Sockeye salmon over Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Lower temperatures in 2008 North Pacific waters brought in fatter plankton, which, along with greater outflows of Columbia River water, fed the resurgent populations. Proposed legislative efforts, such as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, are attempting to protect the headwaters of the sockeye salmon by preventing industrial development in roadless areas. Record numbers of a once-waning population of sockeye salmon have been returning to the Northwest's Columbia Basin (as of June 2012), with thousands more crossing the river's dams in a single day than the total numbers seen in some previous years.
Sockeye salmon National Marine Fisheries Service. Other sockeye populations in the upper Columbia River and in Puget Sound are not listed under the Act. Sockeye is an exception to 2010's forecast resurgence of Oregonian fish stocks. Spring Chinook, summer steelhead, and Coho are forecast to increase by up to 100% over 2008 populations. The sockeye population peaked at over 200,000 in 2008 and were forecast to decline to just over 100,000 in 2010. As an early indication of the unexpectedly high sockeye run in 2010, on July 2, 2010, the United States Army Corps of Engineers reported over 300,000 sockeye had passed