Wallowa County, Oregon
A fish ladder is coming to Wallowa Lake.
Nobody has promised the kokanee will survive it.
For 107 years, the dam at the foot of Wallowa Lake has kept the lake's landlocked sockeye — kokanee — sealed off from the river below. That's ending. This page tracks what a re-opened lake could mean for the fishery that record book calls the best in Oregon.
How we got here
A dam problem became a fish problem
Wallowa Lake fills a basin gouged out by glaciers and dammed at its northern end by their moraine — and, since 1919, by an earthen irrigation dam built on top of it. The dam supplies water to more than 16,000 acres of Wallowa County farmland. It also sealed the lake off from the Wallowa and Grande Ronde rivers below, stranding a population of sockeye salmon inside. Cut off from the ocean, those fish adapted into kokanee: smaller, landlocked, and now one of the most productive kokanee fisheries in the Pacific Northwest.
The dam is old and needs to be rebuilt. The Wallowa Lake Irrigation District, which has owned and operated it since 2017, originally planned a low-cost retrofit using "trap-and-haul" — trucking fish around the dam by hand rather than building a structure fish can swim through. The Nez Perce Tribe, whose treaty-reserved fishing rights extend to this basin, objected and pushed for a true volitional fish ladder instead, arguing trap-and-haul isn't real passage. That fight went through appeals and a formal agreement before landing on the plan now moving toward construction: a rebuilt dam and a fish ladder, in a project whose cost has grown roughly thirtyfold as a result.
Nobody in that fight was arguing about kokanee. The ladder exists to bring migratory fish back. Whether the lake's resident kokanee come through the process intact is a question the project's public record mostly hasn't answered yet.
What's actually at risk
Reopening the lake cuts both ways
Restoring fish passage at Wallowa Lake doesn't just bring sockeye home — it opens the lake to every species that can climb a ladder. Reporting on the project names four besides sockeye that could return once passage is restored. None of them currently share the lake with kokanee, and kokanee have had it to themselves for over a century.
Bull trout
A federally listed native char and an aggressive predator of smaller salmonids. Bull trout returning to a lake with no evolutionary memory of them is the single biggest predation risk on the list.
Sockeye salmon
Kokanee are sockeye — the same species, landlocked. Anadromous sockeye returning to spawn alongside kokanee raises a real question of interbreeding and whether a century-old, locally adapted landlocked strain gets genetically absorbed rather than protected.
Wild rainbow trout & steelhead
Both compete with kokanee for the same zooplankton and littoral habitat that currently supports a fishery good enough to hold a state record.
Mountain whitefish
A native forage and bait competitor that could add further pressure on the lake's plankton base once passage reopens.
The other risk — not the ladder itself, the build
Lake levels, drawdowns, and a warning from Green Peter
Rehabilitating the dam means construction crews need the lake lower — work is planned for winter, after irrigation season, when levels naturally drop. How that drawdown is engineered and timed matters more than it sounds. In 2023, a deep, rapid drawdown at Oregon's Green Peter Reservoir killed at least 8,000 kokanee from barotrauma — fish forced through deep outlet works too fast for their bodies to adjust to the pressure change. It's a different dam, on a different river system, but the mechanism — rapid lake-level manipulation during infrastructure work — is exactly the kind of risk a multi-year Wallowa Lake rehabilitation could repeat if it isn't planned around the fishery.
Where the project stands
Timeline
Dam built
Sockeye passage to and from Wallowa Lake is cut off; the stranded population becomes kokanee.
Wallowa Lake Irrigation District formed
Takes ownership of the aging dam to pursue financing for rehabilitation.
Trap-and-haul plan, then a fight over it
An initial low-cost retrofit is challenged by the Nez Perce Tribe and joined by regional environmental groups and CTUIR, who argue trap-and-haul isn't legitimate fish passage.
Legal challenge resolved
An appeals-court dispute over the project is rendered moot after a settlement locks in a design that includes a true fish ladder.
Dam rehabilitation groundbreaking — expected
Work on the dam itself is expected to begin once irrigation season ends; the fish ladder is planned for a subsequent construction season.
Fish ladder construction & first passage season
The point at which sockeye, bull trout, whitefish, and trout could realistically reach the lake for the first time in over a century.
Our position
This isn't a case against the ladder
The Nez Perce Tribe's push for real fish passage rests on treaty rights this basin has never fully honored, and restoring sockeye to Wallowa Lake is a legitimate, long-sought goal. This page isn't arguing to stop that. It's arguing that a project built to bring one native fish home shouldn't be allowed to quietly wipe out another one — especially when the public record on kokanee-specific safeguards is thin to nonexistent.
What we're asking project agencies and decision-makers to commit to, in writing, before construction reaches the ladder phase:
- Fish screening or a barrier at the lake-side ladder entrance that can selectively manage bull trout and other predator access without blocking sockeye passage.
- A public kokanee monitoring plan — population, spawning success, and genetic sampling — that starts before the ladder opens and continues for years after, not just a one-time environmental review.
- Drawdown engineering that avoids the Green Peter failure mode: gradual lake-level changes during construction, scheduled outside kokanee spawning windows, with fish-kill monitoring built in.
- A funded contingency plan if early monitoring shows kokanee decline — not a promise to "revisit later" once the run is already in trouble.
Who's at the table
Stakeholders
| Party | Role | Stated position |
|---|---|---|
| Wallowa Lake Irrigation District | Dam owner & project lead | Needs the rehabilitation to keep delivering water to 16,000+ acres; has absorbed a large cost increase to include the ladder. |
| Nez Perce Tribe | Treaty fishing rights holder | Pushed successfully for a true fish ladder over trap-and-haul; primary advocate for sockeye restoration. |
| CTUIR & regional environmental groups | Co-litigants / advocates | Opposed the original trap-and-haul-only design as inadequate fish passage. |
| Oregon Dept. of Fish & Wildlife | State fisheries agency | Involved in project funding and fish management; the agency best positioned to require kokanee-specific safeguards. |
| Funders | Oregon Lottery funds, Business Oregon, federal partners | Financing the ~$25–30M project; have leverage to attach monitoring requirements. |
| Wallowa Lake anglers & local economy | Everyone downstream of this decision | No formal seat at the table so far — which is the gap this page exists to point at. |
Take action
Ask, before the ladder is built — not after the kokanee are gone
Construction is expected to start this fall. The ladder itself is planned for a later season, which means there's still a real window to get monitoring and safeguard commitments in writing. These are the offices with actual influence over the project's fish-passage design and funding conditions.
Oregon Dept. of Fish & Wildlife
Sets fish-management conditions on state-funded passage projects and manages the Wallowa Lake fishery.
East Region office (La Grande): 541-963-2138
Email ODFW →Wallowa Lake Irrigation District
Owns the dam and is designing the ladder. Public comment through their board is the most direct route to the project itself.
No public phone line listed — district business runs through the secretary's email below.
District contact page →Sen. Todd Nash — Oregon Senate, District 29
Represents Wallowa County in Salem; the first state senator to come from the county, with direct standing on state funding for the project.
Capitol office: 503-986-1729
Senator's office →