?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. So the way we catch them is a trap. That's a dock. It's like a 16 by 16 square foot dock with chain link fence around it, a big chain link fence. And then like a gate that's on a guillotine type thing. And you can hold it up with an electronic device to trigger it so we can remotely drop that gate. You wait for sea lions to get on that track.

[Steven Rinella]

You baiting them or just letting them haul out?

[Donella Miller]

No, no. So they just haul out. So they want a place to rest and so you're looking for places for them to haul out.

[Steven Rinella]

And so that's the live traffic.

[Donella Miller]

That's part of the trip.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a big old havahart is you.

[Donella Miller]

Gotta set these tracks where they've been hauling out, where you think you can get them to use, and then they get accustomed to it and they'll haul out and then you'll drop the trap. And then we have a barge with these transfer cages. You go up against that trap, open the doors, run them into that transfer cage.

[Steven Rinella]

He just pissed? Probably, yeah.

[CJ Toledano]

How do they react when you walk up to them?

[Donella Miller]

So Steller's sea lions can be pretty ornery. They. They don't. Yeah, they don't take to it very well. California sea lions are pretty, pretty docile. They will, they'll move around. You could get in there with a piece of plywood in front and you could kind of herd them. But nobody would do that with a Steller sea lion. Right. They're big. I mean, it's a 2,000 pound animal that's pissed. In fact, now we put these arrays. So we take these 16 by 16 traps and we put three of them together. A couple of times we had single traps and you'd get three or four or five stellar sea lines in there. And then they'd start doing the WWF and they'd roll the trap over. So, yeah, they're big.

[Steven Rinella]

And then you branded them with a cattle brand.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

What's the brand?

[Donella Miller]

So a letter up there at C and then a number different locations. There's branding programs at different places. The state of Oregon used to brand at as, so there's. There's animals from there. There's, you know, all these different places where studies have been done. They have kind of a coding system.

[Steven Rinella]

Where do you hit them? On the hip?

[Donella Miller]

Right on the back.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Donella Miller]

Across the back. Huh.

[Yanni]

How long do they live? Like, are you seeing the same ones year after year after year after year?

[Donella Miller]

Right. So adult. These are. These are mature adults that we see primarily. We do see occasionally a few smaller sea lions now, but they'll live. They can live, you know, like in captivity. They might live to be in their 20s, but they'll probably in the wild, maybe 15.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. And how many, like at peak spring chinook run, how many are in that dam or at the foot of that dam? How many sea lions?

[Donella Miller]

So from the observation program that the Corps of Engineers does, the highest Observed consumption was 10,000 fish that they saw that they documented being eaten there in a tail race.

[Steven Rinella]

What does that mean? Over how much time?

[Donella Miller]

That's over the spring. So that's April through mid May to late.

[Steven Rinella]

So they'll see 10,000 Chinook get eaten by sea fish.

[Donella Miller]

And that's cherry pick. And that's the top. That's the top number. But that represented almost 5% of the spring chinook run that was going over the dam.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, so you're losing 5% to sea lions.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, well, that's within this quarter of a mile that you can see from the face of the dam and do the observations. National Marine Fisheries Service has done studies in the lower river where they put pit tags in them. So that's, you know, that's the way we track salmon in the Columbia. And it's basically the same thing that you get in your dog to track them. And there's a huge program in the Columbia where they. These pit tags go over antennas. It activates the antenna and records the number. So they're all individually numbered. So we know any salmon that we've put a tag in, we know by individual. And at all of the dam ladders, like at Bonneville, we have pit tag detectors. So when they cross the dam, we know it. So they captured these by gill netting in the lower river down by Astoria, National Marine Fisheries Service would capture these fish put pit tags in them. This was spring chinook. And then release those fish and also took genetic samples. And with the genetic samples we could figure out what their origin was. So you could subtract off any fish that were going to lower river tributaries. Also, harvest is highly regulated and we know what the harvest estimates are for each week. So subtract off harvest and then you have the number of fish that you tag that should go over Bonneville. And in the biggest year, which was 2015, the biggest loss, 50% of the spring chinook run was lost between Astoria and Bonneville. And that's peer reviewed publication. 50% attributed to sea lions. And so we had 200,000 fish were eaten by sea lions. 200,000 fish cross Bonneville. And that's the largest spring Chinook run we've seen in decades.

[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

Is Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman from.

[Julian Edelman]

Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Rob, I've never asked. Are you a dips guy?

[Julian Edelman]

Like the workout? You can't tell.

[Rob Gronkowski]

No, I mean for your chips.

[Julian Edelman]

Oh, I knew that. Yeah, of course.

[Rob Gronkowski]

You gotta try this new Daisy's French onion dip. Goes great on Sundays.

[Julian Edelman]

Daisy, like the sour cream brand?

[Rob Gronkowski]

Yup. That's how you know it's gonna be fire. I use their sour cream all the time. Goes perfect with my Taco Tuesday dinner.

[Julian Edelman]

Oh, Jules. The Chef, I love it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yep.

[Rob Gronkowski]

And now I've added the daisies French onion dip to my Sunday spread. They make it with all natural herbs and spices.

[Julian Edelman]

I like the sound of that. Everyone knows you need a good dip for game day. Personally, I like to dip everything I can. Veggies, crackers, chips. Heck, I might even dip a buffalo wing in there.

[Rob Gronkowski]

That reminds me, they also have Daisy's ranch dip.

[Julian Edelman]

Now you're speaking my language. Sundays on the couch just got even better.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Yup, seems like a no brainer on game day. So get out there and give the French onion dip a try. You won't regret it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out [e-mail]. that's O-O-O.com.

[Yanni]

Going back to what Steve said, how many sea lions are consuming 200,000 salmon?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Steven Rinella]

You can ballpark it.

[Donella Miller]

I mean, it's not that many.

[Yanni]

Right.

[Donella Miller]

You know, that are at Bonneville. It's like, I think a couple of years, we've maybe seen 200. A little over 200 individuals.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[Donella Miller]

So it isn't huge. And the animals that have been from this group of branded animals, there's a big hall outside at Astoria called the East Mooring Basin. And we'll site animals there and then the ones that you'll see at Bonneville or at Willamette Falls, another place where they congregate. Similar situation with sea lions. It's only about 7% of that branded population go that far up. But that seven come back every year, just like you're talking about.

[Steven Rinella]

They habituate, they're as faithful as the salmon man.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. Once they've locked into it, they come back and we'll see them multiple years, three, four, five years.

[CJ Toledano]

So the tribal rights, because it seems like sometimes they can trump other laws and rules and regs, but I'm guessing that doesn't work in this case to trump the Marine Protect Mammal Protection Act.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Because of the act, and that's what I've been talking about is you guys.

[Steven Rinella]

Don'T have harvest rights on sea lions.

[Doug Hatch]

No, because historically they didn't come back in those, those numbers and they're not coming above Bonneville. Well, we have a few that come above Bonneville Dam. That where our gillnet fisheries are only above Bonneville Dam in the Zone 6 fishing area. And so we don't harvest them. Like the big numbers are the lower river. And how you said sea lions are a dam problem. Well, it goes beyond just the dam problem. When they're using that entire stretch of the lower river from Astoria. One year at Astoria he was talking about that east mooring basin. I think there were. Was it 10,000, 8,000?

[Donella Miller]

It was right around 4,000.

[Yanni]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

At the east mooring basin. In the east Mooring basin it's not very big. You know, it went from the early 2000s there would be a couple hundred a year and they do counts every day on these and they'd haul out on the docks. The east mooring basin is not used anymore. Used to be commercial vessels there as well as recreational. And it was just taken over by sea lions basically.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, I think what I think. But I think what Yanni's asking is like picture that. Like for instance, I have more familiarity with regulatory structure in Alaska. But, but there are cases where you have Noah administered species. You have like US and Fish and Wildlife Service administered species, whatever. But you have like tribal harvest rights.

[Doug Hatch]

Rights.

[Steven Rinella]

Where like you know, they can harvest, they can harvest walrus, they can harvest whale species. Right. The things that would be off to off limits to everybody else. If, if you're, if the inter tribal group on the Columbia, like if you wanted to, you wouldn't have the authority of just saying we're going to do sea lion control on our own because we're not beholden to. We're not beholden to ESA or we're not beholden the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Like you don't have that ability that you don't have that legal ability just to take it into your own hands.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, we actually have. I know Yakma has written their own resolution. Right. Which is a tribal law that the taking of sea lions to protect life and property. And it was funny, I actually ended up in that situation where I fish by the city of the Dalles. There was an animal, there was a boat basin. Right. Where people have houseboats and whatnot. Well, there was one that was actually living on a dock in there and those people were feeding it. It Was there for a couple years. Right. It wouldn't leave. And it was. I'd be running my nets and it would be swimming back and forth right next to me. And, you know, they had passed that resolution. And my supervisor at the time was like, you could shoot it. And I was like, yeah, that would be real good optics. Yakima Nation fish biologist. And I don't want to end up in court for the next 10 years. I didn't want to be the on it, but in hindsight, maybe I should have, like.

[Steven Rinella]

And you could have.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, I could have, but those types of things are happening. But like I said, the animals aren't up where we gill net, they're down below. So it would be hard for us to. And we still have those laws in place, but, you know, and a lot of it is just being good co managers. Right. We don't want to, you know, we want to work together with.

