Currently under construction is our 1705 Project, our Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery project at Cherry Lane on the Clearwater River. It is a brand new state of the art hatchery and we’ve been waiting for over 10 years for this to come about and finally it should be done this spring. There we will have earth ponds for smolt rearing and we will have what they call, “natures design raceways.” For people who have been at regular hatcheries they are pretty much accustomed to those flat, straight rectangular raceways.

This is one of our natures design rearing channels. This will be for rearing spring chinook salmon, fingerlings. We have got the design that is trying to mimic the contour of a stream. We have artificial substrate, set into place. Also along the sides, once the construction is complete, we will have an artificial riparian zone with vegetation, trees and brush, and growing along the sides. We will try to provide a natural cover for the fish while they are living in this stream channel. From here we will take the fish to some our satellite facilities up Lolo Creek and Yusa Creek where we will be working with spring chinook salmon and acclimate them up there to those streams and release them.

So for the majority of their lives or their young lives, when they are fingerlings, they will be held here (at the hatchery). In the future we may introduce natural predators and do a natural conditioning such as the northern pike minnow and also live feed. The plan is also to install some bug zappers. So instead of zapping the bugs and cooking them, we will have an attracting light and little wheeled powels that will spin around and actually bat the bugs into the water. That is just one of the ideas. We have a lot of things to look forward to.