Janine Castro

Janine has served as the Project Leader for the Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office (CRFWCO) in Vancouver, Washington since 2017. It is the mission of the CRFWCO to assist in determining the status of imperiled natural fish stocks, to evaluate management measures for recovery and assist in the recovery of these stocks, and to prevent future ESA listings. As the Project Leader, Janine provides leadership to a highly diverse technical staff that address a wide variety of fisheries issues, including:

• Fish passage and aquatic habitat restoration,
• Bull trout recovery and lamprey and mussel conservation, 
• Marking and tagging of nearly 40 million hatchery fish annually to support tribal, recreational, and commercial mark-selective fisheries,
• Mark-recapture studies of wild fish to determine occupancy, distribution, abundance, trends, and population growth rates, and
• Providing analytical support to project design, evaluation, and information management.

Janine regularly provides national and international presentations and training on aquatic habitat restoration, river science, and public speaking for scientists. She is one of the five founding members of River Restoration Northwest and is the Technical Director of Portland State University’s River Restoration Professional Certificate Program. Janine is also a member of the Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program’s Expert Regional Technical Group, which reviews ecosystem restoration actions in the floodplain of the lower Columbia River and estuary.

Current Projects:

• Deputy-level co-lead for the Service on the Willamette Project (Willamette Valley Hydro Operations)
• Columbia River Dredging Lead -- Beneficial Use of Dredge Materials, Regional Sediment Management Group, and the Dredge Material Maintenance Program
• Service representative on the WATER (Willamette Action Team for Ecosystem Restoration) forum

Publications:

See Google Scholar Library for a list of publications by Janine. 

Background:Janine has been in Federal service for over 30 years. Her first position was as a seasonal employee hiking around the Trinity Alps in Northern California looking for streambank erosion because the sediment was impacting salmon spawning. She then went on to spend almost 10 years with the Natural Resources Conservation Service as a geomorphologist working on rivers throughout the western US before joining the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Janine worked for 17 years at the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office in Portland as a river scientist where she was involved in all aspects of aquatic habitat restoration. In 2017, Janine joined CRFWCO as the Project Leader.

At CRFWCO since: 2017