September is salmon season on the Deschutes River, and for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, that means more than fishing — it means the continuation of a practice that has sustained their people for thousands of years.
The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs — made up of the Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute peoples — hold treaty-protected fishing rights on the Deschutes and Columbia rivers. Those rights are exercised most visibly during the fall Chinook run, when the large, robust salmon make their way upriver to spawn. The Warm Springs River, a tributary of the Deschutes running through the heart of the reservation, is a primary destination for wild adult Chinook returns.
The Warm Springs National Fish Hatchery
At the center of the Tribes' salmon stewardship efforts is the Warm Springs National Fish Hatchery, operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and considered pivotal for enhancing anadromous fish runs on the reservation and the broader Deschutes basin. The hatchery produces both fall Chinook and spring Chinook, as well as resident salmonids to meet the cultural and subsistence fishing needs of tribal members.
Wild adult returns are counted with precision at the hatchery facility, located several miles upstream from Kah-Nee-Ta Resort on the Warm Springs River. Shitike Creek, a small tributary that enters the Deschutes at the town of Warm Springs, also receives a modest number of wild adults each season — a reminder of how interwoven the reservation's waterways are with the health of the larger river system.
Water Quality: An Ongoing Concern
The fall run arrives against a backdrop of ongoing concern about Deschutes water quality. Conservation organizations and state regulators have flagged water temperature and pathogen issues in the lower Deschutes as threats to spring Chinook reintroduction efforts — a multi-year project aimed at restoring salmon above the Pelton-Round Butte hydroelectric complex. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs have been deeply involved in that reintroduction effort and have pushed for better water-quality standards and greater tribal input in forest management on lands that border the reservation.
The Tribes have argued — in policy briefs and in public comment — that cold, clean water cannot be guaranteed without stronger collaboration on managing the Deschutes, Willamette, and Mt. Hood national forests that adjoin tribal lands. Those forests are the headwaters of the Deschutes system.
The Season Ahead
For Warm Springs tribal members and their families, the fall fishing season is a time of gathering, ceremony, and connection to land and water. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations govern non-tribal angling on the Deschutes, but tribal members fish under their own sovereign regulations, which are updated annually by the tribal fisheries department.
The run's strength each fall is a barometer for the broader health of the river — and a reminder of why the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs remain among the most active voices for Deschutes conservation in Central Oregon. What happens to this river matters deeply to the nearly 5,000 tribal members who call the reservation home, just 30 miles north of Madras.