[Steven Rinella]

You don't want to go rogue on that kind of thing.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Because there's so many other issues, like we talked about, about death by a thousand cuts. Right. This predation, the sea lion is a huge impact, but there's tons of other things that we work together on. So we're just pushing.

[Steven Rinella]

If you make too much smoke around the sea lion issue and you. And you create, like a bad optic situation, it could impact you addressing all of the other issues that are making.

[Doug Hatch]

The problem and funding as well. Just because you get the permit doesn't mean that you're getting any funding that comes from appropriations and things like that is so this. The program that we have, like, how Doug's explaining the trapping and it has to be chemically euthanized by a licensed veterinarian and things like that. So it's really inefficient, like, because there's. That's in the act. Right. That it has to be chemically euthanized by licensed veterinarian. Like, it would be so much easier if you had it and you could just shoot it. You know, that's humane as well. Like, rather than dragging them through all of that.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Like torture before leading them to their death. And, you know, it's really inefficient, the laws that are put upon us to be able to do this work. Like, we could be doing a lot more like darting. You could dart to euthanize, but then you have to be able to recover the animal as well. So it's like you have no choice but to trap. And, you know, like you said, you see the same animals and As I was mentioning too, like it's not just a dam problem anymore. That's why I brought up how many come to the mouth at Astoria. There's thousands there. But they're learning traits. Like when we have smelt runs returning, when we have sizable smelt runs coming up and you know, historically they were in the lower tributaries and a lot come back to the Cowlitz River. Well, the sea lions follow the smelt up to the Cowlitz river and there'll be hundreds like 500 plus sea lions at the mouth of the Cowlitz feeding on the smelt, which are also threatened as well. And there was.

[Steven Rinella]

So they'll narrow down on something that small. I didn't know that.

[Doug Hatch]

And so they follow up the smelt, they hang around there. When the smelt run trickles off, then they could move upstream like to the Lewis river and eat juvenile salmonids leaving the system. And then by then it's time to head up to Bonneville because you have spring chinook coming. So they're exploiting that whole stretch of the lower river. And the removal program starts at the I205 bridge up to McNary Dam. So it's really site specific. We don't have the ability or the flexibility to address to these changing needs. For one, we don't have funding. It's largely underfunded. There's so much red tape in how you do things. It's inefficient and we don't have the ability to react and take action where it's necessary. Like Doug said about that steelhead population in Ballard Locks going extinct. You know, the same thing could happen with their sockeye, same thing could happen with ours. And there's no hierarchy, there's no act amongst the act about how the MMPA plays into the esa. And another whole can of worms is the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Right. You have huge avian impacts of gulls and things like that that are eating. Like up to 70% of juvenile steelhead leaving the system are getting eaten by gulls.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, yeah, Gulls, cormorants.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And then now we have pelicans too that are feeding on adult sockeye. Like I mentioned, that year that we had the 800,000 returning past Bonneville, the majority going to Lake Okanagan. Half of them died because that year there was also a heat dome, warm, lethal temperatures. There were swimming zombies and pelicans just eating them like crazy. We have pelicans that are resident in the Columbia there. It's like a couple thousand breeding pairs. Right. It's a Ton they don't leave the.

[Steven Rinella]

System anymore and you can't just go out and start doing control measures on those. I guess cormorants were delisted. At least some kinds.

[Donella Miller]

They're all protected.

[Doug Hatch]

They're all protected under the migratory.

[Donella Miller]

Migratory bird.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah. But they, but there's places where they are cormorant like they're squishing nests and you know.

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, true.

[Doug Hatch]

It takes so much to get that to that like you wouldn't even think the seagulls you see everywhere at dumps and at places eating french fries. Right. How protected they are. There's a rocks like by island in the mid Columbia, right. It's called Miller island. And it's just the outcropping of rocks where there's this gull colony that I think it was like they were attributed to eating mid Columbia steelhead. 31% of the juveniles out migrating from that one colony. And we are still working in that process. Like you have to do so much effort of non lethal hazing where we're using like boom cannons and the next year we used a falcon and then finally we were able to do some lethal take and able to oil like some eggs and things like that. But when you do those things you're just playing whack a mole. You're just moving.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure, that's what it sounds like.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Somewhere else. So there's really no ability to manage even on that.

[Steven Rinella]

And so yeah, that river would flow with blood man. If you just needed to get rid of everything that was eaten. Everything that was eaten.

[Yanni]

Well that's the thing is fish always kind of get the short straw when it comes. Like you can't be shooting birds that people like to watch or sea lions that people like to.

[Steven Rinella]

You know.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. So that's the, the biggest thing. There's no act amongst the acts. There's no hierarchy. How do we have these species, these fish that are on the brink of extinction and these sea lions that are exceeding carrying capacity. That's why they're moving to find other food sources. And like looking at the future with sea level rise and change and everything. That was what Doug's been working on with NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service as well. Looking at impacts to the juvenile out migration. That's what he says. They eat a lot more french fries than we ever imagined. So.

[Steven Rinella]

Are you guys involved in the. I have an older brother, he's in his early 80s. He's been turning in his. He fishes the Columbia every day in the summer. He's been Turning in. You know, he's been doing a lot of bounty hunting on northern on the pike minnows.

[Donella Miller]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

What's the story with that? Are you guys involved in that?

[Donella Miller]

We're not peripherally, but I mean, Washington, State of Washington is the one that, that runs that program.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that, is that like productive or is that just like tiddlywinks? Like, is that. You think it's just pissing in the wind or.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, yeah. Because when you have a bounty like that, you have people exploiting it. Right. And I think there was somebody that was growing some, you know, oh my gosh.

[Steven Rinella]

Because some dudes are clearing a hundred thousand bucks a year on that bounty. He's not.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He was telling me he recently had a check for 70 something dollars.

[Yanni]

Covered his gas.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, he's primarily a smallmouth fisherman, but he likes to make a little side money on northern pike mills.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And with that being an actual native species, just the, you know, the change in the reservoir system. But I think we're getting a lot bigger issue on the predation from the warm water fish, the, the bass and walleye.

[Donella Miller]

Oh.

[Steven Rinella]

Like there's more that's doing more damage than northern pike minnows, probably. And then I got buddies like, God bless them, I got boys that like to fish, those like to fish smallmouth there. They're all up in arms about people pointing the finger at smallmouth.

[Yanni]

Yeah, that's what I was getting.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it's like the crumb fight, dude. The crumb fight is a complex crumb fight.

[Yanni]

Why would you want to get rid of this beautiful game fish?

[Donella Miller]

Yep, exactly. And then you have these gigantic walleye that they're catching up there around Umatilla area. Right. And so it's attracting people to come there to catch these big walleye. Well, a big walleye eats a lot of smolts.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. There's probably some group like walleye fishermen of the Colombian all that's like fighting to like preserve the walleye or whatever.

[Doug Hatch]

You know, up and down it is. And that's a big issue. Like, and then you have the fishing guides, right. They say, well, that's our. That's our off season from salmon. It's like restore the salmon. Then you'd have a lot more salmon openings. Like they show those big walleye and they cut them open and there's like tons of smolts in them and multiply that.

[Steven Rinella]

This guy down here, Big walleye guy.

[Donella Miller]

Guilty.

[Doug Hatch]

You could have them come get them all you want.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, it shows that mind frame Is like totally different water system but you from like here we have the Yellowstone Park. You know, Yellowstone Lake had a. At some point in time they put lake trout in there which real detrimental to the cutthroats. And so at one point they like made it that. I think it was mandatory retention. You know, if you caught it, you had to kill it. I had a buddy, he lived here in town years ago, he would love that to go up there and fish. And I remember I was asking him about it and he's like, yeah, I like to hit it. But I'm always conscious to not damage the resource about the lake job because like people just get. That's just how people's minds work, you know, like you go out and you catch some big old smallmouth and then it's just, you know, there's like a certain human adaptability I guess man. Like people maybe you get where you get where you get fatalistic or pessimistic or something and you get. Well, we're not gonna. The salmon things not gonna get fixed. And I love the fish and they're not going to fix that. So I'm, I'm here for smallmouth, I'm here for walleye and that'll have to. That'll do. That'll do for me.

[CJ Toledano]

No, I'd much rather see the 100 pound chinooks.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, dude, for sure. But I'm saying I'm just trying to get into the like, you know, I mean like that's probably without even thinking about it. That's where people arrive.

[Yanni]

Plus you're like you've created a recreational fishery that never existed before. So people jump on it, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[CJ Toledano]

Do we know how? And stop me if I'm going to jump ahead too much. But I got to get this question.

[Steven Rinella]

Are you gonna ask why can't we just get rid of all the dams?

[CJ Toledano]

No, but it is damn related. But do we know how now with all of our knowledge to do hydroelectric power and salmon simultaneously? Oh, it is there technologically, yeah. Has someone figured out how to do it but we just don't have the funds to do it? Like is there a way to make these things not be part of the central, you know, system of the river where like the nature could still do its thing but offset from that you'd have hydroelectric power.

