For Release on October 11th

October 9, 2010

Contact: Jason Rainey, Executive Director, 530-265-5961, ext. 207; Jason@syrcl.org

Smartsville, CA – Today leaders of the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) joined with tribal members of the Tsi-Akim Maidu and other citizens in conducting a traditional “Calling Back the Salmon” ceremony on the Yuba River.  SYRCL Board member Roger Hicks, Executive Director Jason Rainey and River Science Director Gary Reedy were among over

30 “spirit runners” who carried a wild Chinook salmon from a site under the Highway 20 crossing of the lower Yuba River to an ancient ceremonial site upstream on the South Yuba River at the historic Bridgeport Crossing.  Runners transported the “honored salmon”—a roughly 30 pound male Chinook salmon speared by Maidu hunter Jason Ryberg—on a 9 mile

Calling Back the Salmon Run 2010

run around Englebright Dam, a federal dam owned by the people of the United States and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

“While we’ll continue to advance science to support actions to restore the last of California’s wild salmon, today we bring ceremony into our daily advocacy for the reintroduction of salmon to the upper Yuba River watershed,” states Gary Reedy, a fisheries biologist who directs SYRCL’s River Science program.

The ceremonial salmon was iced and wrapped in a blanket and, with cheering and drumming from scores of supporters, the “spirit runners” who had voluntarily fasted for three days began the salmon run.  After two miles, the runners reached Smartsville, with Roger Hicks—a founding Board member of SYRCL 25 years ago—carrying the honored salmon.  Community members of this small, historic town joined with Tsi-Akim Maidu Chairman Don Ryberg in a Maidu round dance and greeted the runners with water and provisions for the remainder of the journey.

“It’s the salmon that brings people together.  We’re running today as an act of healing and of honoring both the salmon and the Maidu people of this land,” stated Roger Hicks, MD who is also founding physician of Yubadocs Urgent Care, a local medical clinic.  “We run for the salmon because they are such an important part of this watershed- not only for the people who live here, but also the plants and animals that have depended on them for millennia.”

In early 2006, SYRCL and the Tsi-Akim Maidu formed the Calling Back the Salmon Committee, comprised of indigenous leaders, local environmentalists (including Hicks and Rainey), and other community members within the greater Yuba River watershed.  Since then, each October for the past five years SYRCL has supported the Tsi-Akim Maidu in the resumption of this traditional salmon ceremony, which hadn’t previously been conducted on the Yuba River in over 150 years.

After leaving Smartsville, the runners continued for an additional 6 miles of difficult and steep terrain through backroads, trails and along Mooney Flat Road before arriving at Englebright Dam.  The Nevada County Sherriff and the US Army Corps of Engineers greeted the runners and provided boat shuttles up the 8 mile reservoir, which currently serves as the upstream barrier to salmon passage.

“Salmon have always held a cultural, spiritual and dietary importance to the people indigenous to the west slope of the Sierra Nevada.  Today, we also understand that restoring wild salmon upstream of the ‘rim dams’ is an necessary part of solving California’s water problems,” states Jason Rainey, executive director of SYRCL who ran with the salmon for the third year.

This summer, SYRCL received a favorable ruling in federal court for their legal action against the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service for what SYRCL contends are inadequate mitigations of the documented impacts to endangered salmon and other migratory fish from federal dams on the Yuba River, including Englebright Dam.   SYRCL is presently working on settlement terms with federal defendants.

The last mile of the run concluded with Maidu hunter Jason Ryberg, who ran with salmon for the fifth year, holding the salmon above his head while he and the runners crossed the South Yuba River to the ceremonial grounds, greeted by over 300 witnesses, supporters, including indigenous spiritual leaders from as far away as Hawaii, New Zealand and tribal lands in the eastern United States.  Maidu elders conducted the ceremony on the beach, which was followed by a feast of traditionally prepared salmon hosted by the Tsi-Akim Maidu tribe and supplied by the Enterprise Rancheria near Oroville, CA.

Yuba Salmon Facts:

• Before the Gold Rush, the Yuba River historically supported an estimated 15% of the 1-2 million salmon that returned annually to the Sacramento River Watershed.   Historic records indicate that salmon and steelhead ascended at least as far as Downieville on the North Yuba and Poorman Creek on the South Yuba River.

• As recently as 2002, the Yuba River supported over 25,000 returning salmon, and the Yuba continues to be a stronghold in California’s wild, self-sustaining populations of fall-run and spring-run Chinook Salmon as well as threatened wild steelhead trout.   In recent years run sizes have been reduced to less than 4,000 returning adult spawners.  Salmon runs in most hatchery-supported rivers in the Central Valley have witnessed even sharper declines in populations.

• Studies show that loss of habitat is a leading cause of salmon decline; more than 95% of spawning spring-run Chinook habitat in California is inaccessible due to the barriers posed by “rim dams” in the Sierra foothills.  Reintroduction of salmon above Englebright Dam was listed as the “primary” reintroduction action in the Northern Sierra region in the draft “Recovery Plan” issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service in the fall of 2009.

Founded in 1983 and based in Nevada City, CA, SYRCL has over 4,000 members and supporters of our mission to protect and restore the Yuba River and the Greater Yuba Watershed. For more than a decade, SYRCL has led environmental, tribal and fishing groups calling upon the Army Corps of Engineers to provide fish passage at Englebright Dam.

For more information about SYRCL’s work to restore wild salmon, or to get involved in our Yuba Salmon Now! Campaign, visit www.yubariver.org.

To learn more about the ceremony, visit www.callingbackthesalmon.com, and the other events organized by the Tsi-Akim Maidu as part of a 4-day Indigenous Peoples Weekend, visit www.indigenouspeoplesdays.org.

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