In general I think the hatchery system is wrongheaded....the following is my best effort at describing why I feel the way I do. I hope my efforts here will be enough to convince some of you that the 'Hidden Agenda' of WT may be the only way to save wild fish populations in our state. At the very least I would hope you just take my opinion into consideration, I suppose that's all one can ever ask in these conversations. BTW, I've never found WT's 'agenda' to be 'hidden', all I need to know about them is contained in their mission statement, which coincidentally is pretty close to the mission statements of Wyoming Trout, Colorado Trout, Montana Trout, Idaho Trout, Oregon Trout, California Trout etc, etc...

This is a layman's explanation, based on opinion, emotion and what I believe to be facts. Hopefully Smalma or Salmo G. will let me know if I've got something completely wrong here....

Hatcheries should NEVER have been on our rivers in the first place. There were no considerations made at the time for how these hatcheries would affect wild fish populations in their respective watersheds. Now that wild fish populations are in jeapordy throughout Puget Sound and even Washington state as a whole, WDFW asks that someone prove there is an impact before the hatcheries are removed? I hope I've got it wrong because that sounds like incredibly backward thinking to me.

In my opinion hatcheries need to justify their own existence. The burden of proof should lie with the IMPACTER not the IMPACTED. In that light I would like to see each and every hatchery in our state closed until they can prove:

1) There are no wild fish left in their respective watersheds, or that the wild populations that do exist are considered beyond the ability to recover ...in this case a I think a hatchery is a good idea...

or

2) They have no significant impact on wild fish populations. That's right, here is where the burden of proof I spoke of above comes into play. The health and vitality of a species native to our rivers is at stake...those that wipe their butts with the spotted owl will take issue with this of course because it puts the welfare of an animal above the welfare of an economy, which affects people. In my opinion this is the single most important fulcrum dividing sportsfishermen. Fish first or fishing first?

For me, there is no question. If the hatchery system were to be enacted today they would have to prove these things anyway. That they didn't have to at their inception can be fixed by making them do it now.

The thing that most people on the other side of this argument fail to see is that I am willing to put my rod away for good if it means even just a chance at recovery for wild fish populations. Already I have taken as many steps as I possibly can to minimize my personal impact, limiting my fishing to rivers whose native populations are relatively healthy, I've educated myself as to the proper way to handle fish for release, I don't use bait during months where heavy smolt populations are present...the list goes on...I'm sure there is more I can do, maybe someday I will be as committed to this idea as WT.

Don't for a minute think I am foolish enough to think that this is an end all solution. With hatcheries gone it would create quite a dilemma for commercial fishermen and the tribes. As far as commercial fishing, at least in Puget Sound goes, no sport fishery = no commercial fishery period, IMO.

The tribes are a different issue entirely. I have no answer here...seems like one for the litigators. The first thought that comes to mind is that if you have a casino generating mega-bucks for the people of your reservation or tribe, how on earth can you justify the need to harvest fish from the river? Don't get me wrong, no one would cheer louder than I if the Quillayutes decided tomorrow that they were going to revert to the fishing methods of their ancestors....whatever those are. Preserving culture, thumbs up...fishing native stocks into exinction, thumbs down. The rub though is that not all of the different tribes have casinos, the biggest source of income for the Hoh tribe for example is wild salmon and steelhead. Who am I or anyone else for that matter to take that away from them?

I never claimed to have the answers. It cracks me up when people do, its usually a crystal clear indication that they are to be ignored. All I have is my opinion, thankfully I've learned over the years that if hold onto that too tightly it will melt away in my hands, leaving me with nothing.

Even though we have divergent opinions about the necessity of hatcheries I hope that either Smalma or Salmo will take the time to share their ideas about why I am wrong, or what misinterpretations of fact I may be incorporating into my logic. If nothing else your excellent counter-points always leave me re-examining my positions, which IMO is the only to way to continue to learn and evolve.

If you've made it this far....thank you.

h2o

Thanks for stating your beliefs in a concise manner.

Hatcheries are a mitigation or remedy for wrongs done to our fisheries by numerous perpetrators. This may be a bandaid for sure but a mitigation nontheless.