[Doug Hatch]

We keep it's. It's ever changing goalposts. Right. There's no limit or there's no oversight of carrying capacity. It's always more like we could be. We could have. There's room for salmon in the Northwest, you know, in the environment with this amount of electricity and that spill, right, Having spill, keeping the river, a river and not just, you know, the way they want to operate it for the grid stability is to turn it off and on like a battery, like a light switch, which is unnatural. You know, like you have, you know, your peak loading and things like that for. To support industry and things like that. So that's what's really damaging. You don't have the spill to flush out the juvenile salmon because that's.

[Steven Rinella]

You mean a spring runoff.

[Doug Hatch]

And then even in the summertime, right? Like late spring when, when fish are moving out, like the journey that used to take two weeks now takes two months. And they've expended so many of their resources before they even get to the ocean that survival decreases. And the same thing when adults are returning. You have the temperature, the Columbia is warming earlier and earlier every year so that it's reaching 68 degrees, like days earlier. We have a chart that I could share with you over time of when you're reaching these lethal temperatures. And that's why we have dying sockeye now. Before, we used to be seeing those getting up to the lethal temperatures in the fall, but then you'd get fall rains that would cool it back down, but you're not seeing that anymore. So it's just a lot. That's why the litigation has been there for so many years, is because it's hydro operations is. Is the huge factor in survival.

[Steven Rinella]

But is, but is there a. Like, however you measure the amount of electricity, okay, like take any particular dam and you measure how much. What do they measure it as? What is the dam measured as? It puts off blank megawatts. Okay, yeah. Tianni's point be like if you take a dam and it produces 100 megawatts, I don't tell 100 megawatts. Would you, would an engineer now look and go like, oh man, nowadays I could give you a hundred megawatts without all that. Or I could give you a hundred megawatts with a much better fish passage system. Were we to start from scratch, do you know, I mean, like, is there ways in which there's an engineering solution? And I always say, like the, the, the that we're. They're constantly asking for more and more and more megawatts. But if there weren't, just theoretically, if they weren't asking for more megawatts, could you get it all in a way that wasn't so damaging to the fish? Now that we have all these Technological advancements that have occurred since 1950, you know.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, it's. That's tough to do. So. And all of them are different. Right. Wells Dam, which is one of the highest, the highest passable dam on the Columbia, has what they call a hydro combine. So the spillway sits and then underneath it is the pin stocks for the powerhouse. Well there the attraction flow for the pins is all in one place. And you can kind of direct your fish up into the spillway and get them over other places. You've got the spillway a quarter of a mile away from where the powerhouse is. Some of them are built at an L, you know, I mean every one of them is a different place because they had to be to, to put them in those locations. And so I think it would be like the complete tear down and rebuild. So the infrastructure cost would be huge. And unless NERF starts making turbines, there isn't really a way to do it, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So there's not like retrofitting and things. It's just they built them and that's what they are.

[Donella Miller]

They're better and better.

[Doug Hatch]

They're updating. We just visited, I toured John Day Dam recently, which is I think the third largest power producer. We have Grand Coulee, Bonneville and then John Day. And the size of the turbines are huge. Like you go in there, like the dam doesn't look that big when you're driving. But the width of it, those turbines in there, I think they're like 60 or 90 foot diameter. Like that's how big. And they're like 30ft tall. Like there's one that's needed repairs. They had it lifted, you could see it. They've been doing repairs on it for 10 years. And they were saying that that one's the next one scheduled to be updated with this newer turbine that they have at Bonneville. And that's supposed to be, you know, more fish safe and water efficient.

[Steven Rinella]

Because these are literally kill. They're literally hitting fish and killing them.

[Doug Hatch]

But just going on the scale is like I had to physically see it to understand, like, my God, these things are massive in the amount of money. Like that project scheduled to start in, I think he said 20, 30 cost several billion dollars and take 20 years to complete.

[Steven Rinella]

So even if that's fixing existing stuff.

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out odoo at O D O o dot com. That's O D O o dot com.

[Yanni]

There's like, has to be. These power companies are like, have to be under some pressure to at least on the face of things, show that they're doing things to help these runs. Like, what kind of partners are they to work with? Like, is it just like, do you feel like it's just lip service or is there like, like a bonafide effort to help out? Or like, what's the, what's the relationship with these power companies?

[Doug Hatch]

Well, the, the hardest thing is because it's not a power company, it's the federal government. Right. So they could more or less do what they want on the timescale that they want. And how things get done with, you know, 10 years of studies and appropriations five years out, and it's not even sufficient for today's dollar, let alone in five years.

[Yanni]

So the dams are managed by the federal government?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, they're operating corps of engineers. And the business end, the marketing end of the power is Bonneville Power administration. And that's 100% business focused on money, not looking at mitigation. They have the Fish and Wildlife program. Like there's been years of like unanticipated revenues. Like they've made like millions and millions more than they anticipated. Okay, so the Fish and Wildlife program is X amount. They have all this unanticipated revenue. There's a cap on how much goes to the Fish and Wildlife program, the rest of it, they go back to pay down their debt with the feds. And they also give breaks. They give money back to their industrial users. Like what, what company does that?

[Yanni]

Do they just kind of view you guys as like a fly buzzing in their ear?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. The solutions are. Aren't new. I mean, basically it's running a river more like a natural river. The more you could do that, the better it is for fish.

[Steven Rinella]

But you mean like even with the dams. Yeah, there's like, even with the dams in place. I guess that's kind of like. I guess I'll jump to what would.

[Donella Miller]

Be.

[Steven Rinella]

Sort of a version of my last. My last question would be. Years ago we had Mike Simpson on Idaho Representative House Representatives. He came on and he was. At the time, I don't think it went anywhere. He was pitching a plan on a dam removal plan which had so many facets around agricultural production, shipping and all that. And it came with this stipulation that were they to do this removal project, all the litigants, all the environmental groups, imagine tribes would agree to sort of this, this like cease. They would, they would stop lawsuits for some period of time on. On fisheries. That dam still standing, Right. So like a sort of like broad ultimate question would be, what are the odds that dams come out? Like, you know, if you had to crystal ball a century into the future, do we have fewer dams then? And then the offshoot of the question is if is if. No, the dams will never. It's not real. The major dams will never go away. Then it's. It's what could be done differently. And you're kind of getting at, I guess, like you could. The dams could still be there, but there are other things that are plausible that could help.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, you got to run it as close to a natural river as you can. Its priorities. Right. If you prioritize fish passage higher than you do now, it's prioritized for dam or for power production.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

Right. And so it's maximize or optimize power production. And then whatever's left, it's the crumbs, whatever's left. We could do what we can around the edges for fish. But if you raise that and made the fish more important, you know, you can look at papers from the 50s. They knew some of the solutions. These aren't new, but it's always been that the money is from the dams and the power production, and that's run the whole system and it all operates and revolves around that.

[Steven Rinella]

When they were conceptualizing those dams, I've asked other people this question. I don't know if I ever got like a great answer to it. But like when they were pitching the dams, the engineers, right, Everybody's getting together on these dams. Did they realize, do you think they knew? Do you think their discussions included conversations about how catastrophic this would be for fish? Like, did they.

[Doug Hatch]

They knew there was actually. The. The memos were discovered by opb Oregon Public Broadcasting recently. He did a Tony Schick did a series Salmon wars podcast. But yeah, he had the memos that talked about the kind of. The cost benefit analysis. Like I said, the salmon became a problem because then they'd have to put in fish passage. And they also labeled it as an Indian problem. We get rid of the salmon, we don't have to deal with the Indian problem on. On the mainstem river anymore. So that was in all of those. It was A choice. Even on the Upper Reach, they were.

[Steven Rinella]

Wide eyed about it because they looked.

[Doug Hatch]

At building Bonneville without passage, with or without. And thankfully with and. But you know, you look up in Hells Canyon, Hells Canyon Dam, there's no passage, but there could be. They could bore through the, the mountain to, for their turbines, you know, to make the turbines more efficient, but they couldn't provide passage. So all of those things, you visit them, it was a choice and all based on cost and also looking at long term maintenance. And you talked about, will these be here forever? No, because there's lack of maintenance, like Doug said, okay. All the money and the emphasis is put on power production and things get fixed really fast. But when there's an issue with the passage thing or especially monitoring, that's the first thing to get sliced off of the budget.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that right?

[Yanni]

Really?

[Doug Hatch]

And you were talking about, you know, litigation. We had that stay in litigation which was going good. We were just getting started in. But In June of 25, it was canceled, terminated by the, by the current administration. So we lost all of that headway that we had made over those, those couple years with the Biden administration. So we're back to we still have the six sovereigns working together, pushing to advance those efforts and looking for appropriations, but we don't have the commitments from the agencies of the federal government, the Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps and everything like that to address these problems. And you know, when we started our advocacy, we were talking about the billion dollar backlog, the billion dollar backlog in needs in the Columbia Basin. Well, once we started writing it down on paper, it actually came out to be like $2 billion, like a billion dollars in passage at the dams and then like another billion in hatchery maintenance. Because they built these hatcheries, they're so outdated and never reach full production. They have failing intakes, crumbling raceways, they're not efficient. And so the things that we advocate for isn't just for us. It's actually, can you appropriate the money for you to fund yourself to do the things that you should be doing? And then even, you know, looking at habitat restoration and you know, the roads and culverts and irrigation intakes and everything. We're just like out there looking for everybody to do the right thing of what we all should be doing for our environment. And you know, it's like a shared responsibility from all of us. And like the Acme Nation, we were involved with a dam removal project. It didn't get as much media attention as like El Wa Dam, but it's actually, it was actually a bigger project and it took like 19 years for that dam removal. And the only reason it got done it was because it was with the private company, it was Pacificor. And then it came down to the license. For them to update the license, they had to either provide passage or take it down. And then they drugged that out for five years. The tribes Yakima and Crypvic actually pitched in money together to fund the study. The cost benefit analysis that showed that removal would be cheaper and then pacificorp finally breached it. But it's like we have to hold their hand and walk them through everything and keep pushing all the time. It's just more like pushing and paying to hold them accountable of things that they should be doing and funding things appropriately. We could have these acts and permits and everything, but unless we have the resources to enact them, it's meaningless.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm going to go out on a limb on this one, but I mean the way the Trump administration's playing out with their like conservation record, I can't imagine they're of any help on salmon issues. It's gotta be low priority to them.

