Today, the National Marine Fisheries Service’s “non-essential experimental population” (NEP) designation for Upper Deschutes Basin steelhead expires — meaning all steelhead above the Pelton Round Butte dams are now officially listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Join us as we delve into the intersectional intricacies of the United States’ most famous wildlife conservation law and Central Oregon’s prevailing framework for (theoretically) balancing the needs of water users and threatened species to better understand a path toward meaningful steelhead habitat restoration and population recovery in the Upper Deschutes Basin.

In less than a century, the impacts of irrigation, hydropower projects, and other human activities throughout the Deschutes Basin have disrupted the natural water systems and environmental conditions that sustained abundant steelhead populations for millennia.

In order to take steps toward habitat recovery, it is important to understand how we’ve fundamentally changed these waterways.

The steelhead trout is one of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic species of fish.

In this series, we’re exploring the history of steelhead in the Deschutes Basin, the impacts irrigation and development have had on this species and their habitat, the actions water managers and regulators are proposing to address threats to this species, and whether they go far enough to restore the critical habitat this iconic species needs and deserves.