The upper Cedar River is also seeing increases in abundance of both Chinook and Coho without supplementation through hatcheries. Pointing to one factor or one run year and saying, thats the problem, or look there are tons of fish ultimately fall short as a means of understanding salmonid biology and population dynamics. Salmon are prone to broad fluctuations in abundance, but as a biologist I greatly respect once said, "freshwater habitat is the bankaccount" if you have a low balance you wont see much return even when things get good. Yes there is still productive habitat in many watersheds in the Northwest, but hatcheries ARE making much of it less productive than it otherwise would be. Even if they pursue completely contradictory policies NOAA, WDFW and ODFW all acknowledge this fact in writing. See the HSRG, WDFW hatchery and fisheries reform docs, and while I'm less familiar with the Oregon Literature I know it's there.

I can't keep repeating myself so at the risk of sounding like a broken record I will say it one more time...from year to year big changes in abundance are NOT driven by changes in the freshwater component of salmonid lifehistories, rather they're driven by changes in ocean conditions. From Sea Surface temperature, to upwelling strength to a whole host of other environmental variables, the amount of productivity in the coastal food web can fluctuate more 2 degrees of magnitude between years. Thats why we've had huge returns of Coho this year, but why returns may well tank next year (El Nino). Freshwater habitat, hatchery impacts and the like play out on a longer timescale generally meaning that the 10 year average adult return, and the longterm population trend are probably reflections of habitat condition.

The last thing to keep in mind is that many sport fisheries are almost entirely driven by hatchery production in the lower 48. That means that adult abundance is entirely decoupled from habitat condition, which is unfortunate because we pour alot of money into hatcheries when in the long run, in many cases we might see a greater return on our investment if we spent less money on supplementation and focused on habitat restoration. I suppose people are never really that patient though.