With the 2024 Chinook salmon season underway, lawmakers including Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden announced on October 13 that the 2018-2020 Chinook salmon fishery has been declared a disaster by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The announcement allows local fishermen to apply for disaster assistance funds to help recover from low fishing returns during those years. … ”I might argue that it’s not necessarily a decline on the salmon population period. It’s on projected returns on two different rivers in California. One, the Klamath River and the other the Sacramento River,” said [Jeff Reeves, chairman of the Oregon Salmon Commission].