The John Day is an amazing watershed.
I've been fishing the John Day since 2001 and a river steward for three years.
It's just a gorgeous country.
It's beautiful water.
It's 200 miles of undamned river and it holds a wild run of summer steelhead.
It's an amazing watershed.
So as a river steward, I've worked with ODFW and the BLM, other conservation groups such
as Wild Salmon Center, Water Watch, and it's really important to work with these other
agencies and conservation groups and other river stewards to ensure the success of a
healthy watershed for the John Day.
So the John Day River has a number of hatchery steelhead that stray into the river and these
hatchery strays impact the wild fish.
They compete with wild fish for spawning area.
One of the ways to reduce the number of hatchery fish would be to install a weir and at this
weir we could pass the wild fish and keep the hatchery fish down below and return them.
This would be really, really great for the wild fish.
I feel pretty fortunate that I've been able to do some traveling and fishing some amazing
areas and work and get to know other rivers that are probably some of the best rivers
in the world and I feel like what we have right here in our backyard is unbeatable.
For me it's a huge honor to be a river steward for the Native Fish Society because the Native
Fish Society in my opinion is the, the group, the wild fish advocacy group and we have such
a, you know, amazing, talented and diverse group of folks looking after all these rivers
all across the Northwest.
Just seeing what good shape our fish runs are in considering what they've dealt with
is really reflects on how resilient these critters and these rivers really are.
I mean to see the amount of logging that has happened and is still happening and these
fish still find a way to find a healthy tributary and spawn and come back and in good numbers
and these rivers their entire length are either in state-owned forest land or in private ownership
which is largely managed as an industrial forest land.
We really need our help because these fish don't have a voice to really stand up and
make a difference.
We as people who understand what these areas really mean need to stand up and make a difference.
We all come together.
I know that we can have a strong enough voice to really make a difference and protect these
rivers for forever.
Right here today being out with Rob Russell it's just amazing to see the guy come behind
me and scoop an awesome chrome buck.
I thought I covered that water pretty good too but just goes to show you how intimately
he knows this river so in touch with it, so in tune with it he knows exactly where to
be and when to be there and I think he knows exactly what it takes to protect a river like
this.
I think he knows certainly probably more than anybody that there's no fish around like
these fish.
They're definitely worth fighting for.
Because the South Uncle River was so prolific it was the first one to be domesticated.
As a result it received a greater impact from human intervention modern society than other
watersheds to such an extent that the general attitude is to say well sacrifice it, it's
a sacrifice zone.
There are no sacrifice rivers, there are none.
When that coho salmon showed up on my property after not seeing coho in that stream for 60
years it was a statement to me saying I want to live, I want the natural processes to continue
and if you let them continue your land, your culture are going to benefit by it.
When we see these native fish species the coho salmon, the Chinook, steelhead, cutthroat
flipping off the radar screen, when we see the runs diminishing, we see them going down
that is a direct sign to us that something is sick and there was really not a mechanism
for me to be able to effectively address that in my watershed without the native fish society.
Each river should be cherished, each river should be nourished and we're at a critical
point right now where we can redeem some of the harm that we've done and enact an awareness
in our neighbors, in our agencies that will ultimately teach us how to live, how to interact
with these fish and these streams.
We have a unique opportunity here in the Malala River in that we've been basically granted
a living laboratory looking at our wild winter steelhead as we begin to improve the habitat
conditions and recover that run of wild winter steelhead.
We're seeing that we're recovering not merely the steelhead but also the attention of the
community.
We're collaborating with the city of Malala, with landowners.
We have a diverse group of partners and as we recover our environmental situation we
also are recovering our economy.
Our local economy used to be a depressed timber economy.
Now we're finding through a close partnership with the city of Malala that we have a growing
and burgeoning tourist economy.
I still am enough an idealist to believe that we can see this river as it was years ago.
With fish, with trees, with a healthy ecosystem, our wild fish are absolutely key to the natural
recovery of this river.
It's the wild fish that naturally return time and again.
These fish are the root of the entire recovery process for this river and for the entire
world and the basin.
