Four Columbia River basin treaty tribes recently completed their second restoration plan for “imperiled” Pacific lamprey in the basin fifteen years after the first such plan in which the Tribes had urged aggressive action in order to recover the culturally significant fish.
The fifteen years that have passed since the first lamprey restoration plan is about the same length of time as one generation for a Pacific lamprey, yet while some progress has been made since the first plan was released in 2011, “Funding, staffing and progress continues to remain unacceptably slow,” the 2025 restoration plan says.
“We are frustrated that sufficient and sustained resources are not immediately being made available quickly enough for lamprey recovery and tribal harvest of this important species,” the latest lamprey restoration plan says. “Passage through the Columbia, Snake and Willamette river dams is non-existent or completely inadequate.
Regional partners cannot — or will not — provide a Pacific lamprey passage standard over these dams and passage is often difficult to measure, at best. In fact, in many cases we continue to be talking about the same things we talked about over 15 years ago.”
The “2025 Tribal Pacific Lamprey Restoration Plan for the Columbia River Basin” can be found at https://critfc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ReportPost_CRITFC_etal2025B.pdf
Some 22,038 Pacific lamprey had been counted at Bonneville Dam’s fish ladders last year as of Sept. 22, one-half the 10-year average and only one-third the number that had passed the dam on that date in 2023.
In a September 2024 news release, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called the 2024 run of lamprey “disappointing,” especially after the 2023 run that had 63,896 lamprey by September. The 10-year average for that date is 41,263.
The goals in the 2025 Pacific lamprey restoration plan are 1 million adult lamprey passing Bonneville Dam and 1 million adults passing Willamette Falls by 2035. By 2050, the tribes call for the restoration of adult lamprey populations in the basin so that they can be sustainably harvested and consumed safely in quantities historically available.
There is general agreement that the basin’s population of Pacific lamprey is “imperiled.” According to the 2025 Pacific lamprey restoration plan:
— Idaho lists them as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need and Endangered
.
— Oregon lists them as a Sensitive Species (wildlife species, subspecies, or populations that are facing one or more threats to their populations, habitat quantity or habitat quality or that are subject to a decline in number of sufficient magnitude such that they may become eligible for listing on the state Threatened and Endangered Species List).
— Washington lists them as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need and a Priority Species (require protective measures for their survival due to their population status, sensitivity to habitat alteration, and/or recreational, commercial, or tribal importance).
— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists them as a Species of Concern and Tribal-Trust Species.
— The Pacific Lamprey Conservation Initiative, depending on the geographic area, considers them as Presumed Extirpated, Possibly Extirpated, Unrankable, Critically Imperiled, Imperiled, and Vulnerable.
The 2011 restoration plan was the first comprehensive restoration plan for Pacific lamprey, containing vision, goals and objectives, the cultural context surrounding lamprey in the basin, lamprey life history, its abundance and status, as well as critical uncertainties and limiting factors. The first plan, as does this latest plan, prioritizes the actions the tribes say are needed for recovery.
The Pacific lamprey restoration plan is the product of four Columbia River tribes: the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon.
“Lamprey have been an important part of the cultures, diets, and ceremonies of Columbia Basin tribes since time immemorial,” said Aja DeCoteau, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) executive director. “The tribes have been successfully leading the effort to restore this threatened fish throughout the Columbia River Basin, not only to protect its role in the ecosystem, but also to preserve our access to this important First Food.”
In the restoration plan, the tribes say they are demanding accountability and “steady progress” is needed for lamprey recovery. Needed, according to the recovery plan are greater efficiency in planning and design, timely implementation of actions and a more robust, effective research, monitoring and evaluation process. Accountability will require more resources with tribes participating in the budgeting processes to get those resources.
“The non-tribal communities must understand that many developments sanctioned by the federal, state and local governments have harmed the Tribes’ most fundamental treaty reserved right: to take fish at all of our usual and accustomed places,” the restoration plan says. “Now when we harvest Pacific lamprey, we must travel a long distance, primarily to one last location: Willamette Falls.”
Adult passage in the mainstem and tributaries of the Columbia basin must significantly increase, with the highest priority being in the lower Columbia River, the restoration plan says. Some 50 percent of migrating lamprey adults do not pass Bonneville Dam and passage through this bottleneck, as well as in the Willamette River, must be corrected before the basin will see significant improvements in lamprey populations.
Among the many actions called for in the 2025 recovery plan, the tribes say the region must establish passage standards for both adults returning to their spawning areas and for larvae and juveniles migrating out to the Pacific Ocean.