The tribes are enjoying a pretty liberal interpretation of the treaties of 1855 in this state and other treaties across the country. No question the white eyes screwed them over pretty bad. The treaties are federal and cannot be modified here locally. We ruined the wild runs that they were given "in kind" access to 150 years ago so today we mitigate those old promises with hatcheries and many other rights for the tribes. Casinoes are part of the sovereign nation exemption and there really isn't much we can do about it without federal decisions to abbrogate the treaties. That doesn't seem likely in this political climate.

Even Alaska's vast and pristine lands are not producing the salmon of the glory days. I am really not sure if hatcheries are a viable solution but I think we need to consider the effects to all our citizens and not just the fishermen. That unfortunately includes the villains who helped cause the decline of our salmon. The farmers, the loggers, the developers, commercial nets, dams etc...

The US immigration policies have allowed a flood of people into this country further compounding an already overpopulated urban area here in Puget Sound.

So, in conclusion, to single out hatcheries as the villain is wrong. I think we can find a solution but not overnight or even in our life times..Even if we closed all the hatcheries and stopped fishing tomorrow we would not succeed. Stop all logging , breach all the dams and halt development statewide and still the wild fish runs would not be as robust as in 1855. I would say, however, that one good way to prevent the fish from disappearing would be to stop killing them. Until we figure it out we mitigate the damage.

Grandpa: I very often disagree with you. I usually don't bother to respond, but in this case we are close to agreement. We wiill not stop tribal abuses in this climate, and we seem to do too little, too late about the other commercial fishermen, and we all know the loggers own our politicians. But . . if hatcheries are killing our wild salmon. I said IF. IF we learn from solid science that current hatchery practices are killing wild salmon we must stop doing what we are doing. IF there is no way to modify hatchery practices short of closing them we must close them.

I am not convinced that closing the hatcheries is the answer, but if they are killing wild salmon that is not my idea of mitigation.

And while I think WT may be a bit extream, I beleive tha change sometimes will come only from extream measures. (i.e. civil right marches, womens suffarage protests, etc. etc.) Perhaps the outcome of the WT litigation will be to force the hatchery practices WT advocates.

We may not fully resrtore wild salmon in our lifetimes but we can damn sure wipe them out in the blink of an eye.

I think if hatcheries are a culprit in doing away with wild salmon I suspect they would not be near the top of the list of culprits. A politician running for governor said something to the affect that we in Washington are a rare breed in that we actually catch and kill our endangered species (wild salmon and steelhead). Think of it another way. What if we took the bald eagle, our national bird, and allowed hunting of the bird? We would allow capturing and killing of only , say, 1,000 of them this year...We would just raise a bunch of chicks in hatcheries to make up for it. Would it be the eagle hatchery that we blame for the extinction of the national bird or the hunter?

It was said by John Carlson in the 2000 governer's race. He said:

"What other endangered species can be legally trapped in large numbers while traveling to lay its eggs? It makes no sense to regulate salmon habitat on land while allowing thousands of yards of gill nets to be stretched across salmon habitat in the water."

I might add that I totally agree.

i think hatcheries are great. you get to put some pretty nice steelhead on your plate every year. would you rather people keep natives?

H20-
Very well said. Your views make sense on some points and are extreme on others. But that is the best anyone has explained why they are against hatcheries. And I even agree with some of it. I however, could not put my rod away. I could catch and release only, but not give it up completely. I'm pretty sure it would kill me. Anyway, great explaination, You should go after Ramone's job...

okieboy: Did you think this clearly before you became a team Mary Jane pro staffer?

Grandpa: I think you are 100% correct in your analogy of the eagles and the eagal hatchries. BUT, if the hatchery eagles were killing the last remaining remnants of the wild eagles, what whould you do about it?
No question we would not have needed hatcheries had we not built the dams, clearcut the forrests, paved the wetlands and then tried very hard to net every last salon in the sea and the rivers.
Problem is, we are still doing all that.

