In 1998, the JCAPE project requested an emergency Step-2 action from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC) to begin limited salmon supplementation of the Johnson Creek stock of summer Chinook salmon population.  This request was to produce 110,000 smolts in existing facilities at the McCall Fish Hatchery.  This action allowed the JCAPE project to start the recovery of the Johnson Creek stock while the JCAPE project continued development through the NPCC 3-Step review process.  This limited production has now occurred in 1998, 2000-2016. The original proposal for the JCAPE project was to produce 300,000 smolts annually. This level of production would have required the development of new satellite facilities on Johnson Creek and the expansion of the McCall Fish Hatchery.  NOAA Fisheries indicated, in August 2002, that they would only permit the JCAPE project for 110,000 smolts.  This level of production could be accomplished utilizing existing hatchery facilities without modifications.

Johnson Creek Artificial Propagation Enhancement Project is a conservation program that will spawn, incubate, rear, and release summer Chinook salmon. This program will utilize existing incubation and rearing facilities at the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan (LSRCP) juvenile rearing hatchery at McCall, Idaho.  Juvenile fish will be reared to the smolt stage and direct released into Johnson Creek.  The production goal for Johnson Creek Chinook salmon remains 100,000 smolts.  These numbers are authorized by NMFS through Section 10 permits of the Endangered Species Act (ESA Permit #1250).

Juveniles will be raised to smolts from incubation to release in variable water temperature conditions mimicking the natural regime. Rearing conditions will also include low density (0.1 to 0.30 lb/cf/in), and natural photo-period (indoors).  Smolts will be direct released into a known natural production area in Johnson Creek with the intent that the returning adults will spawn in their natural habitat.  Releases of juvenile smolts occurred in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.  Existing McCall Fish Hatchery facility structure has limited JCAPE production to one final rearing container.  Based on results from a recent small-scale study, we found that release timing of fish differed between an 'early' and 'late' period.  Results indicate that survival of fish released during the later time frame were higher than for those released during the early time frame.  We plan on releasing all BY15 smolt during the later time frame in 2017.

This program, initiated prior to the first releases of supplemented fish, has been collecting baseline life-history characteristic information, to examine survival of the natural fish in Johnson Creek and any potential effects that the supplementation program may have on the natural population. This M&E program quantifies 38 key performance measures, which are being standardized throughout Columbia River Basin (within Collaborative System-wide Monitoring and Evaluation Project), and contributes to regional monitoring and evaluation (RM&E) efforts addressing critical uncertainties associated with supplementation and ESA listed stock status/recovery.  These performance measures are listed in six major categories: (1) Abundance, (2) Survival-Productivity, (3) Distribution, (4) Genetic, (5) Life History, and (6) Habitat.  Evaluation under the context of these performance measures give us the most accurate means to evaluate this supplementation program.

The JCAPE program is guided by a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan (Vogel et al. 2006) which includes management, and monitoring and evaluation objectives. One key objective in the Plan is to assess the status and trends of an unsupplemented 'reference'  population to enable comparisons with the Johnson Creek population.  As such, we collect juvenile and adult data from the neighboring Secesh population via operation of a rotary screw trap and through multiple-pass spawning ground surveys (respectively).  We do this in collaboration/cooperation with the Integrated Status Effectiveness Monitoring program, or ISEMP.  Other objectives are to assess production at the subbasin scale, which involves widespread spawning ground surveys throughout the South Fork subbasin (i.e., East Fork South Fork Salmon River, South Fork Salmon River, Secesh River) and at the Major Population Group Scale.