Steelheader69, Thanks for the clairification, however you seem to disregard the fact that the WSC is trying to form part of what your talking about.

boater, There was actually quite a bit agreed to, but the biggest agreement was to work together and forge ahead with ad hoc committees fom the first summit. A report will be sent out to the summit attendees, WSC membership and then place on the WSC website when completed.

Double Haul, there is no disregard. I haven't looked into them at all. I may eventually, but as of right now I haven't. Like I said, I have a bad taste for organizations, so tend to steer clear of them. No disregard at all, just never the inclination to look.

This is what really gets me steamed...... The fish decline problem saddens me deeply, but the Tribal issue just flat pisses me off. Treaty waving tribal members that espout how they are and always have been "Stewards of the land" are the most vocal and sometimes flat nasty when anyone even mentions closing the net season to preserve a run. Then comes the renegades that fish anyway, the rest join in cause they don't want to miss their share, then the thing goes to court and the gov't buckles and gives in. Commercials, who also only think about the resource in $$ will fuss, but in the end the gov't recommendation will win. Sportsmen are always the ones to say "Hey, if it will save a fish" and then watch as the Tribes stretch the nets across the mouth of a river. Take a trip up the Columbia Gorge sometime in July and count the nets. In 1993, I checked out how many tribal claims were on the columbia and was very shocked to find it was in the thousands. Multiply that my the maximum # of nets each claim is allowed (I think 7 nets max), and do the numbers. How many wild fish get caught in these nets? Do the tribes care? For the most part no. They will not give up their "right", no matter what. In the end, if the fish are gone, it will be the white mans fault anyway. Will they accept their role in the demise of the wild runs? No.
Commercials are nearly as bad. They know what the condition of the fish stocks are, but it is all $$ to them, and they will cry the same as farmers that they are "losing our way of life". Well, times change, and unfortuanately we ALL must change with them. Sometimes it hurts really bad, but that is life. As far as the Flyfishing elitists that make up the majority of groups like WT, Bill Bakke, etc. are idiots and very contradictory. Just go to one of their favorite flyfishing hangouts and see what they drive. SUV's are NOT good for the environment, but you had better not tell them to give up their comfort or luxury..... But YOU BETTER NOT DRILL FOR OIL ON THE NORTH SLOPE!!!!!
Same with the PETA people. Curse you for wearing leather shoes, but how environmentally friendly do they think their plastic shoes are???? What about the emissions that the manufaturing process spews into the air??

In the end, we all think we are right in our beliefs, but generally it is the "lowly sportman" that is the only one really willing to give up some of their pleasures for the sake of saving the runs.... But are the only ones of all groups that really end up giving anything up.... I for one am really sick of it and without the hatcheries, the only ones to really suffer will be the sportsman..... Ooops, sorry.. Cannot leave out the great sportswomen out there too like AuntyM, who I think has a lot of great ideas.

Thanks all for the patience, and I can take flaming as good as anyone, so FIRE AWAY!!!

MC

Another aspect is that hatcheries are a poor investment.

We pay lip service to preserving/restoring habitat, but where does the money go - into hatchery operations. In Oregon, about 90% of the Fish Divisions budget goes to hatchery operations.

Hatcheries are a never-ending, ever-escalating annual EXPENSE. As opposed to restoration, access, conservation easements, etc. etc. which are an INVESTMENT.

Stuffing rivers with hatchery product is not ensuring your future access, or keeping (clean) water in the river, or preserving the wild stock whose genes are needed to perpetuate hatchery production.

You get what you pay for, and the current situation is most of the scarce dollars are going to artificial propagation.

IF THE STATE SHUTS DOWN ALL THE HATCHERIES LIKE ALL THE LIBERAL ORGANIZATIONS WANT TO DO (by the way I think that a lot of these replys come from people who don't even fish !) THE STATE WOULD PROBABLY GET SUED BY THE TRIBES BECAUSE OF THE MITIGATION TREATIES.
(The reason why I think a lot of the people who are on this site don't fish is because everyone realizes that without hatcheries there would be little or no fishing...there are other liberal...no VERY LIBERAL agendas on this site. Too much so for most true fisherman...especially bait chuckers...you know - the non flyfishermen

According to whom?

Also...exactly how many is 'not too many'?

also...I rarely 'chuck bait' but I never fly-fish. Where does that put me on your right wing/left wing scale as it relates to fishing?

sure, but the numbers are so low that it doesn't justify keeping them

"Not many native fish left . . . " Yeah, where does this come from? The genetic evidence allows one to reasonably (few things in science are absolute. Only on internet BBs like this are many things absolute. Sorry, couldn't resist.) conclude that there are a lot of native salmon and steelhead populations remaining in WA. You don't need pre-hatchery specimens in order to make this analysis.

I mostly fly fish; guess that makes my a left wing conspiritor. My pappy taught me it takes two wings to fly straight, however.

Stlhdh2o,

Technically, you could close the parts of a hatchery that are not dedicated to chinook recovery, but there are practical economic issues as well. It costs a lot of money to operate a hatchery. The cost per unit of production skyrockets if you close all but a small part of it. Consider a factory that produces model A, B, C, and D widgets cost effectively. If you shut it down to supply only the limited A model widget, it becomes uneconomic. Now, as a public facility, it's politically untenable to openly and knowingly operate a high-cost, low-output hatchery, leaving staff with little else to do but mow the lawn and tend the garden. The political backlash is very mean-spirited. BB members like CFM would tear them apart. So while technically possible, it's not economically or politically viable.