[Doug Hatch]

It was actually the Trump administration that signed the permit for the pinniped removal. Right. During these.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, so really?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. But the thing that we get from congressionals and actually our supervisor, our executive director actually just testified in Congress last month on this pinniped issue and we're Republican witness because. And we have our.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah, I was thinking of that being like an interesting trade off is what the administration is going to give you is probably greater latitude because like, like of a, like of a general suspicion of some of these acts that were passed. Greater latitude for some things like removal of species, but sort of just like generally less sympathy about river flows and things I would imagine.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, that's what we're after is that, you know, there's no management provision in the Marine Mammal Protection Act. We'd like an amendment to add management provisions and so a way that you could analyze the problem. And if it's river otters somewhere, if it's California sea lions or Stellars or whatever the problem is, there would be a process you could go through to get some management in place and be able to do that. I guess I get quickly back to the sea lion thing. What we talked about earlier was the 120 removals and then there was an amendment that was passed in 2018. It was signed by Trump and his first administration that did recognize the co management of the tribes. So tribes our Four treaty tribes were able to be party to permits along with the states, and then our tribes could delegate to CRITVIC to do that. And we've been doing that since. But it's, you know, red tape is a killer. Because that was passed In December of 2018, we immediately applied for a permit, and our joint permit was finally issued in August of 20. So two years. Two years. And then we start implementing it. And then that provision, it's 120F, it allows area management. So that was the. Above the 205 bridge. If an animal's up there, he's individually identifiable and he's having a significant negative impact. So if you can collect that animal, you can euthanize it, but it's very restrictive. You can't go out and specifically, you can't shoot them. You have to trap, chemically euthanize. So there's still some burden to it, but it isn't the level that we used to do when it was individual sea lion management. So it's a little better, but it only applies to the Columbia.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So, yeah, on the, on the question about the different administrations, I don't want to put you in a rough spot. Maybe my assumption is wrong. But, like, I just remember years ago, I think, I can't remember if it was the first time Trump was running. He was kind of. He was in California. He was like, ridiculing the delta smelt, you know, like, why would you ever sacrifice anything for some little fish? And I think there's just like, in that way, like sort of a dismissiveness about some fisheries issues. But, but have you guys found that, like, have you gotten more done during the Trump administrations than you do during the Biden administrations? Or is it not that simple?

[Doug Hatch]

No, it's not that simple. A lot has to do with funding that's coming into the federal agencies. The federal agencies now that we work with have been gutted. Right. So there's less, less people to do the same amount of work and with less money, which, which is a problem.

[Steven Rinella]

And so you felt the impact of, like, some of the cuts to land management agencies.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, and that.

[Steven Rinella]

And like, but like also a red tape reduction. So less money and less red tape.

[Doug Hatch]

No, it's still there. It's just the processes just take longer now, you know, or you don't have somebody there to. You don't have that human there to process this permit, which we ran into last year on a tagging project, like, we couldn't access that area because there was no. The person was doged. That did wrote that permit for us.

[Steven Rinella]

I see.

[Doug Hatch]

And just things like that. I think the around this predation thing is like the one crumb that we could actually get done during this time. And because like I said, we were a Republican witness and resistance to change and we're mindful of, you know, ag and transportation and things like that, but we're looking for responsible ways to do things. There's beyond the status quo and you know, there's a lot of interest in just protecting the dams. So they're quick to point at sea lions. They are a huge impact. But that's not the only impact. But if that's the only thing we could get right now, understand then we need to maximize our effort and jump on that and get these things done now while we have the, while we have the chance. While the focus is on that.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a conservation gamble that just in the conservation movement at large, that is a gamble that causes for people that like things simple. That's a gamble people have to live in. That makes people uncomfortable. Especially people that want things to be very cut and dried. Good guy, bad guy, really simple. But that an organization, yourselves or any number of conservation organizations with a new administration comes in and you're like, here's all the things we're not gonna get. But there's this, you know, and we can be friendly and try to get this one thing or we can dig in our heels and spend four years with nothing. You know, I mean, and a lot of people want you just to dig in your heels and get nothing rather than look like you're cooperating. You know, and then it flips. Then four years later it flips the other way around. You're like, like, you know, killing sea lions is out. Yeah, right. But we might get some sympathy on this other issue.

[Doug Hatch]

You know, it was really hard. We were kind of a perfect storm. We ran into. Was right. We had that. We've had this accords agreement since 2008. It's the Bonneville Fish Accords. Where was a 10 year agreement 2008 to 2018 where there was a set program? We said we won't sue you and you fund these programs. And the benefit in that is we weren't having to justify and fight every year for funding to do this or that. We were really micromanaged. Even now today we're still really micromanaged as fish managers, the expert micromanaged by the funding agencies, of course, because they control the purse strings. And that's still a frustration for us. But the Accords Gave us the ability to do non ESA work and work on things like sturgeon and lamprey and things like that kind of expand what we were doing. And we made a lot of progress. And since then we never signed another long term agreement. We went through two three year extensions in 18. And so we were just starting to negotiate a new long term agreement. Bonneville rolled the dice on the election and they won. We didn't get another agreement and they gave us another extension. But in that, and I mentioned the litigation on the hydro operations around esa, the ESA litigation. And so we were in that stay, we were living good, looking forward to a new, another favorable administration. And it, it flipped the opposite way. We lost that agreement. It was terminated. And then this Bonneville piece, they have no, the Accords ended. They have no written legal binding commitment to us except this really hard, long process of the Power Council, the Northwest Power act, their commitments to the Fish and Wildlife program, their responsibilities, which is really tough. So the accord is ending. And then there was money left over from that that was tied up in their years of red tape to build facilities or do certain projects. Well, when the tribes signed to take the litigation back into court, the stay was ended. Okay, let's reinitiate this litigation. Bonneville viewed that as a negative action towards them. And they said, we don't owe you that money anymore. You violated the accords. It was $50 million to the tribes that they're still. Our tribes are having to go to D.C. to lobby to get that money back to like we have projects we've been working on for 15 years.

[Steven Rinella]

And that would have been 50 million bucks towards salmon.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Not like for people to walk home and put in their bank accounts.

[Doug Hatch]

No, it was all earmarked for projects that we weren't able to get done on the ground because of their red tape. So frustrating.

[Yanni]

I got a question about the Klamath. Like, the dams aren't coming down on the Columbia. Right. At least not anytime soon. But the, you know, a year or two ago when they took out the four dams on the Klamath, it's like now seen as a success for salmon is like, I know you guys are focused on the Columbia, but is there like opportunities like the Klamath on other rivers besides the Columbia?

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, that one I mentioned on the, on the white salmon, the one that we did with Pacificor, which is funny, that was the same company that owned the Klamath dams, that removed them. And it was a lot because of, you know, reservoir succession. And things were so bad in that System. They had no choice, which we're seeing in the Columbia every year by a degradation of water quality, sediment accumulation and things like that. We're not, we're not keeping up in the Columbia either. And like, like I mentioned that the, the dam on the little white salmon that was removed, but it took 19 years to do that.

[Yanni]

Yeah, they got them down on, on the Klamath pretty quick.

[Steven Rinella]

It seemed like.

[Doug Hatch]

No, they were, they were in the fight for decades as well. You just don't hear about it until, until like things are happening.

[Yanni]

Oh, they're taking them down. Then it's like, oh, they're down.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And then always, like I mentioned, the only reason we got that dam removed is because of the licensing process that required fish passage. It was the same thing on the Klamath. They could have done fixes to maintain the dams, but it was cheaper for them to take them out. Like how you were saying. It's like things get costed out and it's never, it's not like, yay, we won. They did the right thing. It's like they did what was cheapest for their pocket. Yeah, that, that's always the trade off.

[Steven Rinella]

So I think how quickly do you see, how quickly when a dam comes down like that, like in the Klamath or whatever, how quickly do you see results in terms of fish passage the next year?

[Doug Hatch]

It was like that in the white salmon when we removed that dam. Actually a few years ago, I hosted the. We had a 10 year returning salmon celebration there because they thought it would take like several years to rebuild. But those fish have been coming back. Like, you open the door, they're gonna.

[Yanni]

Yeah. There were salmon that run in the Klamath this past fall, I think.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Yeah. So it was that very.

