LIVE PAIRS

In addition to the egg boxes, Fish First introduces live pairs to its spawning habitat. Just like with the eggs, this only works if the genetics of the fish are native to the water shed. Luckily, the hatchery on the North Fork of the Lewis is a mitigation hatchery and only used native genetics. No other fish were transplanted here.

Also fortunate is that the North Fork fish runs have sufficient genetic diversity to allow for full recovery. Not all streams have native fish left. For these waters, restoring fish runs will be exceptionally more difficult, if not impossible.