The Bonneville Power Administration will stop funding the lower Columbia River's Select Area Fishery Enhancement program on September 30, ending a 33-year arrangement with roughly three months' notice and leaving about 7 million hatchery spring Chinook and coho in production without a clear source of money.
The decision came in a June 18 letter from Jason Sweet, executive manager of BPA's Fish and Wildlife Program. Sweet's argument is not that SAFE failed. It is that SAFE succeeded at something BPA says it was never obliged to pay for.
"Although the off-channel fisheries supported by the SAFE program have clearly increased commercial and recreational harvest opportunities in those areas, there is no direct evidence that such increased off-channel harvest has resulted in reduced harvest impacts on weak and ESA-listed stocks in the mixed-stock fisheries on the mainstem," Sweet wrote.
He was blunter later in the same letter: "As a practical matter, the sole function of the current SAFE program, both in effect and by design, is to augment harvest opportunities for recreational and commercial fishers."
That distinction is the whole fight. SAFE began in 1993 as an experimental pilot built on a straightforward premise: raise hatchery salmon in off-channel sites like Youngs Bay and Blind Slough, and fishers can target them there instead of running nets through the mainstem, where protected wild stocks mix with hatchery fish. BPA funded it as mitigation for the hydro system's damage. Sweet's letter says the harvest-shifting benefit was never actually demonstrated.
Oregon's fish agency did not see it coming.
"This decision by BPA caught us by surprise. It puts decades of fishery reform work at risk and goes against the recommendation of the regional fish and wildlife managers and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council to fund this work," said Dr. Debbie Colbert, director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Council had recommended SAFE for continued funding. BPA overrode that, noting a Council recommendation is not a funding guarantee.
Tucker Jones, ODFW's ocean salmon and Columbia River program manager, laid out what he says goes down with it.
"SAFE is a cornerstone program that provides terminal, ocean, and mainstem harvest opportunities, supports living-wage jobs in coastal communities, provides forage for critically endangered southern resident killer whales, and reduces pressure on vulnerable Columbia River stocks," Jones said.
The money at stake is small by hydropower standards. BPA supplied about $1.6 million a year, roughly two-thirds of operations and maintenance costs, and the total gap across ODFW, Washington's WDFW and Clatsop County comes to about $2.4 million. SAFE commercial fisheries generated roughly $6 million in Oregon economic impact in 2025, with about $5 million a year paid to fishermen at the dock.
Recreational anglers take an average 34 percent of SAFE fish, a detail that scrambles the familiar sport-versus-gillnet framing on the Columbia. So does the reaction from the sportfishing industry, which finds itself defending a commercial fishery.
"This is one more nefarious effort by the BPA to step away from its fishery obligations, and this will affect both commercial SAFE fisheries and the Buoy 10 and nearby ocean fisheries," said Liz Hamilton, policy director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association.
BPA's position is that none of this should be a shock. The agency says it has advised the region to transition away from BPA funding since at least 2011, and Washington began phasing out its own SAFE participation in 2024. What changed in June was the deadline.
Gnat Creek Hatchery alone has historically released 560,000 spring Chinook a year. Whether those releases continue past this autumn now depends on whether Oregon, Washington and Clatsop County can find $2.4 million before September 30.