Note: In June 2007 LLTK returned management responsibility for the Wishkah River Hatchery to the State of Washington. These pages exist as an archive of LLTK's 20 years of work on the Wishkah River. Our December 2007 Year End Report features a story about what we learned from our two decades operating the Wishkah Hatchery.
Posted November 30th, 2007
our hatcheries - wishkah river
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, ORCAS ISLAND | LILLIWAUP CREEK, HOOD CANAL | WISHKAH RIVER
WISHKAH HOMEPROJECTS AND PROGRAMSHISTORYSTAFFPARTNERSCOMMUNITY INVOLVEMENTWISHKAH ROADWISHKAH PHOTO GALLERY |
"We are grateful to WDFW for providing us the opportunity to work with a diverse group of partners for over 20 years. LLTK has had the privilege of helping to make the Wishkah Hatchery an important part of the Chehalis Basin community." From 1986 to 2007, Long Live the Kings was responsible for managing and operating the State-owned Wishkah River Salmon Hatchery (formerly Mayr Brothers Ponds). LLTK's Wishkah staff worked closely with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and other community partners over two decades to support wild salmon recovery, pioneer natural fish-rearing techniques, and maintain a popular Grays Harbor fishery. LLTK determined in 2006 that the time was right to hand operation of the facility back to the State of Washington. June 2007 marked the end of our tenure managing Wishkah's salmon recovery programs. The links at left provide a history of LLTK's programs at the Wishkah River Hatchery. LLTK is grateful for the support of the many community partners and volunteers who have helped to make Wishkah's salmon recovery, habitat restoration, and community education programs a success. For more information about LLTK's management of Wishkah and the programs we operated there, please contact LLTK's Fish Programs Coordinator Michael Schmidt at (206) 382-9555, ext. 27. Creating a Model Landscape Hatchery LLTK reached an agreement with WDFW to begin a Chinook recovery program at the Wishkah River Hatchery in 1986. Since that time, the program has served to maintain the genetically distinct Wishkah Chinook population. LLTK has added coho rearing to support a popular Grays Harbor Fishery, and chum rearing for an educational program that takes place at the facility. For two decades, LLTK's Wishkah staff has worked to make the Wishkah Hatchery a demonstration of one of LLTK's founding principles: that hatcheries might be used, in concert with habitat restoration, to help recover wild salmon populations and support sustainable fisheries. We were proud when the Hatchery Reform Project's Hatchery Scientific Review Group cited the facility as a "model" for a "landscape hatchery." 
The Wishkah property now includes seven off-channel ponds to provide refuge and rearing habitat for both wild and hatchery coho, which often spend more than a year in fresh water before migrating to the ocean. The ponds have become host to a variety of other fish and wildlife, including Chinook and chum salmon, cutthroat trout, lamprey, peamouth, and newts. Shortly after we completed construction of the ponds, chum salmon were observed knocking rocks loose from the sides to create a gravel bottom they then used for spawning, a remarkable demonstration of the adaptability and resilience of salmon. In the past five years Long Live the Kings has brought in large woody debris to create logjams in the Wishkah River which provide improved habitat for both naturally-spawning and hatchery salmon and steelhead. The contributions of the Wishkah Hatchery to the local landscape extend far beyond the hatchery fence. Habitat recovery and restoration projects have supported myriad species of fish and wildlife in the Wishkah River and in neighboring watersheds, where decades of intensive logging have drastically reduced available habitat. The hatchery has become an important center for community education-hosting thousands of visitors, from school children to graduate students, local legislators and citizens, hunters, birders, and fishers. |