Actions most needed in the near-term in order to make “reasonable progress and accelerate Pacific lamprey restoration to an acceptable level,” the restoration plan says, are:
1. Secure research and monitoring funds necessary to accelerate the implementation of restoration actions with greater confidence of their success.
2. Increase capacity (staffing and funding) to accelerate the implementation of restoration actions, with a focus on mainstem and tributary passage, excessive predation, and identification and cleaning of toxics in the water and sediments.
Items 1. and 2. are an all-hands on deck responsibility (all parties), according to the restoration plan.
3. Increase regional passage standards for adult lamprey at mainstem dams to be 95% or higher. The responsibility for this action goes to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the basin’s public utility districts that own and operate dams.
4. Implement LEAPP (Lamprey Emergency Assisted Passage Program) at Columbia, Snake, and Willamette river dams. Responsibility for this action is the tribes and the Corps.
5. Fix key areas that are known to impede or kill larval and juvenile lamprey at mainstem dams (e.g., cooling water strainer screens) based on basin-wide acoustic telemetry (and other studies). Initial focus at Ice Harbor and Lower Granite dams on the Snake River, and McNary and John Day dams on the Columbia River. Options for barging must be considered if these fixes are not made immediately.
6. Obtain accurate annual passage estimates for adult lamprey at all mainstem dams, including the Willamette River, and obtain highly precise passage counts for key mainstem dams to allow accurate and precise assessment of reach-to reach conversion rates in the mainstem Columbia, Snake and Willamette rivers.
7. Obtain annual larvae/juvenile abundance estimates at all dams, beginning at PUD structures, LGR, LGS, MCN, BON and Willamette Falls. Provide assessment of winter run sizes at suitable facilities.
8. Install a system of passage structures (including wetted wall, LPS, and surface collectors) at key bottleneck locations to significantly address the incidence of “lost fish” in the CRB. Focus near-term work at PUD structures and BON, TDA, JDA, MCN, and IHR.
Responsibility for actions 5. through 8. goes to the Corps and PUDs.
9. Apply rigorous high standards for lamprey restoration and protection to tributary environments to ensure safe passage and connectivity across their life history. Responsibility for this action is to all parties.
10. Develop models that evaluate the effects of key host fish abundance and ocean regime changes on lamprey. Responsibility for this action goes to NOAA Fisheries.
11. Implement lamprey specific measures to reduce the negative impacts of unnaturally high predation on lamprey. Near-term focus on sea lion predation on adults concentrated below BON, juveniles and larvae predation by terns and gulls in the lower CRB, by smallmouth bass in the John Day, Umatilla, Yakima and Grande Ronde rivers, and by walleye in the mid-Columbia River. Develop/implement a basin-wide predation reduction plan. Responsibility for this action goes to state fish and wildlife agencies and the Bonneville Power Administration.
12. Partner with action agencies to clean up contaminants in lamprey-bearing streams. Responsibility for this action goes to state agencies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps.
13. Continue using both adult and larval supplementation techniques with improvements in facilities and capabilities. Responsibility goes to the tribes, Corps and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
14. Predict or assess likely changes in regional and local lamprey habitat and distribution due to climate change and manage adaptively. Initial focus should address effects of temperature and flow changes on mainstem adult and juvenile/larva passage and effects of these changes on larvae in Key Index Survey Sites. Responsible Parties are federal agencies, including the Corps, USFWS, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management.
15. Preserve Traditional Ecological Knowledge related to lamprey and restore intergenerational lamprey culture. Through partnerships, develop a comprehensive outreach program that helps educate a variety of audiences, including students, the general public, agency staff, managers, as well as state and federal legislators.
16. Initiate, identify, maintain, and expand baseline population monitoring at key index sites in each RMU using genetic and population monitoring (quantification of key life stages). Tribes, USFWS, PLCI, All Parties 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 PLCI RMUs 5.9, 5.2
17. Develop and adopt a life-cycle model (for prediction of population dynamics) and a regional species distribution model (for intrinsic habitat potential) that can be used to evaluate passage requirements at various dams and assess restoration progress from other (completed or proposed) actions at various temporal or geographic scales.
18. Initiate and develop an Adaptive Management process, including a Status and Trend Annual Report, for the CRB according to the framework identified in Section 6.3
Responsibility for the last actions goes to all parties.