Grandpa,surecatch
The bald eagle analogy is oversimplified and idiotic unless you talking about dilluting the bald eagle gene pool with millions on genetically identical clones year after year for decades...then it makes sence. IMO it's not the hatcheries that are problematic its the hatchery practices. And who is willing to say that if we stopped harvesting salmon and herring for a cycle or two that they would not come back 10 fold. Look what happened when canada stopped taking 500,000 coho off the west side of Vancouver Island. We had the best coho returns in decades. Yes there are lots of reasons the runs have declined, but as sport fishers we need to stop pointing the finger and realize that any wild fish that lives to spawn helps the resource. There are plenty of Special interests blaming each other for this decline. Certianly they all contribute to the problem including WDFW hatcheries. IMO, like John Carlson, some of these problems are more easily addressed than others. GET THE #@%$ING NETS OUT OF THE RIVERS NOW! This would be the lowest cost to our society and have the biggest positive impact on the resource. Wild puget sound kings are being gillnetted each year, and we, the taxpayers, are paying billions to try to save them.
End of Rant

H2o

I will also add that the hatcheries are a bandaid to cover the reel problem.They decieve the general public and allow fishing where there should be none.Even if the hatchery fish are not competing with our wild stocks they open the door for the sporty to go in and kill smolt accidently while trying to catch these hatchery fish.

I have said on this bourd for two years now, that I would rather put my steelhead gear away then see the wild fish go by the way side.That is not an easy decision.Alot of the people that are trying to discredit any body or orginization that stands against the hatcheries is afraid of losing there oportunity of harvest.

To fish or not to fish.Is that the reel question?

IMHO- no hatcheries= better survival for wild fish
better survival= more opportunities to be caught by commercial and or tribal fisheries
More developement=less habitat
less habitat=less wild fish
less wild fish=possibility of over exploitation by commercial
and or tribal interests
over exploitation-possible extinction
sport fisheries limited to only wild stocks-even less wild fish that can be taken by commercial and or tribal interests, adding to wild stock's fate
no hatcheries-no fish at all to be caught by anyone. Sell your gear before it's too late, and start doing whitewater float trips for all the bleeding heart liberals who are at the root of this and many other problems that confront us all

I haven't seen anyone discuss the more basic problem with hatcheries - they don't work that well. In recent years, the effective return from hatcheries has been documented to be as low as .5% of the plants, while wild stock fish in the same river get 3 to 5% returns. The hatchery fish have been bred to be raisable in hatcheries, but the same traits that make them successful in cement ponds chasing liver pellets don't allow them to thrive in the rivers.

This is not so much an indictment of hatcheries per se as it is about hatchery management, and the state of knowledge about fish raising. I suspect that the hatchery managers are trying to improve, but they, like everyone else, can only do so much in the budget situation we have today.

I don't hate hatcheries. I just think they are viewed by the angling public as being a magic solution that will keep the fish coming, when the data show that they are becoming less and less effective as the years go on.

Really, most all of you are right. There are river systems that are pretty much totally trashed with hydropower and habitat losses that mitigation hatcheries were designed to correct. These systems should have hatcheries. There are also systems that have no dams, relatively to very pristine headwaters (some in national parks) and relatively undeveloped estuaries. The best systems left are right in Bob's back yard. There are some in my backyard too. These should NOT have hatcheries on them as they are not necessary to mitigate anything and really don't, all that happens is that hatchery fish replace wild fish. All the other things (overfishing, habitat loss, etc.) are worse problems than most anything a hatchery can do, however, unless it is contribute to these problems by deceiving people into thinking overfishing and development is ok as the hatchery will take care of it.

So here's what I want - lots of hatcheries on dammed, screwed up systems, hatcheries designed to produce large, fat smolts that need little habitat on their way to the ocean - put a bunch of them in net pens at the mouth even for a couple weeks before release. These systems then are the places people go to catch fish to eat, commercial, sport, and tribe. Then take all the hatcheries off the rivers that have no dams and adequate spawning and rearing habitat. These have wild fish release fisheries on them, period - no commercial, no tribal, no trophy fish retention, nothing. Tribes on these river systems would have to agree to transfer their commercial operations to hatchery systems, or perhaps they could be given an exclusive area to guide C&R fishermen (this would work particularly well on the Quinault Reservation.) Ocean fishing, or fishing in other mixed stock areas like the Straits or the Sound is allowed, wild fish are released, and if there is to be any commercial or tribal trolling in the ocean, then the quota is based upon weak stock management. And for crissake, protect the habitat in undeveloped river and estuarine systems from development, and control pollution from point and non-point sources agressively.

