A truck carrying tens of thousands of baby salmon crashed on its way to a river in Oregon, but up to 77,000 salmon managed to survive by jumping into a nearby creek.
Many of the young salmon, or smolts, survived the crash by jumping into the creek, the officials said. But wildlife officials and members of the Nez Percé Tribe, who co-manage the fishery, counted another 25,529 that weren't so lucky. Their carcasses were recovered both in the tanker and on the streambank.
"The silver lining for me is 77,000 did make it into the creek and did not perish," Andrew Gibbs, the ODFW fish hatchery coordinator for eastern Oregon, told The New York Times."They hit the water running."The original plan to release smolts into the Imnaha River is part of a strategy to supplement the local wild population, which is listed as threatened largely due to dams that were built along the lower Snake River in the 1960s and early 1970s.