Joseph Oatman named leader of tribal fisheries group

A homegrown fisheries biologist was appointed to be the next leader of the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management.

Joseph Oatman will replace Dave Johnson, who is retiring after a four-decade career.

Oatman, an enrolled member of the tribe, was the deputy director of the department as well as the director of its harvest division. He started there as an intern in 1992 while attending the University of Idaho.

“I am humbled by this opportunity my Tribe has given me to lead our Fisheries Department,” he said in a news release. “I come from a family and tribal community who fishes for salmon and other fish. Salmon is our food and our economy. The health and well-being of our tribal fishers and their families depends upon the annual returns of salmon. I am committed to protecting, managing and enhancing our fishery resources for the current and future generations.”

Johnson is a member of the Navajo tribe and has worked for the department for nearly 40 years and served as its manager for more than 20 years. During that time, the department has expanded from a small fisheries agency into one with about 200 employees and a $30 million annual budget.

The department works throughout the Nez Perce Tribe’s traditional homeland in north central Idaho, southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. It manages two fish hatcheries and co-manages another while raising and releasing 12 million juvenile salmon and steelhead each year.

The tribe restored coho to the Snake River basin after the fish was declared extinct in the 1980s and it dramatically expanded the abundance of fall chinook upstream of Lower Granite Dam. Both fall chinook and coho now contribute to fall fishing opportunities for tribal and nontribal anglers.

The department also runs a large-scale fisheries habitat restoration program in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service that targets land degraded by past logging and minning.

“I’ve had the highest honor of being on the ground floor of this nationally recognized, award-winning program,” Johnson said in a news release. “We’ve been able to show that respect, care and dependency on the natural environment, along with a time-immemorial sense of place, make tribally run programs indispensable to our country’s management of its natural resources.”

Barker may be contacted at lmtribune.com.