[Steven Rinella]

They're going up, they're like, this place is sweet.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah, this is the place my grandma was talking about. But yeah, it's just when you reconnect, have those openings, then they're going to find the resources and return to those areas. They find their niche. I see Doug has some pretty cool pictures of sea lions at Astoria. Bringing it out.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. Yeah, I want to show you those. I guess we don't have a great media for, for that, but.

[CJ Toledano]

Yeah, well, we can share them with Phil and he can put them on.

[Julian Edelman]

Okay.

[Yanni]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. Pretty astounding. These were from 2015 when the kind of been the peak of the sea lion issue. But they're just like all the docks in the east mooring basin in Astoria are completely covered with sea lions. And then they're patrolling in the water trying to find a spot to get out.

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[Steven Rinella]

I keep sort of asking this, and I think Brody asked too, but I just want to be clear on it. In a century, the big, like, in a hundred years, the big Columbia dams will still be there.

[Doug Hatch]

It's hard to say because things are getting so bad now. Like, you're starting to have closures of parks and boat ramps and areas because of toxic algal blooms in the summer because of heat. And I know right there in the Tri Cities, there's been dogs that are dying people. You know, the dogs are running around in the water. And so I think when it starts, it's gonna start impacting people and those types of resources because of the degradation of water quality.

[Steven Rinella]

And we didn't do it for salmon. We might do it for dogs.

[CJ Toledano]

Oh, yeah. If it starts hurting their furry pets.

[Steven Rinella]

Buddy and cattle, the wrong suburbanite's dog, and they're gonna be like, this cannot stand.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And then, you know, like, when cattle end up in those toxic algal bloom situations, it's like, well, if you would have just had this buffer from the. To protect the nutrient loading in your creek, then your cattle wouldn't have died. But they're still up in arms about their cattle dying because of that.

[Steven Rinella]

So it could be like a broader, like a broader litany of environmental degradations could bring up in the future more serious discussions about, like, doing something really radical.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And that's the thing. You know, like I mentioned the six Sovereigns, and then we had that resilient Columbia Basin agreement, but our negotiating piece was the creation of the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative. That's an initiative that's created and vetted by the six Sovereigns. It's the tribes, because our tribes, we've had with Crypvic, we've had the Waikonishmiwakishwit, you know, for 20 years, you know, that set these, these recovery plans and recovery goals. Well, this was taking that to the next step and coming together with our co manager. It's our guiding North Star that we're still working towards. And so that's what we're looking at today about habitat restoration in the mid Columbia. And also, like I mentioned, it's cold water refugia. The. Through the migration corridor of the Columbia where you have the tributary mouths, the deltas that are all full of sediment and you know, have all the predation and water quality issues and things like that. So we're able to like have this input of cold water to corral so that returning adults, they have respite as they travel these hundreds of miles upstream. And that's something that's doable today. You know, we just gotta break through the red tape and get the funding to actually do it. And that would be a huge benefit for salmon. Like we have all these recovery plans for the basins and you know, habitat projects just waiting to be funded and then addressing these things, you know, predation. I've been the squeaky wheel about predation over the past few years. Like the pinniped predation, but also the avian predation and the piscine, the warm water predators. But there's also invasion that are heavily impacting our river system. And that's American shad. Those were introduced in the 1800s and there was a very problematic. I saw article from the Seattle Times on the shad issue that they're just becoming accepted. That was the title. There's a new top fish in the Columbia and it doesn't mind the warm water where you have. We've had years of, of 8 million shad returning roshad.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Doug Hatch]

And so that's totally unnatural. And that feeds the predators when, you know, because their life cycle is opposite. So when these warm water predators, the salmonids are out there eating juvenile shad and then you have all the pelicans that are feasting on shad and they're spawning in the main stem. So it's a huge nutrient load. And so you have all this aquatic vegetation and algae growth because it's. It's not meant to be there. Right. You. You have barren tributaries that don't get those marine nutrients, but they're all piled in the. The main stem. And why the main stem's green now and muck and.

[Steven Rinella]

But dude. Oh, go ahead, Brody.

[Yanni]

One more. You hinted at how far these salmon will go earlier. If those dams weren't there, like what would be the terminal point for these chinook? Like how far would they go and where would they end up?

[Doug Hatch]

I know like distance wise in the Snake Basin would be at Twin Falls because you have the falls that was. It's huge. And then they went all the way up into the tributaries and the headwaters in Canada. You know that little piece of Montana where the Kootenai is and, and you know, like you have the Wenatchee, the Metau, the Entiat and the Yakima Basin. So all up into the Cascades, up into Canada, around to Montana, how far it stretches, Idaho and even Nevada. Right too.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. It's incredible, man.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, Steelhead, they'd go all the way up the Owyhee river there into Nevada. You'd get them up the Salmon river, up, up past Stanley, almost to Galena Summit, right at the headwaters of the Salmon, which is like 40 miles north of Sun Valley.

[Yanni]

So like twice as far as where you, you were seeing them.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And even like the other species, like I always said, were, you know, comprehensive and holistic in our salmon recovery efforts. Like Lamprey I think, you know, we put, you know, they're a sacred food source to us and they were also medicinal, you know, like. Cause they're so oily that that was your skin salve and your ear drops and stuff when you know, before you could go to the drugstore. But the, the benefit that they brought to the system and all of the nutrients in the forests and the animals and you know, like forest habitat, like they're lacking those marine driven nutrients for the standing forests. And then also like management, I think back to. I watched your hunting show Blue Mountain, Blue Mountain Bulls and it was on fire, right? There was forest fire. We're seeing that more and more. It's forest management practices. But also you know, like we don't have the same nutrients coming into the forest to grow. But you know those, that's the other side of the aspects. We touch all aspects of it and I think Lamprey is a huge part of that. Doug showed me a picture. It's in the Bruno river that flows into Nevada. It's. They dewatered this, this dam or whatever. They're standing on the cement. There's like thousands and thousands of lamprey and that's hundreds of miles from the ocean in this one little tributary. Imagine how many there were all throughout the basin, millions and millions. And all of that's gone now. And there's an effect, it's a ripple effect through the entire ecosystem. And so us just to try to put all these building blocks back together to create that better tomorrow because we can't restore the salmon back to barren streams, even looking at benthic organisms and things like that. So working with beavers and all of that stuff. So we're coming at it from all.

[Donella Miller]

Angles and to bring it back to your Semmelparis fish. See these fish died, right. They Go up and they die. And they brought all those nutrients from the ocean back to the forest and they get hauled out by bears and otters and everything else and brought in. And so the whole thing has been cut off. Those forests have lost all of that nutrient input for 100 years, 150 years.

[Steven Rinella]

My brother's a fisheries biologist in Alaska and they've been tracking that with marine isotopes.

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

So you have all these, these like traceable elements.

[Yanni]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Strontium is one that, you know, came from the ocean.

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

And the way it got from the ocean into the mountains was on a fish.

[Donella Miller]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And then you look at how that stuff is used by vegetation and animals and it's like marine. Just a picture of like that fish are a way of like wheelbarrowing in nutrients into nutrient poor regions. Yeah, yeah. You pluck that out and it's like you're not fertilizing it anymore.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. I mean you get up. Like I said, in that upper part of the salmon, it's just granitic soil. There's no nutrients to speak of up there. Ultra clear water, it's gin clear. But the nutrients aren't coming from what's running.

[Steven Rinella]

It used to get millions of pounds of natural fertilizer.

[Donella Miller]

Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

You know.

[Donella Miller]

Exactly.

[Doug Hatch]

And the other thing you were like, Yannis, you were asking, is there a way to operate the hydro system and still have salmon? But like I said, the ever changing goalposts and maybe things that would help would be like bringing on renewables and also battery storage. So you're not depending on the river to be your battery that you turn off and on. But then there's impacts, there's trade offs in everything you do. But that's where the tribes come in and advocate to do things in a responsible manner. Like all of our tribes have their own utilities. We're looking at different types of energy production. And that was part of the agreement and the litigation was funding for energy projects administered by the tribes like the Yakima Nation. They're working on a solar over irrigation project and also a dry pump storage project using rail railroad cars that you lift up and down the hill. And they're working at pump storage at several places. One is a really big issue for our tribes and especially the Acma Nation is the Goldendale pump storage project. They want to withdraw water from the Columbia, build a reservoir up on the hill and then they just pump it in a loop. They generate power when they need it and then pump it back up off peak when it's cheap and then so you have all these for one, they're boring through the mountain and then they want to tap into the John Day power line system to export that power. And then there's also a super fun site below from an abandoned aluminum smelter that's never been cleaned up. And it's one of our sacred sites. It's like Pushpum, it's like the mother of all roots. It's a place where we still go and gather and they just like, okay, yeah, you move aside and we're gonna do this here now. And it's literally drilling a 30 foot diameter tunnel through the mountain. And you'll see that also all in the surrounding area of the windmills, the wind generation, which like why does it have to be all on our native lands, open lands, isn't there low value agriculture that they could incorporate agrivoltaics and things like that? It's always looking at what's cheapest and easiest and that's these public lands that they get a 30 year lease from. And once they go in and alter it, it's never the same. And it impacts the withdrawals from the river for these things. And even the solar has huge impacts to the water table because they need water to clean the solar panels. So there's a huge water usage even with solar production. So what we're saying is we're not against all of these things but like let's not be in a rush to do it and let's do things right. And we can't put all of these burdens on the backs of the salmon and all the users who depend on them, the tribal people and the community members, because we're the ones that these resources are extracted and all the burdens placed on us and it all goes outside. It's all international companies exporting power to California into these industrial users and data centers and things like that. It's like again and again the same story. So let's do things slow down, do things better. Like yeah, we can, we need to do better find renewables, but let's do it right. So not just what's cheapest, what's cheapest today may not be in the long run because even if they, maybe they, they would have put more maintenance into the hydro system now. We wouldn't be, we wouldn't have these billion dollar backlogs and, and things like that.

