Along the Lemhi River in central Idaho, water is essential to farming and ranching that dominates the mountain valley. It is also vital to the recovery of threatened Snake River Chinook salmon and steelhead that once returned to the Lemhi by the thousands.
In what may have been the hottest, driest year on record, water brought them together in 2021.
A stretch of the Lemhi River would go dry each year without voluntary, market-based agreements with landowners. They agree to restrict the delivery of their water for 100 days to keep it in the rivers and streams for salmon. The annual and permanent agreements are between water users and the Idaho Water Resource Board. Recently the agreements have been funded in large part by electric ratepayers of the Bonneville Power Administration.
Typically, they start in July. In 2021 they started in April. “I never thought I’d see that happen,” said Amy Cassel, manager of the Idaho Water Transactions Program. “I could not believe how severe the drought became, and just how quickly it became so severe.”
An almost absent snowpack, dry soils, little precipitation, and extreme heat combined to shrink the water supply just when salmon needed it most. The state water program had agreements with landowners for about 3 months annually. There was no way that would be long enough. “We knew it was going to take something unprecedented to get through the summer,” said Chad Fealko, fisheries biologist with NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region in Salmon, Idaho, who has worked on salmon recovery throughout Idaho. He wants to see the fish coexist with agriculture.
Continue reading at fisheries.noaa.gov.
