POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) — Construction on a once-abandoned sockeye fish hatchery project in eastern Idaho intended to bolster Idaho’s breeding program is back on schedule, Idaho Fish and Game officials said.
The $13.5 million Springfield Fish Hatchery between Aberdeen and Blackfoot should be finished by November, Fish and Game Hatchery Manager Doug Engemann told KIFI-TV (http://bit.ly/15UDM2G).
The hatchery is intended to boost the number of endangered sockeye salmon returning to Redfish Lake near Stanley in central Idaho. The Bonneville Power Administration is paying for the hatchery that’s being built on a 73-acre site.
Only four Snake River sockeye made their way through eight dams and past nets and predators in 1992, a year after the fish that makes its home in Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley was listed as endangered.
But in recent years the population has rebounded somewhat, with more than 1,300 returning in 2010, the most since the 1950s, before four dams were built in Washington. Returning fish that swim the 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean are used as brood stock.
“We’re moving past the genetic conservation component of the program into a bonafide stock rebuilding, stock recovery program,” Engemann said.
He said the Eagle Fish Hatchery in western Idaho will supply the Springfield Fish Hatchery with about 250,000 sockeye eggs this December. When the fish are ready, they will be released into Redfish Lake to make the downriver trip to the ocean.
“To keep those fish from going extinct, we needed to keep that existing gene pool, maintain it, and minimize inbreeding using state-of-the-art genetic tools,” Engemann said.
He said that, eventually, the Springfield Fish Hatchery will hold one million sockeye at a time.
“We’re going to have sockeye eggs — 250,000 sockeye eggs,” Engemann said. “And then a million from that point forward, assuming the brood stock is there to provide it. I just can’t ask for anything more.”
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Information from: KIFI-TV, http://www.localnews8.com/
