The Baker River sockeye fishery is especially important to Upper Skagit tribal fishermen.
It’s one of the few opportunities the tribe has to exercise treaty fishing rights at the site of an ancestral village. With declining salmon populations caused by disappearing habitat, increasing water temperatures and low streamflows, tribes have drastically cut back on their treaty-protected fisheries.
These fish are harvested near the confluence of the Baker and Skagit rivers. They are an integrated stock of both hatchery and wild-spawned fish. Without a hatchery program, the fishery would not be possible.