The Panther Creek Chinook Salmon Project follows a long history of work by the Tribes to monitor, protect, enhance, and restore Chinook salmon populations in the Upper Salmon River subbasin.  Following the demise of the local Chinook salmon population, Panther Creek was identified as a high priority for restoration with the potential for significant benefits if mining impacts could be effectively addressed.  However, the scale of impacts and the costs of remediation were daunting.

In 1982, as part of a comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Program for the Columbia River Basin, the Northwest Power Planning Council (NPPC) adapted a program (Section 700) aimed at increasing wild and hatchery production of anadromous fish. Panther Creek was one of the projects to be implemented by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) as offsite mitigation. The overall purpose of the project was to achieve full salmon and steelhead production in the Panther Creek basin.  BPA contracted with Bechtel National Inc. in 1984 under this program, to conduct an initial assessment of fish production potential and alternatives eliminating sources of toxic effluent that prevented passage and caused mortality of anadromous fish in Panther Creek (Reiser et al. 1986).  This assessment found substantial amounts of spawning and rearing habitat in portions of the drainage but also documented the severity of the environmental contamination problem.

Over the intervening years, extensive environmental and habitat remediation and restoration efforts have been undertaken in the Panther Creek in response to a complex of actions, litigation, and agreements by Federal, State, and Tribal governmental agencies and private entities.  These efforts have restored conditions In Panther Creek suitable for natural production of Chinook salmon.

The purpose of the Panther Creek Chinook Salmon Project is to restore a summer Chinook salmon fishery in Panther Creek.  The project involves a dedicated recolonization effort using remote site incubators to seed vacant and/or underutilized habitat.  Project planning has been underway for several years, with recolonization beginning in 2014.