This would work, guys

Isn't this about where we are?
What does Endangered Mean?

Where would one look for numbers of Wild Chinook for a given drainage?

It is highly unlikely that Hatcheries are responsible for the demise of Wild Chinook. If you had to quantify how much damage each factor had what would be the impact of hatcheries? 1%? 2%? Less? Far too many other factors have had much greater impact.

Leave the hatcheries in place. Work to make them better. Work to make habitat better.

...that and $2 will get you a cup of coffee

Right on Auntie!

We have a ton of problems facing our fish. That should be obvious by the fact that more then half of all distinct chinook species in the state are on the brink of extinction. Many are already extinct. And I do not for a minute buy that crap about how many animals have gone extinct in the past. We know what caused these extinctions. We did!

No one action will bring them back, be banning nets, tearing down hatcheries, feel good habitat projects or whatever. In fact I seriously doubt you ever again see healthy chinook runs in Puget Sound's urban streams.

I agree with a previous poster who said we should stuff our ruined rivers with salmon form hatcheries and keep them off the few remaining rivers. If that means some marginal rivers need to be closed, so be it. There would be added opportunity on the ones we stuff with fish.

The Vedder River in B.C. seems like a good model. They have huge hatchery plants of chinook, steelhead and coho. Thousands of urban anglers enjoy excellent fishing. Other nearby rivers have no hatcheries and are managed to keep their wild stock healthy.

surecatch

"The Vedder River in B.C. seems like a good model"

I am not familiar with how their hatchery practices work, how do they manage their hatcheries different then we do?

Lead Thrower:

In fact they do manage their hatcheries diffrently than we do, but I wasn't talking about that. I was simply saying they stuff badly degraded, urban rivers with hatchery fish and leave the others alone.

While I am by no means an expert on B.C. hatchery practices, I know they use rod and reel caught wild streelhead for most of their broodstock and that they hold them for up to four months until they are ripe for spawning.
The Vedder, which is about the size of the Nisqually gets 10,000 steelhead returning in a good year. They get 40,000 fall chinook.

Stlhdh2o,

Your opinion is fine, but you asked for a response, so . . .

This is complex. If it were simple, I think even our inept government might have solved things by now. We're a plurality of people with a plurality of interests, and many of our nearest and dearest interests conflict with one another - sometimes to the point of mutual exclusivity.

The hatchery system exists for two reasons: 1) because fish can be cultured, you can bet someone would decide to do it; 2) hatcheries seemed like a good bet to offset over-fishing. Habitat was still quite pristine on the west coast when hatchery operations commenced. Now we have hundreds of hatcheries . . . in Washington State alone.

It isn't necessary to close every hatchery until it proves itself as not harmful to listed species. That sounds like a simple action, but it would actually be quite complicated. I'll not go into that here. Wherever there are ESA listed fish, hatchery operations must obtain a section 10 permit from NMFS (which is what WDFW hadn't yet done, causing WT to sue them). In that permit, NMFS imposes a series of conditions on the operations of hatcheries, either individually, or collectively for an area or region - like Puget Sound. An interesting note is that 5 of the Puget Sound hatcheries have chinook restoration/recovery as their primary or sole purpose. Closing them would be a serious setback, perhaps ensuring the extinction of some local stocks.

I think a useful evaluation of our state's hatcheries would be an objective audit - if such a thing could exist.

