The Okanagan Nation Alliance is restoring salmon access to Okanagan Lake for the first time in nearly 100 years through a newly completed dam fish passage.
The Okanagan Nation Alliance has reconnected sockeye salmon to Okanagan Lake for the first time in nearly a century. A new fish passage now lets fish bypass a dam that has blocked the route since 1953. The milestone caps decades of restoration work led by Syilx Okanagan communities in British Columbia.
Dams and channel work built through the last century cut salmon off from more than 350 square kilometers of lake habitat. The Okanagan Lake Dam at Penticton became one of the last major barriers standing in the salmon’s path. Until now, fish had no permanent route to swim safely around it.
The Okanagan Nation Alliance runs one of Canada’s most extensive Indigenous-led fisheries programs. It comprises eight member communities and manages hatcheries, habitat restoration, and dam modifications across the Okanagan Basin. Its fisheries team has spent more than two decades working to bring salmon back.
For Syilx Okanagan communities, the reconnection means more than fish counts. Elders describe a longstanding relationship between their people and salmon, one rooted in responsibility rather than simple resource use. Opening ceremonies for the passage included songs and drumming, along with tributes to community leaders who pushed for its construction over many years.
Engineers designed the completed passage as a nature-like channel rather than a traditional metal fish ladder. Grating along the top lets sunlight reach the water and allows visitors to watch fish pass underneath.
The Okanagan Nation Alliance’s completed fish passage is designed as a natural-looking channel rather than a traditional metal fish ladder, with grating along the top that lets sunlight reach the water and lets visitors watch fish pass underneath. Photo courtesy of Okanagan Nation Alliance.
The route gives steelhead, rainbow trout, sockeye, chinook, and kokanee access to the lake and 13 tributary streams. An adjustable barrier built into the design filters out invasive species trying to follow the same path. That balance lets native fish through while keeping unwanted species out.
Salmon runs in the Okanagan once numbered in the hundreds of thousands before dam construction and river channelization fragmented their habitat. The Okanagan Lake Dam, built in 1953, included an earlier fishway that never worked well. Water levels made it unusable for salmon during much of the year.
The passage builds on a broader restoration effort the Okanagan Nation Alliance has carried out since the 1990s. That work includes a 12-year sockeye reintroduction program in nearby Skaha Lake and roughly 50 habitat projects across the basin. Modifications to two other dams further downstream have also opened additional spawning grounds.
A conservation hatchery run by the Alliance raises sockeye fry each spring for release into historical spawning areas. Students take part in some releases through a program that introduces them to salmon biology and Syilx culture. In 2026 alone, organizers released 330,000 sockeye fry across the territory.
Recovering salmon runs have also revived a small commercial and community fishery on Osoyoos Lake. In recent years, the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s fishing crew has landed record numbers of returning sockeye there, with thousands of fish distributed to member communities for ceremonies, trade, and food. A stronger run into Okanagan Lake could extend that momentum further north.
Okanagan sockeye form part of a larger population that migrates through the Columbia River Basin shared by Canada and the United States. According to the International Joint Commission, Okanagan-origin fish account for the largest share of sockeye returning to that binational system most years. That transboundary status makes the newly reopened habitat significant well beyond British Columbia.
International reviewers have noted the project’s design. The passage was nominated for the International Fish Passage Project of Distinction and presented at a fish passage conference in California in 2026. Recognition like this signals growing interest in Indigenous-led approaches to river restoration.
Returns to the reopened habitat are expected to stay modest at first, since warm river conditions have limited recent salmon numbers. Even so, the passage will remain open for every future migration season. For a Nation that has worked for generations to see salmon return, a permanent route into Okanagan Lake marks a turning point rather than an ending.
