Kalispel Tribe Signs $39.5 Million Deal to Bolster Native Trout

By Jack McNeel August 1, 2012

 

The Kalispel Tribe has signed an agreement that will provide $39.5 million from the federal government to fund a 10-year program to help restore bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout populations.

For centuries the Kalispel people relied on bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout for a significant part of their diet. That changed in the 1950s, when Albeni Falls Dam was built on the Pend Oreille River in Idaho, a couple of miles from the Washington line. No fish ladders were installed, and fish could no longer move between Pend Oreille Lake, where they grew to huge sizes, or to downriver streams below the dam, where they had traditionally spawned near the Kalispel Reservation.

“The single largest issue facing the Kalispel Tribe is the presence of non-native species that tend to crowd out, consume or interbreed with native species,” said Dean Osterman, executive director for the tribe’s Natural Resources Department. “We want our people to be able harvest these fish again.”

Brook trout, northern pike and lake trout are the three species targeted for suppression…
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