For example, think about how many hatcheries come into existence. A state senator or representative decides a fish hatchery in his or her district (usually at the urging of some special interest) would be a good political trophy. The hatchery might get located on a river that has/had a good wild run. However, the increase in runsize from the addition of hatchery fish causes WDFW to authorize an increased harvest and increased harvest rate to prevent too many excess hatchery fish returning to the hatchery rack. (Excess rack return is always bad political news. The commercial interests complain to their legislator that constituents are missing out on harvesting state-owned salmon. So the legislator directs WDFW (how makes a separate good story) to "improve" management. So higher harvest reduce the hatchery surplus but also over-harvest the wild run, putting it into a spiral toward oblivion. This gets "mitigated" by releasing hatchery surplus fry into the nearly empty natural habitat to try to retain both natural and hatchery production. It usually doesn't work very well, and the river is left mainly with a hatchery population.

Some hatcheries produce fish mainly for a commercial fishery that has become an historical anachronism. Yet it goes on. The lower Columbia River coho fishery fits that catagory in my opinion. Massive releases of hatchery coho and subsequent gillnet fishing particularly have all but extirpated wild coho populations in the Columbia. Yet it goes on. Why? BTW, all those hatchery coho are a major contributor to the Columbia chum salmon being endangered as well.

Not all hatcheries are equal in their performance. Some get perpetually low smolt to recruit survival. They cannot be closed; Mr. Legislator mentioned above won't stand for it because his constituents won't stand for it. Some hatcheries are plagued by water quality problems and fish disease. They might not be economically viable, but there is no standard for economic viability of hatcheries. The range is almost rediculous. I think hatcheries produce adult salmon and steelhead and costs varying from 1 or $2 to $3,000 (admittedly the high end is occupied by Columbia/Snake River mitigation hatcheries wherein most smolts never live to see Astoria.). Does every hatchery make sense, as in serving the public interest? Well, there is no singular definition of the public interest, so there is no simple answer.

Hatchery reform is essential to a balance of natural and artificial production. So far, I'm in the balance ballpark instead of the no-hatchery camp. We need hatcheries to help recover many wild populations (let's not get into the genetics here). And I don't think wild salmon and steelhead will provide significant harvest opportunities until the state's human population gets back down to 2.6 million or less, and it's presently 5.8 and climbing. I'd like to have some fish to eat, and I think that requires a economically viable and biologically effective hatchery program.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Cool...thanks for the response...I hope you don't think I'm calling you guys out at all, if I am wrong on this I want to understand why...I feel like you and Smalma are my best shots at doing just that.

"An interesting note is that 5 of the Puget Sound hatcheries have chinook restoration/recovery as their primary or sole purpose. Closing them would be a serious setback, perhaps ensuring the extinction of some local stocks."

I don't understand. The hatcheries in question are restoring wild fish runs with hatchery fish? If that is not the case why couldn't you close a hatchery but retain that portion of its function aimed at protecting/restoring wild fish?

I am hearing something in what you are saying that is not sitting well with me. Bad hatcheries are not closed due to political reasons? Political reasons are what's keeping WDFW from being audited by an objective party? Isn't that the general idea of the HSRG?

My true fear is that I will live in age where we had the opportunity to do something before it was too late and let 'political reasons' and special interests (see also: big money) get in the way of anyone being able to do anything about it.

...and someone wondered aloud why someone would sue over this issue.....?

If you have time to indulge me in one last question...

I am not familiar with the specifics of the Feather River study that's been bandied about so much lately but I do understand the implication of its findings. How much weight do you give to the idea that a high percentage of wild smolt are consumed as prey by hatchery released smolt?

If there is any weight to that idea whatsoever shouldn't immediate steps be taken to eliminate such an impact?

Thanks again...

Eric

I'm for hatcheries. They are the only reason that we still fish. But there are changes that need to be made. I would be happy to catch and release salmon and steelhead if the comercial guys would stop harvesting fish. Has any one ever stopped to think that hatcheries are where the WDFW and all other DFW in other states get their money? It mostly comes from people buying fishing licences to catch and KEEP planter trout in lakes. Getting rid of hatcheries would make the WDFW stop planting fish and loose thousands of dollars that are used to help salmon and steelhead. So I think that we need hatcheries not only to make salmon, but for the WDFW to get money that goes to salmon and steelhead conservation. Think about this the next time any of you want to make a post againsed hatcheris.

Jay