[Steven Rinella]

So yeah, man, I was hoping you guys are gonna tell me something's gonna put me on a good mood.

[Yanni]

Well, they got some success stories we should go over.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, let's close out.

[CJ Toledano]

There's this too. There's like speaking of boogeymen, like, I feel like we grew up and the lamprey was the devil of all devils.

[Steven Rinella]

That's non native, right?

[CJ Toledano]

Yeah, I know, but still, you know, like I've never heard of a good lamprey and here you guys are trying to like promote it. So can we just touch on that a little bit? Yeah, because when we grew up in Michigan, it was like when you went to the, a hatchery we had, I can't remember the name of the hatchery now they're in Kalamazoo. But like every year you'd go on a field trip there and like it would just be nothing but placards on the walls about how the lamp reaches killing off everything.

[Steven Rinella]

That a system. It's like any, any invasive species story. It's a system that hadn't adapted with it. And then all of a sudden, ta da. Here's a bunch of lampreys. And like every non native species story, it just explodes at great expense to native fish. And so then you hear like, oh, you know where they are from, but.

[CJ Toledano]

In your neck of the woods they coexist.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And they're, they have that relationship. Right. They're parasitic but not lethal. You could see sometimes you catch salmon. It has a little round mark with the teeth.

[Steven Rinella]

They were lethal lake trout. Yeah, but in the Great Lake system they were killing. Yeah. Because again, it was a fish that was, hadn't adapted with the Rift, you know.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. So they do, they are parasitic. They. But they don't kill their host. Like they drop off and they can swim and migrate and everything. And then the benefit that they serve to the salmon is, you know, they're spawning in these tributaries as well. And then they're breaking down all the detritus and things like that. So they're the filters and the cleaners in the tributaries. And so.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, and these are Pacific lamprey that we have. Those are sea lamprey in the Great Lakes.

[CJ Toledano]

Okay.

[Donella Miller]

And you know that's like you said, that's an invasive in the Great Lakes. These are, these are native fish.

[CJ Toledano]

And so where is the sea lamprey originally from?

[Donella Miller]

East Coast.

[Steven Rinella]

And yeah, what happened was sea lampreys couldn't get past Niagara Falls. And so then when they got moved eventually, like that was a natural barrier and so the upper systems never had them. And then eventually on ship ballast or whatever, lamp rays got moved above a natural barrier barrier and then poof. And just decimated lake trout, you know, and they started all those different programs of poisoning spawning beds. And it still goes on. Another, like, you're talking about, like, another Doge cut was. There was a big. There was a big Doge cut around, like all this work to try to get lampreys under control in the Great Lakes system. And then they were asking the people that run the program, and that was when that was going on. I pointed out, like, on the show, I pointed out that there's a little bit of a. Like you said, like, paying attention to what the ramifications are. We've spent millions and millions and millions of dollars getting them under control. And then you. And then you go to save a couple bucks by ditching some dudes that you know, and then all of a sudden, the whole investment goes out the window, you know, because you're trying to save a couple dollars, right? Yeah, but that's different watershed, different problems.

[CJ Toledano]

Do people ever eat these Pacific lampers?

[Julian Edelman]

Yeah.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. Actually, I meant to bring some today, but I didn't get to meet up with my friend that she had some that she had put away that it was. We dried them. You know, you eat them fresh, roast them, and they're really, really rich. I'd say it's an acquired taste. I'll send some to you guys. You can taste some dried lamprey. But, yeah, it's really oily fish. And, you know, like, that was highly sought after. Right. You need those calories to.

[Steven Rinella]

They're in the scoffier's cookbook. One of the things that. When I was doing Scavenger's guide to oak Cuisine, one of the things I bombed out on was getting lamp rays. But that was in the scoffier's cookbooks. Like French. French preparation. French lamprey preparation.

[Doug Hatch]

Is it a bit like Mac, right? It is.

[Steven Rinella]

It's an eel. I mean, it's like. Yeah, if you cut its head off, you think you're looking at it.

[Donella Miller]

And they're crazy. Just the biology of them is pretty crazy. They're carlaginous fish. They're an ancient fish, jawless. They're 400 million years old. I mean, and they were here that long ago. I mean, when. That was when, you know, the continents were all connected.

[Steven Rinella]

Yep.

[Donella Miller]

And they've been able to figure out how to survive until man put enough dams on the river that we've, you know, they went down to critically low numbers in the Columbia, probably down to. To 20,000 or so. It's. We've had lamprey programs going for a while now at the tribes, and it is coming back and we've got lamprey that we've got coming back to Idaho and other higher tributaries. They're really. They're a weak swimmer. So getting over dams is a difficult thing. There's been a lot of technology stuff to try and figure out how to get them moving. But it's getting better.

[Steven Rinella]

You go up to, like, the Yukon, koskokwim, Kobach river. That's like an indigenous subsistence fishery still with lampreys.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Doug Hatch]

It was 50% at each mainstem project that you'd lose of adult lamprey returning. So that's why it was the tribes that took the initiative to start the lamprey translocation. So collect at bonneville dam and then take them up to the tributaries. And that's how we're starting to see fish returning. So we want to do more of that. And also installing passage for lamprey, like a wetted wall, you know, for them to work their way up. Because they can't go up the fish ladders because there's, you know, perpendicular surfaces.

[Steven Rinella]

They can't jump.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. So they're trying to swim up. They can't make it. But they could go all the way up that wetted wall. And so we're looking at adult passage at the dams. Translocation. Another hard thing is a lot of the juveniles get sucked out into irrigation because, you know, it's like a little worm in the slats on a screen. You know, they would have to be outrageously small to keep the lamprey out.

[Steven Rinella]

So they wind up going through sprinkler.

[Doug Hatch]

Systems, End up in all the irrigation canals and whatnot. And we do salvages. When they shut down the canal, we'll go in there and try to salvage as many of the juveniles.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Donella Miller]

And they're super complicated. So the life history of them. And so everything you learned about salmon then doesn't really apply. So it's trying to relearn all these things. They don't home like a salmon. If you get it in a particular area, they're going to come back to that spot to spawn. And lamprey don't. So it's.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, they don't have, like, site fidelity. They just go wherever they go.

[Yanni]

They're like American eels. Like, they're just distributed by currents.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, to a degree. There is some that come back, and they do have a pheromone that they give off. If there's juveniles there, they'll come back back to that location. But it wouldn't necessarily be where they were born. So it's complicated to Try and restore them. And really it needs a broader coastwide effort than if you need to improve it in a lot of streams. Not just. You can't just do a stream like you do a salmon and expect that that homing is going to help you out and they'll come back. Isn't going to happen.

[Steven Rinella]

And they're anadromous, but not the word I was saying earlier.

[Donella Miller]

They're not similar, Paris. They're interoparas. Yeah. They can repeat spawn, although not that much. And we don't know so much of it. We just don't know about it. Because it hasn't been a sexy fish to study.

[Steven Rinella]

No.

[Donella Miller]

Right. Yeah.

[Doug Hatch]

Well, there's a lot going on with them now. And what's crazy, it's funny, but it's not. We were at the. The dam, right. Bonneville Dam, where they have the fish viewing windows and that's where they count. Right. Back in the 90s, the Corps actually used to have an air blast system. Those damn lamprey getting in the way. They would air blast them off.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh really?

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, it looked like a series of moss, you know, or they'd be attached to the window and it would obstruct the view to count salmon. So they'd blast them off every 10 or 15 minutes and they'd push them down the ladder.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. My brother Danny, who's a salmon biologist in Alaska, he works on that. Stable isotope issues and a bunch of other stuff. A lot of like warm water issues and other things, but impacts warm water. One of his first, I think his first paid fisheries gig was he was in Walla Walla, Washington and he was paid to sit there looking out that window. This is one of his first paid gigs, man. Yeah, sit live like living in. Basically living inside the dam, counting fish in the window and. Right. Writing it down.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Steven Rinella]

Well, man, I feel like we go.

[Doug Hatch]

On all day, but we didn't even hit success stories. Or more success stories.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, yeah, who can conveniently give us some success stories?

[Yanni]

Well, we can just read them off and have them give us the short version. Steelhead reconditioning.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. So that's a thing I've been working on for 25 years along with a really good group of people, but basically. So steelhead are iteroparous. They repeat spawn. They're rainbow trout, so they can spawn and they can spawn again. They'll go up to whatever river they're in and then they spawn and they try to go back downstream and go back to the ocean. And in a totally natural system, the number of repeat spawners that you have in your population, they'll range anywhere from, you know, 5 to 6% up to maybe 30 or 40%. It's kind of dependent on how close you are to the ocean. Closer to the ocean, the higher you get of these repeat spawners through the hydro system, they don't make it. I mean, it is definitely not set up for large fish to pass downstream. And a lot of them will go through the bypasses, the juvenile bypass system. And there they get screened off. And we collect those fish, collect them at lower granite, other places. We take those fish then into a hatchery, put them in tanks. We've got specialized fish culture, fish care. And we'll feed them to where they survive and then they'll remature. And this has been concentrated on wild fish. So this is a fish that successfully spawned. There were no eggs in it when we collected them in the dam. They go up, we've reconditioned them, release them either that fall or some of them will skip and they won't spawn again until the following fall. We'll hold them for 18 months, keep feeding them. We let them go downstream of where we had collected them and then they go back upstream and spawn and they.

