A creature with 450 million years of history is slowly finding its way back to Oregon's rivers, and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs are helping lead the charge.

Pacific lamprey — an ancient, eel-like fish of deep cultural and ecological importance to tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest — have seen dramatic population declines across Oregon in recent decades. Dams have blocked their migration routes, water quality has declined, and habitat has degraded. For the Warm Springs people, the lamprey's disappearance is not just an ecological loss. It is a cultural one.

Translocation Around Impassable Dams

Lamprey biologists Aldwin Keo and Courtney Golts, working in partnership with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), are leading ongoing translocation efforts to physically carry lamprey around dams they cannot otherwise pass. Translocation efforts earlier this summer moved lamprey to Coyote Creek and the Long Tom River — waterways where the species had not been seen in years.

"The lamprey has been around 450 million years," said CRITFC's Jeremy Five Crows. "The thought that we could drive something extinct that's been on Earth for that long is terrible."

The effort is part of a broader Tribal Pacific Lamprey Restoration Plan developed by CRITFC member tribes — including the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Nez Perce, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. First formalized in 2011, the plan has guided restoration and research efforts across the Columbia Basin for over a decade.

Cultural Significance to Warm Springs

For the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, lamprey — known as apapam in Sahaptin — has been a traditional food source and part of spiritual life for thousands of years. Its decline represents a rupture in the connection between the Warm Springs people and the land they have stewarded since time immemorial.

Restoration work is slow, requiring careful collection of lamprey at sites where they remain accessible, transport to target waterways, and long-term monitoring to evaluate survival and reproduction. But tribal biologists say they are seeing encouraging signs in waterways where translocation has occurred in previous years.

A Broader Tribal Health and Conservation Week

The lamprey work comes alongside other recent news from the Warm Springs community. The Warm Springs Community Health Program recently hosted a free educational session on dementia and physical therapy for local caregivers. Medical social worker Shawnetta Yahtin, who organized the event, emphasized that residents can call her office at 541-553-2352, extension 6288, to be connected with cognitive assessments and resource guides.

Tribal leaders also continue to monitor the impact of federal funding cuts on Native service programs. A recent report from the Urban Indian Health Institute found that nearly two-thirds of surveyed tribal organizations have been forced to scale back services for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) following federal cuts enacted since early 2025.

For more on Pacific lamprey restoration, visit critfc.org. To contact the Warm Springs Community Health Program, call 541-553-2352.