The V=Chambers Creek steelhead, when one delves deeply into how the program was actually run, reflected intense inbreeding and is likely one of the reasons for its collapse in Chambers.

Obviously, there are well run operations, and poorly run ones. I tend to hark back to Lloyd Royal's view that the river carrying capacity is relatively meaningless as far as hatchery production is concerned. The capacity of concern is the estuary and the ocean, and it seems to be getting exceeded.

I think hatcheries should serve one primary purpose, and that is to produce fish as mitigation (only). As such, they should be located as near to the fishery to be mitigated as possible. I also think that mitigation has to include escapement, and that the spawners upstream of a dam need to be replaced as much as the catch downstream.

I don't think that "enhancement", where more fish are produced than would have naturally, is a evil and destructive practice for the ecosystem.

And, to piggyback on some of the comments to this thread, I put my name on these ideas and put them out in the fisheries literature and at fisheries meetings.