Last year, the water flowing from Shasta Dam got so warm that the Sacramento River turned lethal for winter-run salmon eggs. Winter-run chinook salmon are increasingly struggling to survive as global warming intensifies drought conditions and extreme heat. “And just trying to give them the courage and support,” she said, “that we’re here for them and we’re going to do the best that we can.” Taylor Lipscomb, the hatchery’s manager, reached into the cooler and lifted out a cup filled with orange salmon eggs, then handed it to one of the children.Įach child participated, lowering a cupful into the water and tipping it until the eggs tumbled out and settled on a metal screen.Īs Sisk carried a cupful to the tank, she said she was “talking to the eggs about their ancestors,” the salmon that swam there long ago. Two biologists lugged the cooler down a rocky slope to the riverbank and set it down next to specialized incubator tanks, where water flowing from the river was circulating through the system. And the women and children welcomed the eggs, she said, to give them a “female mothering kind of vibration.” She said the tribe offered prayers for the salmon to survive. “Whatever happens to the salmon happens to us,” Sisk said. They call the river Winnemem Waywacket, and it’s the heart of their traditional homeland, which the tribe lost when the reservoir was filled. “And we’ve put down that song so that they have a fighting chance.”įor the Winnemem Wintu, salmon are central to their cultural and spiritual traditions. “We’re asking that the river receive these eggs,” Sisk said. “It’s a real blessing.”ĭuring the ceremony, Sisk and others sang as two women carried the cooler with the salmon eggs, leading a procession around a fire as several children followed. “This is history for California that we’ve done this,” said Caleen Sisk, the tribe’s chief and spiritual leader. Members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who have long sought to return salmon to the river where their ancestors lived, held a ceremony as the eggs arrived in a cooler. State and federal wildlife officials collected about 20,000 winter-run salmon eggs from the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery near Redding and drove them for three hours to a campground on the banks of the McCloud River.

Ĭhinook salmon haven’t been able to reach Northern California’s McCloud River since 1942, when the construction of Shasta Dam blocked the fish from swimming upstream and sealed off their spawning areas in the cold mountain waters near Mount Shasta.Īfter 80 years, endangered winter-run chinook are about to swim in the river once again. Caleen Sisk, chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, visits the McCloud River in January.

Fireplace screen curtain installation