[ Music ]
>> The further you get away from the city I think, well the more relaxed I get
and just the more a peace I feel when you, you know, you see this,
this gorgeous river, these wonderful trees.
It gets wilder with every step you take.
>> It is a treasure to have so close to Portland
and we're really lucky to have this in our backyard.
>> This is a gem.
This is Oregon's gem.
And for me the understanding of the connectivity
and the wild nature of it is just, it's therapeutic.
[ music ]
>> It does look pristine.
It does look like it's been untouched but it's been touched, it's been harvested,
it's been exploited, it's been damaged but it's recovered.
>> The Forest Service allowed a lot of the forest to regrow.
The roots are preventing a lot of the soil from going into the rivers.
The streams are shaded again.
Really the upper Clackamus looks it would have when Lewis and Clark came through.
[ music ]
There's three dams in series on the lower Clackamus.
And Portland General Electric has worked very hard
at creating the infrastructure needed to get fish to pass these dams.
>> And in fact over time decisions have been made to reduce the number
of hatchery fish in the upper watershed.
>> The upper Clackamus River, everything upstream
of the dams it's a complete wild fish sanctuary.
Fish can move around anywhere and just live freely.
>> One thing missing in the celebration of the upper Clackamus
as being a wild fish sanctuary was in this one signature fresh water trout from the northwest.
>> They're an elusive fish.
They like the dark.
They like the cold.
It's one of the purest, cleanest, wild living organisms that we have in the aquatic system.
>> It's an apex predator so you don't find them in great abundance.
But when you do find them it just indicates that so many other things are balanced
and so many other things are healthy.
>> It was historically in California and Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana,
up into Canada and southern Alaska but the range is shrinking.
>> The history of bull trout in [inaudible] is definitely unclear.
People didn't start paying attention to bull trout until I think,
until they had maybe disappeared in a lot of areas.
They're very dependent upon cold water.
And in the [inaudible] that type of habitat is in the rivers flowing off the Cascades,
you know, the McKenzies, in the Middle Forks, in the Santiams, the Clackamus.
[ music ]
And we lost bull trout in the Clackamus in the '60s
and probably early '70s for a number of reasons.
>> The pendulum swung out of balance.
We over logged it.
There's was a lot of sediment that went into the streams,
[inaudible] fish passage was blocked off for years
and the bull trout's forage base just crashed.
>> I think another impact early on up here in the upper Clackamus was probably over fishing.
>> The goal was to eliminate bull trout
because that was the predator fish that's eating the salmon and steelhead.
>> We really didn't have a concept of what a full healthy fish community was to know
that bull trout were a part of it and that they might play some significant role.
>> I guess I personally was a little surprised that such a large watershed like the Clackamus
that had its full complement of native species was missing bull trout.
>> They were for probably 100s of 1,000s of years
in this watershed evolving with all the other species here.
They were the only species completely extirpated by humans.
To bring them back and give them a chance to flourish again
in my mind eventually became the only right thing to do.
>> In the grand scheme of things bull trout aren't going to reestablish
in these habitats unless we help them out because there are
so many barriers between these systems now.
Just knowing that they're not going to come here on their own,
we have to do it because they're endangered and because their habitats are shrinking.
>> The Metolius River has been one of if not the healthiest population of bull trout in the State
of Oregon and we found that there were enough numbers over there
to support the reintroduction here in the Clackamus.
You know, having the confederated tribes of the warm springs being so onboard with this project
and allowing us to take fish from Lake Billy Chinook which is the lower Metolius system.
We're collecting the juveniles in traps.
And the moment we capture those fish they're in our care.
And I see it as personally my reputation
on the line every time we're handling these endangered fish.
And we're doing this in June and July.
The summer temperatures can be 80 degrees and 90 degrees, 100 degrees.
And when you're trying to maintain your transport tank
at 6 degrees Celsius all you do is make ice, break ice and melt ice.
And it's all about the fish.
Just getting everything just right.
We take these fish out of the Metolius that drains the east side the Cascades
and basically we're just wrapping around the backside of Mount Jefferson.
As we climb out of the Metolius basin we enter the Santiam basin.
We're in the Santiam basin for a short period of time and then we start climbing
up around another side of Jefferson and we start entering the Clackamus basin.
>> It culminated in 2011 with the reintroduction of fish into the upper Clackamus.
We gathered all the primary players and we had a beautiful little ceremony down near the water
where each agency had an opportunity to say a few words about what this project meant to them.
So we had, you know, all the people present that have made this thing happen.
Patrick Berry and I carried down the first cooler.
Just to get down in the water with those fish
and to hear everyone clapping, it was a high point.
I don't know if I will see it again.
>> Releasing that first fish was a major step in recognizing past mistakes and returning wildness
to the river and restoring an ecosystem and to just make things right.
We brought over 219 fish so far, sub-adults and adults.
And almost all of those have gotten radio tags.
We were lying heavily on radio telemetry to give us the insight
into where these fish are moving, where they spend their winters.
What they do right after release.
>> Over their entire range bull trout populations have been extirpated.
This particular project is giving us valuable information for how we might proceed
with potential reintroductions into other parts of the range of bull trout.
>> To move fish in 2011 in June and July and then to see spawning in September
and October, it just, it just blew me away.
We thought it was possible but, you know, nobody thought it was likely.
Now just this year in 2013, this is the third year of the project, we're starting to see them
for the first time spawn in different places.
They're branching out from that original tributary they picked in 2011.
We're seeing more of it, more spawning, more pairs,
more fish maturing and it's just a good story.
>> I think that a bull trout reintroduction is not going to be successful
until the community is able to support it.
So a big part of this project is letting people know that bull trout are here,
they're part of the ecosystem and we want them to stay.
They mean good things for our watershed.
Bull trout do represent wildness.
>> Yeah.
>> When you cross that sign that says you're in bull trout country, you are in,
you are in a state of nature that is wild and free, clean and pure, rehabilitated,
restored or wild as it was 100 years ago.
>> Look at this, you know, we're in the Clackamus and it's an hour from Portland
and there are bull trout just up there.
That's amazing to me.
>> As we were driving up here today
in the telemetry vehicle we were hearing chips of fish as we were driving up.
And it, I just get this permanent grin on my face every time I hear that.
And it appears from the telemetry signal that there's a fish in the pool right behind us.
>> I like to look at the Clackamus with a lot of hope
because if it can happen here it can happen other places too.
>> It's so much more than just the Clackamus.
It's about recovering of bull trout.
And if we can learn how to do things for bull trout that shoot them
on the path towards recovery, what can we do for other species?
>> And I hope in 20 years if I return, I hope it's like it was 50 years ago.
I hope everything's here, cutthroat and rainbows and salmon and steelhead and bull trout.
>> This was the one missing fish that evolved in the Clackamus.
It's the one missing ingredient of this native aquatic community.
It's really now up to bull trout to show us that they belong back here.
And I'm fairly confident that they'll show us they do.
[ Music ]