[Steven Rinella]

Skip their whole return to the ocean.

[Donella Miller]

Right. So we circumvented that.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, no kidding. So you've cut out whatever mortality happens out on the open ocean.

[Donella Miller]

Exactly.

[Doug Hatch]

Our communications director, he made a. A little pamphlet and it shows like the Steelhead spa where he's kicked back.

[Steven Rinella]

No kid, really.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And so you'll say, like, we'll take care of everything, brother.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And then when you're ready to go again, we'll let you go.

[Donella Miller]

And they home back to the same stream. And we have.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, how many fish can you actually do that with?

[Donella Miller]

Well, it's a. It's a. It's a safety net. I mean, you got these low numbers of fish in certain populations and you can target it to those streams by having a weir or some way of collecting to that stream. And especially in a Place where you're really worried about them blinking out or you get bigger collections, more generalized. Like Lower granite has the whole Snake River. We release them though, and the fish.

[Steven Rinella]

How many fish?

[Donella Miller]

A hundred maybe, or 150. We've been concentrating. We've been doing it at research scale.

[Steven Rinella]

Scale, you know, I understand this is now. Yeah. I'm not trying to dog.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, no, it's finally now we're gearing up to do this as a production scale. It's a Nez Perce tribe project at a production scale.

[Steven Rinella]

That's cool.

[Donella Miller]

But there's fish that go back to the Amnaha, the Upper Salmon river, the, the Grand Ron, the clear water, the Sea Sesh, everywhere.

[Steven Rinella]

This is. But it'll like. It's great.

[Donella Miller]

And it's wild fish.

[Steven Rinella]

And I, and I know we're looking for positives. It's great. But it's like, that is sort of like definite, you know, the term conservation depends on that is like, like the poster child of conservation dependence.

[Donella Miller]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, I mean, we have the fish because we literally handle it and care for it, you know. Yeah, it's. It's great. But, but it, I mean, you know, I don't want to be Debbie Downer. It's great. But it's like, holy. Has it come to that? Do you know what I mean?

[Donella Miller]

That's the problem is that wild still had recovery. Nothing's really worked.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

You do supplementation. Some things that have worked, we've been able to pull off with salmon. Hasn't worked for steelhead, we get hatchery fish. But getting more wild.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. All this conversation about how do you get these big ass fish out of the ocean to their spawning grounds. And with steelhead, it's like, okay, let's get these big ass fish out of the ocean up to their spawning grounds, back to the ocean, right?

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

And you're like, oh, that's tricky.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

They're not going back down.

[Donella Miller]

Yep.

[Yanni]

What about like Snake river fall chinook and then sockeye and coho. We've got those on the list for your success stories.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah. So in about the early 90s, Snake River Falls chinook were under 100 fish at lower Granite. And Nez Perce tribe had a hatchery program for fall chinook. And that stock has rebounded to where the peak was about 90,000 fish in the Snake River. I think it's hovering now around anywhere.

[Steven Rinella]

From 30 to 50,000 with some natural reproduction.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you get some natural. So the idea there is to collect the fish and Then out. Out plant those juveniles so that they'll return to the.

[Steven Rinella]

So there you're helping them. You're helping them get back to the ocean.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, kind of. That hatch. It's integrated hatchery program. So you're taking in wild. Wild fish as well as the hatchery fish. Trying to. To maintain the genetic, you know, your genetic integrity and stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

And those are getting back home on their own fins. I mean, they're going back up to. Yeah, they'll later make it up on their own.

[Donella Miller]

Yeah, there's fisheries now. There wasn't a false. When I was in college, there wasn't false chinook fisheries in the. In the Snake River. There are.

[CJ Toledano]

How big is the fall chinook there on that river?

[Donella Miller]

25. 20. £25? 20 to 30. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's fisheries all the way down as well as off the coast.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Dudes are catching those fish all along the hill.

[Donella Miller]

They're catching them everywhere.

[Yanni]

What about sockeye and coho? It says you had some reintroductions.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And that was a tribally led effort. Like how I had mentioned a lot of the hatchery production being in the lower river, which was a natural. You're just feeding your sport and commercial harvest and totally excluding the tribes and everybody inland. So it was. We started the coho reintroductions back in the 90s and taking juveniles from the lower river and taking them back into their tributaries like in the Metau and the Wenatchee, the Yakima. And that was highly successful. And so that was replicated by the Nez Perce tribe. And it was actually. The state of Idaho has a law against reintroduction programs. And it was by night that actually it's our tribal chairman now, Gerald Lewis. He worked in fisheries for a number of years. And it was back when he was in fisheries, he drove the truck in the middle of the night of taking those coho up to the Nez Perce tribe so that they could reintroduce them.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it was becoming illegally.

[Doug Hatch]

It was illegally, yeah. So under threat of arrest by the state, even on tribal land in.

[Steven Rinella]

Because what are they. Because they don't want to then create like new ESA issues for themselves.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. More responsibilities for maintaining and. And all that type of thing. So I don't know where the level.

[Steven Rinella]

Of cynicism, dude, is just unbelievable.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So like, don't put some there because then we'll be obligated to, like, do something to allow them to live.

[Doug Hatch]

So that the cohort introductions were highly successful. We started out Bringing in juveniles and we'd hold them in acclimation ponds for a month or so and then release them from there. And then as they started returning then we started building things out into a full supplementation program where we're getting our own brood to spawn in all these generations. And then we're still incorporating some of the lower river like as needed. But yeah, it's almost becoming a self sufficient program. But also you have the anti hatchery group but we're leading on the genetic side where we're incorporating, trying to have that genetic diversity and we use stocks that were similar to this area and distance and things like that. But you know, just being mindful of the work that we do. So there wouldn't be, there wouldn't be coho above Bonneville Dam if it wasn't for the efforts of the tribes. And I always credit our senior most biologist Tom Scribner with Yakima and he hates that I call him out all the time, but that was his life's work. He did years and years of advocacy and then also fighting with our state co managers because they were against it because there was worries because you know, coho are more voracious eaters and they were worried about them eating the spring chinook. It's like these things coexisted for millions of years. It's like we just need to get them back and they'll work out their areas and where they live and you know, like it took us to mess them up, let's help them recover. And the same thing with the sockeye reintroduction. You know, we're working with the Okanagan Nation alliance in Canada collecting fish at Wanapum Dam which is just upstream of the Snake river because the Snake river sockeye are listed. So that's what that has all the ESA restrictions and concerns. So we're collecting above the snake. And then so we did reintroduction programs into the Yakima, into Lake Cle Elum. And we just completed a passage project at Lake Cle Elum because that was used as an irrigation reservoir. You know, it was checked up and so there was no passage. And that's how, that's how the sockeye were extirpated in the tributaries was from irrigation cabaret reclamation. You know, these dams, these diversions without passage, no fish screens and dewatering events and things like that. So you know, the tribes have really been working together with BOR and the local irrigation districts to be able to get fish. Like how can we work together? The Yakima Basin integrated Plan is a great success story of that. They got this like $30 million fish passage structure at Lake Cle Elum for juveniles to out migrate. They'll still have to trust the adults over the dam, but they could go up into the tributaries and spawn rear in the lake and have access to get out. So that's been a huge success story. And we've been talking working with the Nez Perce tribe. They want to do reintroductions into Lake Wallowa for sockeye as well. Yeah, but that's really complicated because, you know, like with the ESA listings in what poor shape the. The Snake river sockeye are in. So they're collecting at Bonneville Dam and they actually utilize our genetic technology. They collect at Bonneville Dam and then they screen out and you know, they.

[Steven Rinella]

Could see kid me, you can screen out the ESA ones from the non.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So like you. We can move you, buddy. You got to stay put.

[Donella Miller]

No kidding.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah.

[Donella Miller]

And I think that's one of the big success stories too is collaboration. I mean through the six sovereigns, stuff that Donella was talking about with the other. With the states of Oregon, Washington, the treaty tribes we work great with at Bonneville Dam. That's an integrated crew that we have with the sea lion project. It's got people from state of Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Kritvik that we have all working together. It's under the same permit and it's all jointly done. So from the dark times that you talked about earlier, we're not all the way there, but it's better. It's looking. It's a lot better than when I started. It's improving and it gives you hope that I think it can get better.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, man. One of the things I appreciate about the conversation is I've always looked at the whole issue being that be like I always looked at it like binary. It'd be that the dam stay and the fish go or the dams go and the fish stay. And it's encouraging to think that there could be. I mean as much as it is like becomes like very conservation dependent, very expensive. But you could see some level of progress, you know, and like at least hang on and wait for like a better day, you know, like just to have something to say. Right. I know I've mentioned a couple times already, but my brother, who's the fisheries guy in Alaska, he had this really interesting perspective about Alaska versus Alaska versus the lower 48. He said that conservation lower 48 is. It's all recovery. Do you know what I mean? We're like we're in recovery mode up there. They're still in almost like a classification mode. They're still trying to go like, what's here? Right? Like what is here. Trying to count things, describe things, get a sense of what's there. And down here it's like we just look at like what's gone. You know what I mean? How do we try to fix our mistakes so hard?

