Pacific Lamprey
On Tuesday morning, September 24, 2024, Kelly Coates, the Director of Natural Resources for the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe, addressed the Senate Interim Committee On Natural Resources and Wildfire about the importance of the wild Pacific lamprey population in the North Umpqua River.
“I’m the Director of Natural Resources for our tribal government,” Coates began, “and have worked for the tribe for over a decade. My education is an aquatic wildlife biology, organismal biology, and ecology. As the Director of Natural Resources, I leverage this expertise with the traditional knowledge of my tribe and cultural commitment to look seven generations into the future, which is one of the guiding principles of any policy decision for the tribe.
“Thank you for the invitation to speak today about one of my favorite topics. It is personally important to me and a critical part of my tribe’s culture and history: lamprey. It’s good that I was only allowed two minutes because the joke with my tribal board and staff is that I can make any conversation [be] about lamprey; it’s a gift. I could talk for hours about this fish species whose population has declined dramatically over the years. I know that you’ve heard about this before but I just wanted to remind folks about the population of lamprey in the North Umpqua River.
“In 1964, when ODFW began counting lamprey passing Winchester Dam, there were around 46,000 lamprey. In 1997, fifteen were counted. And now the population averages between 1,000 and 1,500 annually. However, it remains a priority for the tribe to work in partnership with state governments and other organizations to preserve conserve and restore the species to healthy runs throughout the Umpqua River System.
“I know this hearing is about the Winchester Dam update. You heard from the state agencies whom we partner with on a government-to-government relationship. And our role was to support in their response to the devastation that occurred last summer. Our focus since that time is to ensure protections exist to prevent such devastation into the future. Pacific lamprey are a traditional first food source and an important component of the cultural lifeways of the Cow Creek Umpqua people, who have been stewards of the North Umpqua River since time immemorial. Lamprey are also a key ecological component of the river system. The Cow Creek Umpqua tribe believes that protection of lamprey and other native species to the area is of the utmost importance and that impacts to those sensitive populations can have a wide range of harmful effects.
“We believe in an all-fish approach. Our goal is that one day we will have robust runs of wild fish again that can be sustainably harvested and to continue our cultural practices that maintain the connection between fish and our tribal people. Because we are river people. So the tribe natural resources are cultural resources. They are one and the same and we have a relationship of reciprocity with the land and these species. They take care of us and we take care of them. iIm very happy to speak more about this issue and others important to the tribe. Our approach to natural resources management and our commitment to working productively with all partners for a better Oregon.”
