Pacific Lamprey
NEW!!
April 29, 2010: USFWS Releases Pacific Lamprey Conservation Recommendations: The Service today released a document that describes the primary factors contributing to lamprey population declines in upstream and upriver habitat and recommending best management practices for lamprey conservation.
Conservation interest in Pacific lamprey has grown in recent years, with increasing attention from tribes, federal and state agencies, and others.
The FWS introduced the Pacific Lamprey Conservation Initiative in February 2008.
The Corps is developing a ten-year plan for addressing lamprey passage at mainstem dams. The plan is intended to work in concert with the treaty tribes’ Columbia Basin lamprey restoration plan.
Under the 2008 Columbia River Fish Accords, the tribes are also pursuing a number of actions to help Pacific lamprey.
Lampreys belong to a primitive group of fishes that are eel-like in form but lack the jaws and paired fins of true fishes. These species have a round sucker-like mouth, no scales, and breathing holes instead of gills.
The lamprey can reach 30 inches in length and weigh more than a pound. Compared to salmon they are relatively poor swimmers, but they still can travel great distances in a short time.
Lampreys spend most of their life in stream substrates as a small, non-parasitic worm-like animals. They live five to seven years in stream sediments, feeding on algae, diatoms and other small organisms. After this period they begin to mature and migrate out to the ocean, where they mature into adults.
After two years or so, they swim back to freshwater, where they spawn in areas similar to salmon. They die after spawning, returning their sea nutrients to the stream for other species’ benefit.
Lamprey once were abundant throughout the Columbia River basin in the same areas as salmon, with numbers in the millions. Their rate of decline is greater than salmon, and now just a few thousand migrate over Bonneville Dam each year. They are culturally important to indigenous people throughout their range, and play a vital role in the ecosystem as food to mammals, fish and birds, for nutrient cycling and storage, and as a prey buffer for other species.
Pacific lamprey face a variety of threats at all stages of their life, including artificial barriers to migration, poor water quality, predation by nonnative species, stream and floodplain degradation, loss of estuarine habitat, decline in prey, ocean conditions, dredging, and dewatering. These factors have led to their decline.
USFWS Lamprey Conservation Initiative
USFWS lamprey fact sheet
USFWS lamprey coloring book