The last couple of months have been rocky for Tom Rumreich.

Some say that Rumreich, who works as an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife Salmon-Trout Enhancement Program biologist in Charleston, has been the linchpin to the program’s success for the last 25 years. He’s won numerous awards and been hailed by state officials, teachers and area business leaders as having helped create one of the best — if not the best — salmon and steelhead fisheries in the state.

Over the last 10 years, the proliferation of millions of fish from local hatchery programs into area waterways has pumped millions of dollars into the local economy.

If there’s any one person to be credited for the program’s success, many believe that it’s Rumreich.

But not all are in agreement.

On Nov. 17, Rumreich was suddenly removed from his position as STEP biologist and reassigned to another position within the department. But after three weeks of discussions between ODFW officials — including several of the agencies top deputies — and some local heavy hitters threatening to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from local STEP programs — Rumreich found himself back in STEP last Thursday.

When contacted, Rumreich declined to be interviewed for this article. ODFW officials were tight-lipped too about why Rumreich was reassigned.

“Tom’s job duties have been switched, if you will,” said Steve Williams, an assistant administrator at ODFW’s Fish Division in Salem.

“He is still in the same location but he is no longer responsible for the STEP program,” Williams said the first week in December.

He later added that Rumreich’s relationship with STEP had “become very personal in nature with relation to the program,” but would not elaborate on the comment.

Rumreich’s supporters say one of the region’s five STEP Programs, known as the Coos River STEP Association, with a hatchery on Noble Creek, had pushed for Rumreich’s removal.

“That’s probably true,” said Clyde Haga, who owns the Noble Creek hatchery. “The Coos River Association got to where they couldn’t work with Tom.”

One of the reasons, he said, was because of criminal fishing violation charges brought against two former Coos River STEP Association presidents. Larry Cruthers, 62, of North Bend and Richard Bramblett, 67, of Coos Bay are scheduled to go on trial in early 2006. Cruthers was cited for transferring salmon eggs without a permit, while Bramblett has been cited with unlawfully taking a Chinook salmon for personal use.

Haga, who’s worked with Rumreich since 1984, said shortly after the two men were charged, about 25 members of the Coos River STEP Association and some Coquille STEP members met with ODFW officials and asked that Rumreich be removed.

A few weeks later, ODFW did just that.

But when word began to spread of Rumreich’s removal from STEP, another faction sprouted, this one consisting of about 50 members from the region’s other STEP groups who called for Rumreich to be reinstated. When John Ward, the president of the South Coast Steelheaders, and de facto spokesman for the ad hoc group of 50 inquired why Rumreich had been removed, he couldn’t get an answer from ODFW.

As a result, the ad hoc group caused a stir, Ward said. Ed Bowles, the state’s Fish Division administrator attended a meeting with the group in a Menasha Forest Products Corp., board room in North Bend on Nov. 30.

“By the third meeting, it had become evident to ODFW leadership that there was quite a community backlash coming out of this,” Ward said.

Part of that backlash came from Bill Lansing, the Menasha CEO, who threatened to withdraw his company’s financial backing for a new hatchery at Morgan Creek if Rumreich wasn’t reassigned.

“I’m not bashful about it,” Lansing said during an interview Monday. “I did pull that string.”

Menasha, a major backer of the Millicoma Interpretive Center for the last 20 years — a hatchery and education center on the West Fork off the Millicoma River, and several other timber companies have pledged to share in the cost of developing a $300,000 fish hatchery at Morgan Creek on 40 acres of land. Several other timber companies are also planning to kick in their share for the project.

But Lansing, for one, isn’t willing to do so without Rumreich.

“It’s like taking Babe Ruth out of the New York Yankees,” Lansing said. “I believe, without a champion, the best ideas will falter. You have a situation where you have a great idea — a program that he’s built for 25 years — and then jerk him out of it. It would collapse. We would have withdrawn support until that champion was re-found,” Lansing said.

Ward said the STEP projects are so numerous and so complicated they need to be supervised by an experienced biologist like Rumreich. ODFW had offered to replace him with another biologist.

By Friday of last week, Ward said he learned the groups efforts had paid off.

“We are a much larger constituency and they realized we better not be ignored,” Ward said.

However, Rumreich will not be performing the same duties as before. Mike Gray, ODFW’s district fish biologist, and Rumreich’s supervisor, said ODFW decided to have Rumreich handle only the educational component of the STEP program — the brunt of which takes place at the Millicoma Interpretive Center. Meanwhile, Gray said, the fish production aspects of the program, including supervising spawning and egg collection and other technical matters will be carried out by another biologist and Gray himself.

Since the education aspect of the program wasn’t the controversial part, Gray said, ODFW administrators decided to keep Rumreich there. More than 1,000 school children visit the facility each year. Since there are no field trips to the Noble Creek facility, Rumreich won’t be heading there anymore.

“The educational component was not the root of the issues causing problems in the STEP program,” Gray said.

As each of the factions move forward under the new leadership they differ on how they feel about Rumreich being there.

Haga said he remains unconvinced about the future with Rumreich in STEP. Meanwhile, Lansing and Ward, said they’re going to move forward with ODFW on their plans, but be cautiously optimistic.

“My only salvation is that they were good enough to correct it,” Lansing said. “We feel good about where things are headed.”