[Doug Hatch]

Because it's. Salmon are international issue. Right. Even the harvest of salmon. Because that's why we have the Pacific Salmon Commission, Pacific Salmon Treaty and looking, you know, when things really tanked back in the 80s and the numbers were in dire straits in the Columbia Basin and that's when, you know, those court cases were happening and our tribal fisheries programs were really being established and the tribes started their supplementation efforts. That's when you could see the rebound in the curve on the graph of when our tribe started doing that, that work to get us here.

[Steven Rinella]

We haven't even gotten into all that stuff with like high seas drift nets and dudes out in almost an international waters peeling off American salmon, man. Like we didn't even get into that stuff.

[Doug Hatch]

But in the bycatch of salmon in other fisheries is here.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. And then they go digging into the cans of salmon and it's full of canned steelhead that they're catching out on the high seas. You know, it's just like unbelievable, man.

[Donella Miller]

Big the year, the odd years with the high pink numbers that's being seen. We're seeing decreased signal in Chinook and other lower 48 fish. And you know, those are Alaska as well as Japan and some of those Asian countries that are putting out a lot of pinks. So it's complicated.

[Steven Rinella]

No one's sorting through those nets, man.

[Doug Hatch]

And that's all it's done just for corporate interest. Right. That's not anything natural. It's not a natural population. It's not a public service. It's these groups putting out all this pink catch reproduction just for this commercial fishery. Low value commercial fishery in comparison to what they could be having in sockeye.

[Steven Rinella]

I sent Yanni the other day. Do you have that text message? Pull up that text message. I sent Yanni some fish price stuff. We'll close out, almost close out with this.

[Doug Hatch]

And we can't forget about where to go if you want to donate, you.

[Steven Rinella]

Know, but we're talking about just relative value here. When you're talking about like paying pink, like the pink industry. Do you have that nickel? This is paid at the dock. Yeah.

[CJ Toledano]

Steve and I exchanged at times, a lot of text.

[Doug Hatch]

So it's taking just a second.

[Steven Rinella]

I think it was six cents.

[Donella Miller]

Six. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And then compared to like a sockeye or a king. Hopefully Yanni can find it.

[Doug Hatch]

There's. There's been years that when I grew up fishing, we were getting two and a half cents a pound for tulies on the.

[Steven Rinella]

On the.

[Doug Hatch]

It's the. It's a different stock of fish like that runs in the. The lower river. You have upriver brights that were farther.

[Steven Rinella]

Upstream or truly like T h u l. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. But two and a half cents a pound. Yeah.

[CJ Toledano]

These were overall average prices paid to fishermen in 2025. This is the Alaska Fish and Game department. Chinook took 640 a pound.

[Steven Rinella]

Next down, this is paid to fishermen at the dock. 640 a pound.

[CJ Toledano]

Next down the line was coho at 141, sockeye at 117. Surprisingly to me, chums were 80 cents. And then the pinks came in at 30.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, 30 cents. Okay. But like just a relative picture. The. The way that the values on these fish are perceived, you know, and like the amount of like. Yeah, the other thing about the. Man, this is such a rich subject. You go on and on. But like the hat. The pink hatchery stuff is you think like, you think when you're running cattle. When you're running cattle and you want to run graze cattle on public land, you pay a grazing fee. You have a contract and pay a grazing fee. A cannery runs, a pink hatch. They're grazing for free. That stuff goes out in the open ocean and grazes for free. And then it comes back and you sell it for 30 cents. You know what I mean? You sell it for 30 cents a pound. Dude. It's competing with wild fish.

[Doug Hatch]

And then compared to the market, I was looking at just pike place fish prices as of yesterday. And of course, it's probably more expensive, but 30 to 40 pounds for wild dollars. Chinook.

[Steven Rinella]

30 to 40 bucks for a pound of wild chinook.

[Doug Hatch]

Yeah. And then that was an average. Then pike place was 55 for filets. Sockeye is about $50 a pound for filets. And coho is 28 or pink's honor. Nope. Sturge white sturgeon was like average 10 to 30 depending upon, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

You know who else we didn't get to? We didn't get to bitching about killer whales who I guess can go into a school of pinks. If there's a king in there, they go into that school. It could be thousands of pinks and they're gonna grab the king, dude. They know.

[Donella Miller]

They know the price. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Isn't that wild? They'll sort through. They'll sort through and find kings. Because, like, that's the good one. That's the baddie one right there.

[Doug Hatch]

Well, that's, like, with sea lions, right? Doug was talking about the Stellers that. That eat sturgeon. They were primarily going after the big females and eating out the bellies. Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Animals.

[CJ Toledano]

Well, it gives me hope, like your. Your aha moment story of seeing those giant fish in that pool. I feel like the stuff you guys are doing, if at the minimum, you're giving the opportunity for future generations to have that moment, hopefully we can keep the whole thing going.

[Donella Miller]

And then.

[CJ Toledano]

And to think that we could have, like, what Alaska has, like, literally right here or within a half a day's drive where we're sitting right now, and that we don't and that we're not putting more effort into doing it.

[Steven Rinella]

Could have walked across the river on them.

[CJ Toledano]

It's kind of crazy.

[Doug Hatch]

It's the resistance to change and moving beyond the status quo of. That's the way we've always done things. Like, you have this old car that's all beat up, and I'm barely keeping it running, but I refuse to.

[Steven Rinella]

To.

[Doug Hatch]

To trade it in to.

[CJ Toledano]

Well, it's the baseline syndrome, too. Right. None of us here in this room have ever would ever know, see, have seen or would know what it was like to have those kind of fisheries right here.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like, my little kids, like, if things. If we don't turn things around on salmon, my little kids would be like, man, 20, 25 was bitching, dude, we got three kings.

[CJ Toledano]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You'd never see that now.

[Doug Hatch]

Well, there's a lot of miscarriage.

[Steven Rinella]

That was the good old days.

[Doug Hatch]

There's a lot of misconception, too. People don't understand that. Like, what are they complaining about? Like, they see those reels and those videos of all those fish coming back to those pink catcheries, you know, and that's what they're showing. That's not what's going on in reality. And having fish coming back to the rivers and the spawning grounds and things like that, that's more natural. But they see these. These outrageous things and think that's not a big deal. And there's also a lot of misconception, and we call it the numbers game. Right. They're looking at the total number of salmon that pass Bonneville Dam. That's kind of what the outsiders view as success of the health of the river, like, you know, we're around 2 million now, but a lot of that is still lower river hatcheries. You have little white salmon and in spring chinook catcheries where they're not. Whereas wild spring chinook in the upper and mid Columbia, you're only getting like a thousand.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I got you of that. So you can cook the numbers, you make them, you can show what you want to show with the numbers.

[Doug Hatch]

And then also understanding that harvest is limited by those weaker stocks because you have ESA restrictions on spring chinook all throughout the basin. So you have very little access to harvest spring chinook. And, you know, the numbers are so low. Well, sea lions are eating most of them before they get to us. And then we fight over the, what, 17% harvest that's shared between the states and the tribes. And then also in the summer, because of the ESA listed sockeye concerns, and we can't access, we can't fish those on the successful Okanagan fish or upper Columbia fish because of ESA restrictions. And the same thing happens in our fall fisheries. We have mesh restriction sizes because of B run steelhead limitations. So it's like, things are great, but like, no, it's not. You have to look at the real picture of what's going on throughout the basin.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, well, I said, man, we go on all day, but this has been great talking to you guys about.

[Doug Hatch]

I've learned a ton and I'm just one person. We have a ton of great experts on any subject you want to touch on. And it would be really awesome to, you know, like, focus more on the cbri, the Columbia Best Basin Restoration Initiative. And, you know, that's what we're continuing to work for, towards and advocate for to get these actions done to continue the success. And also, you know, looking for partnerships of, you know, how we could work together. Because, you know, the only time we make actionable change is when we set aside our differences to focus on our commonalities. And that's when we connect. And also connecting his people, like how I said about, you know, salmon, it's the heart of our culture. It's cultural, it's spiritual, you know, like, and even things don't have to be religious to be spiritual. It could be that way for you or anybody else. Like, I talked to a lot of our staff. I shared my aha moment of that, seeing that fish 800 miles away. And they've talked about sitting alongside the stream bank and seeing that fish jumping to get over this barrier. Things like that. Like, like, we can all feel that connection. If we get out there and it's there's you can't put a value on that. So take a first step. Audience members, if you want to donate, can you guys plug your website? I know there's a donate tab there. Yep. Yeah. On our webpage, the Columbia River Inter Tribal Fish Commission. It's at www.cripfish so c r I t f c.org.

[Steven Rinella]

All you non Indian fellers out here, these are the fish. Same old fish. Thanks for coming on guys.

[Yanni]

Thanks.

[Donella Miller]

Thank you.

[Steven Rinella]

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[Doug Hatch]

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