Sockeye Spawn in Lake Cle Elum for First Time in 100 Years SEATTLE, WA (N3) - For the first time in more than 100 years, sockeye salmon are spawning at Lake Cle Elum in the Cascade Mountains. KPLU's Tom Banse reports the fish will need a helping hand for many more years to firmly reestablish in the area.

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Early settlers and farmers wiped out the sockeye salmon run in the Yakima River basin when they dammed mountain lakes to store irrigation water. This summer, tribal fish biologists trucked a thousand adult sockeye to Lake Cle Elum. The fish came from another run in the Columbia River. Steve Parker with the Yakama Nation fisheries program says everyone's excited to see the sockeye spawning after a hundred year absence.

Steve Parker: "It's always very satisfying and exciting to restore something that has been extirpated. This is a very satisfying achievement."

Parker says with no fish ladders, adult spawners bound for Lake Cle Elum will have to be trucked around two dams for the foreseeable future. The Yakama Nation is also working on restoring sockeye salmon to another irrigation reservoir in Washington's central Cascades, Bumping Lake. I'm Tom Banse reporting. © Copyright 2010, N3