Dennis Daw, Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation

Prior to European contact and development there were an estimated 10-16 million salmon and steelhead that returned to the Columbia River system, of those an estimated 1.7 million would have migrated to the Snake River and tributaries above the Hells Canyon complex of dams. Today the steelhead runs in this area are a fraction of what they were historically because of overfishing and dam building and many other factors.

This program will focus on the upper Snake River, upstream of Hells Canyon. We will learn when, where and how these critical changes happened and blocked the salmon and steelhead runs. Then we will learn about promising possibilities for a new narrative to this story. USRT, member Tribes, USGS and the Bureau of Reclamation are in the very beginning stages of developing a capture and transport plan to determine how to kickstart a program that would return salmon to the homelands of the Shoshone, Bannock and Paiute people.

The Upper Snake River Tribes (USRT) Foundation is composed of four Indian tribes of the Upper Snake River region in Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon: The Burns Paiute Tribe, Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation, and Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation. The four tribes have common vested interests to protect rights reserved through the United States Constitution, federal treaties, federal unratified treaties. USRT works to ensure the protection, enhancement, and preservation of the tribes’ rights, resources, cultural properties, and practices and that they remain secured. These include but are not limited to hunting, fishing, gathering, and subsistence uses.

Meeting and presentation will be at Smoky Man Pizza on Parkcenter Blvd. Social at 6:00 p.m. and meeting at 7:00 p.m.