When the Eagle Creek fire roared through the Columbia River Gorge in 2017, it was during the salmon commercial fishing season. Tribal fishers along the river were out in boats as the sky turned a dark red and the air filled with smoke.
Buck Jones was working at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), the fisheries technical and advisory organization of the four Columbia River treaty fishing Tribes: the Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce. As the fire burned, blocking Interstate 84 that borders the river in Oregon, Jones drove up to the Washington state side and along the river to distribute high quality masks to the Tribal fishers and staff working there. The air quality was so bad, he couldn’t see across the river to the Oregon shore.
“The fire really made me aware of how vulnerable we can be in the Gorge,” said Jones, who is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and salmon marketing specialist at CRITFC.