BEND, OR -- The annual Lava Island Falls Fish Rescue finished Monday. Thousands of fish are rescued at the end of irrigation season, each year, after they get trapped in shallow pools of the upper Deschutes, west of Bend.
“That’s due to less water being released out of the reservoirs upstream. And as a result, we do see some stranding in side channels,” Emelie McKain with Oregon's Water Resources department tells KBND News the annual occurrence shouldn’t go on much longer, “There are a series of water conservation projects and initiatives happening in the basin to flows in the upper Deschutes River in the winter time to help prevent these issues from happening in the future.”
She represents the state on the board of the Deschutes River Conservancy. That organization along with the Deschutes Basin Board of Control oversee the three-day fish rescue. Volunteers worked under the guidance of a technical crew of fish experts, hauling the fish by bucket into the main channel of the river.
“Winter 2029, we'll see a significant bump in flows in the upper Deschutes River. We'll see 300 cubic feet per second being released from Wickiup Reservoir. Which will increase the available habitat for fish, not causing as many stranding issues that we see today,” McKain says.
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