Uhm, sorry about political reality. I didn't think it's a secret. State legislators, on average, don't give a rat's @ss about fish, among other things. Fishery interests, either commercial or recreational, give their representative the idea, lobby for it, and the representative sees it as building their constituent base, so they promote it in the house and senate, and many of them became reality, provided they are not opposed by WDFW, which generally doesn't oppose ideas that are consistent with the concept of empire building because that is one of the main things government does. Ergo, we have lots of hatcheries.

WDFW proposes the closure of its least productive facilities when faced with budget cutbacks, such as in the last session. However, virtually every hatchery is somebody's sacred cow, so they howl to their representative who then works to ensure it stays open, even if there's no money to operate it. Ain't politics exciting? Or perhaps stupid? Well, bear with, because I've met groups of legislators who don't seem to have the collective IQ of a box of rocks. But they do have lots of political savy, and unfortunately they mistake that for intelligence, and I'm getting off topic here.

Intelligent solutions lie in the grassroots, not the legislature. If you trust me on nothing else, believe this. The more you study it, the more you will believe it.

So yes, the legislature has repeatedly kept unproductive hatcheries open. WDFW (old WDG, actually) was able to close Barnaby Slough on the Skagit in 1980 due to miserable performance. Yet the Wildcat Steelhead Club lobbied and persevered to have it reopened, and did so by about 1990, although, as modified, it's still a miserable performer. And the WSC got the legislature to appropriate 4 or 5 million dollars for a steelhead hatchery at Grandy Creek, in spite of expected lousy performance from it as well. An adult return rack and smolt imprinting and release ponds are moving forward there, last I heard, because the money is available, and the WSC and the two legislators they have lobbied so persistently over the years just won't let it go. The fact that it doesn't make sense in terms of performance gets almost no air play at all. The same can be said for many facilities that don't produce enough adult fish to justify their existance. Politics, not common sense, are THE decision criteria in fisheries.

Oh, and HSRG, the objective auditor. HSRG was created by former fish savior Senator Slade Gorton to "preserve the status quo." That is, to conclude that whatever hatcheries are doing is OK. Well, Slade's gone, and a little science has intervened, but common sense has unfortunately not risen to the top like cream in a can. No. They recommend closing Hupp Springs. Now Hupp Springs isn't the most important facility in Puget Sound, but that IS where White River spring chinook are separately cultured because their existence in the White River was so much in peril. Now, it may come to pass that things in the White will be sorted out positively, and the survival and recovery of the chinook may be assured. But how sensible is it to close the off-site, out-of-basin culture of these very special chinook (talk about unique genetics!) BEFORE we have reasonable assurance of recovery? HSRG isn't all bad, but I'm not counting on them to recover threatened populations. I'd rather not take chances with something like extinction.

We are on the cusp of opportunity to save the "best last . . ." We could save more, but we haven't the collective social will. Politically, we want to say we're going to preserve and restore habitat to recover fish. And in the next breath, the legislature introduced something like 70-some bills this past session that would have weakened WDFW's and DOE's ability to protect the very environment that would recover those fish. Remember the TV Indian phrase: "white man speak with forked tongue." so true, so true. The very direction our state is going is to restore and recover threatened fish by engaging in more of the very actions that caused their listing as threatened in the first place. Government funds 50 habitat improvement projects, and during the same time period approves 500 habitat degradation projects. You really shouldn't get me started. . .

Saving wild salmon and steelhead is fairly simple, but the primary action is so very hard. Step one: stop degrading habitat. Step two: repeat step one. Failing to do that, all the habitat restoration projects to date maybe reduce the rate of loss by about 10% (my rough estimate, not scientifcally measured).

I haven't seen the Feather River study. Hatchery smolts, primarily coho due to their size and street fighting personalities, do eat other fish. Coho like pink fry, but miss most of them due to migration timing differences. Next, they like chum fry. Chum are a little large for wild coho, but the larger hatchery smolts can handle them. In north Puget Sound, hatchery coho releases have been delayed until June 1 to minimize interaction (code word for predation) with chum. In some cases, hatchery coho smolts have both the size, timing, and opportunity to prey on wild chinook smolts. I don't assume the problem is the same everywhere. Most Puget Sound chinook are in the estuary by June 1, where they grow like crazy. And those that are coming down river at the same time as the coho are larger than their earlier timed counterparts, and should be less susceptable to coho predation. There may be some recent Puget Sound research on this, but I haven't had a chance to check. So yes, the concept that big fish eat little fish holds true, but there is usually more to the story, and I'm except for the former issues between hatchery coho and chum, I'm not aware that hatchery smolt predation on wild smolts is presently a serious issue in most (I didn't say all) of western WA.

Sorry to be so long responding. I kinda' overlooked this thread.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Thanks Salmo....lots to consider here.

reminds me of ""War and Peace" in college...

Anyway the observations on politics are pretty good. The big missing link here is economics....unemployment....Boeing (leaving)..
farmers (irrigation)...developers (habitat loss)..
When you say that politicians don't care about fish you're right unless they can get a photo op out of it like Governor Locke and Norm Dicks did recently when the hatchery recommendations came out...they appropriated a bunch of money and made it sound like salmon were saved already (thanks to them of course)...Now we have the new water allocation bill that will please alot of the above and piss off fishermen...but to the politicians the interest groups above are way more important to their voter base than we fishermen. BUT if you portray the salmon in the same light as say the spotted owl like WT does so well you get more political attention.
So pandering to the correct interest group at the right time is a tough job for the politician. