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YOU CAN HELP SALMON
Which stage of Chinook life is most risky?  - Pea-sized Salmon Eggs? - Alevins at half an ounce? - Smolts at 4 ounces? - 20 pounders in the ocean? - 50-pound adult spawners? All are at risk but from different threats. So if you want to help Salmon, you need to know the threats and how your choices put salmon at risk. All these stages are in Bear Creek every year. And it isn't just chinook salmon. There are coho and steelhead too. Like you, different salmon live in different neighborhoods and tend to hang out with their friends. They eat together, swim together, and go out to the ocean together. The lucky ones come back together to have sex and start a new family. They lay eggs in a gravel nest that hatch in about 5 months. Alevins live off their egg sac a while, become tiny fish called 'fry', and grow into 6-inch smolts. The shiny silver smolts swim 115 miles down Bear Creek and the Rogue River to the estuary. Here, the salty Pacific Ocean mixes with the fresh water in the Rogue. It takes a while for the smolts to get used to the new taste. But they remember the smell of the Rogue, and the home stream where they were born months earlier. That smell will guide them home. Some swim 2,000 miles out in the salty Pacific Ocean. They stay 3 or 4 years. Some grow to 100 pounds. All remember the smell of their natal stream. And in time they come home. Home to the Rogue. Home to Bear Creek. Home to the tributary where they were born to start a new family. DON'T WALK
ON SALMON EGG NESTS
Soft Salmon eggs in a gravel
nest are really
fragile.
Put a Salmon on Your Plate  When you purchase a salmon license plate, half the extra $30 two-year fee goes directly to fix road-related impacts on streams. The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department invests the other half in salmon habitat projects in state parks. Projects reduce sediment to waterways, replace fish-blocking culverts, and construct bridges to allow native fish passage. Click here to learn more about Oregon's Salmon Plate program. It is important; last year salmon plates put $650,000 to work improving native fish habitat. Avoid Pesticides
that may Harm Salmon or Steelhead
 Avoid products labeled
as a SALMON
HAZARD when buying any pesticide.
These products can kill fish at any age or stage.
Salmon eggs
are very sensitive so take extra care in areas near salmon spawning
habitat.SALMON HAZARD signs must be posted by retailers in Medford, Talent, Phoenix, Ashland, Central Point, White City and Jacksonville when selling certain pesticides. Click here if you want more information on seven pesticides that harm salmon |
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