In addition, the recovery plan says, what lamprey that are in the river are exposed to and contaminated with PCBs, mercury and other toxins, both in freshwater and in their ocean phases, the plan says.
As the plan explains, “The water is no longer clean. Once mercury and PCBs get into the water they get consumed by bacteria, insect, and other small organisms that fish eat. When fish eat these organisms, the contaminants are absorbed into the fish’s flesh and fat rather than passing out of the fish as waste. Over time, the amount builds up to toxic levels. The bigger and older a fish is, the more likely it is to have eaten lots of smaller, contaminated organisms. Since lamprey feed off those larger and older fish, they are exposed to a much higher concentration of contaminants.
“Yes, we may have a few more lamprey to harvest now than in 2011, but due to an existing consumption advisory many members of our community will not eat them in traditional quantities.
The CRITFC Lamprey Consumption Advisory, October 5, 2022 is here: https://critfc.org/2022/10/05/lamprey-advisory/
A news release from CRITFC about Pacific lamprey history and cultural significance is here: https://critfc.org/2025/06/17/tribal-pacific-lamprey-restoration-plan-updated-by-tribes-critfc/
For background, see:
— CBB, March 15, 2025, WORK CONTINUES TO IMPROVE LAMPREY PASSAGE AT COLUMBIA/SNAKE DAMS, CORP COMPLETING CHANGES TO BONNEVILLE DAM FISH LADDER, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/WORK-CONTINUES-TO-IMPROVE-LAMPREY-PASSAGE-AT-COLUMBIA-SNAKE-DAMS-CORP-COMPLETING-CHANGES-TO-BONNEVILLE-DAM-FISH-LADDER/
— CBB, September 26, 2024, LAMPREY RETURNS TO COLUMBIA RIVER ‘DISAPPOINTING’ THIS YEAR; EFFORTS CONTINUE TO BOOST NUMBERS, INCLUDING TRANSLOCATION TO TRIBUTARIES, BETTER DAM PASSAGE, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/LAMPREY-RETURNS-TO-COLUMBIA-RIVER-DISAPPOINTING-THIS-YEAR-EFFORTS-CONTINUE-TO-BOOST-NUMBERS-INCLUDING-TRANSLOCATION-TO-TRIBUTARIES-BETTER-DAM-PASSAGE/
— CBB, September 29, 2023, THOUGH FAR BELOW HISTORICAL RETURNS, IMPRESSIVE NUMBERS THIS YEAR FOR PACIFIC LAMPREY PASSING COLUMBIA/SNAKE RIVER DAMS, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/THOUGH-FAR-BELOW-HISTORICAL-RETURNS-IMPRESSIVE-NUMBERS-THIS-YEAR-FOR-PACIFIC-LAMPREY-PASSING-COLUMBIA-SNAKE-RIVER-DAMS/
— CBB, April 27, 2023, STUDY OFFERS FIRST DIRECT EVIDENCE THAT TRANSLOCATING IMPERILED PACIFIC LAMPREY FROM LOWER COLUMBIA TO INTERIOR INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY, HTTPS://CBBULLETIN.COM/STUDY-OFFERS-FIRST-DIRECT-EVIDENCE-THAT-TRANSLOCATING-IMPERILED-PACIFIC-LAMPREY-FROM-LOWER-COLUMBIA-TO-INTERIOR-INCREASED-PRODUCTIVITY/
— CBB, Sept. 16, 2021, YAKAMA NATION’S TRANSLOCATION OF PACIFIC LAMPREY FROM BONNEVILLE DAM, ALONG WITH HATCHERY OUTPLANTINGS, SHOWING RESULTS IN YAKIMA RIVER BASIN, https://cbbulletin.com/yakama-nations-translocation-of-pacific-lamprey-from-bonneville-dam-along-with-hatchery-outplantings-showing-results-in-yakima-river-basin/
— CBB, May 14, 2021, RETURN OF COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN PACIFIC LAMPREY: TRIBES’ RESTORATION PLAN FOCUSES ON HATCHERY, TRANSLOCATION, GENETICS, https://cbbulletin.com/return-of-columbia-river-basin-pacific-lamprey-tribes-restoration-plan-focuses-on-hatchery-translocation-genetics/
— CBB, August 7, 2020, “Study Brings Forth Important New Information About Pacific Lamprey Life History Traits, Focus On Adult Body Size, Maturity,” https://cbbulletin.com/study-brings-forth-important-new-information-about-pacific-lamprey-life-history-traits-focus-on-adult-body-size-maturity/