Hundreds of baby salmon released into Wolf Creek during annual event

Hundreds of baby chinook salmon are now swimming free in Wolf Creek after being released into the watershed on Sunday, May 24.

The release was coordinated by the Yukon Fish and Game Association in partnership with staff from the Whitehorse Rapids Fish Hatchery as well as community members from the Carcross/Tagish First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council.

The family-friendly event included a community barbecue at Wolf Creek Campground and educational activities put on by community partners. Various tables set up at the event offered attendees a chance to learn about the Yukon River salmon and the efforts underway to promote their population-level health and conservation.

The migration of chinook salmon on the Yukon River is one of nature’s most remarkable phenomena. Every year, thousands of mature salmon undertake one of the longest freshwater migrations on earth to swim over 3,000 kilometres upstream from the Bering Sea in coastal Alaska all the way to their spawning beds near the headwaters of the Yukon River in northern B.C.

Warren Kapaniuk, a hatchery technician at the Whitehorse Rapids Fish Hatchery, explained how the program to raise chinook salmon fish was established in 1984 as a “mitigate hatchery” with the goal of helping to replenish stocks of salmon that are lost when the immature salmon (called fry) are forced to move through the dam at the Whitehorse Rapids Generating Station.

“Our main [goal] is to replace the fry that are lost coming down through the turbines”, says Kapaniuk, “So what we do is we put extra fish in to offset some of that loss”.

Every year, hatchery staff breed and raise tens of thousands of baby salmon fry before releasing them into their traditional spawning areas located in various tributary creeks of the Yukon River. The release into these spawning areas helps ensure that both the hatchery-raised and wild salmon will begin the long trek to the Pacific Ocean at the same time. Time in the spawning beds also allows the salmon to imprint the smell of the area into their memory. It is this unique smell that salmon will follow for thousands of kilometres back to these same spawning beds, the lifeblood of these salmon stocks for millennia. This year, Kapaniuk says the hatchery expects to release just over 64,000 fry into various Yukon River tributaries, with the majority of those fish set to be freed into Michie Creek in just a few weeks.

In recent years, the migration or “run” of chinook salmon up the Yukon River has seen a concerning decline in the number of returning fish. According to a report published by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in February, the number of returning fish has dropped from a yearly average of over 175,000 in 1981 to the lowest-ever observed returns, averaging just over 25,000 fish in the early 2020s. While the hatchery program to replace losses attributed to the dam and power station in Whitehorse predates this precipitous drop, the annual fry release has become an important avenue for conservation experts to engage with the public on the issue of salmon conservation.

The fish were transported to the event on Sunday in a large plastic bin on the back of a trailer, arriving in the Wolf Creek campground parking lot just before 1 p.m. Members of the public were invited to peer into the bin to view the tiny salmon, and the trailer was quickly overwhelmed by excited children jostling to get a glimpse of the tiny fish. Volunteers from Yukon Fish and Game were on hand to transfer the fish into smaller buckets before hauling them from the parking lot to the creek. Down by the water, volunteers scooped the fry into dozens of clear plastic bags before handing them off to dozens of eager children to release into the creek.

The controlled chaos lasted little more than half an hour as parents and volunteers worked to shepherd the bag-toting children as they ran back and forth collecting and releasing fish.

Speaking after the event concluded, Kapaniuk said this year’s release was a great success.

“I think it went really well, all the kids got a salmon,” Kapaniuk said. He was also happy to see the longevity of the event on display, with some families having a history of attendance spanning multiple generations. “I’ve heard there’s even been third-generation [attendees] with grandparents bringing their grandkids, so it’s a long-running stewardship project.”

By Noah Korver, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Original Published on May 27, 2026 at 11:44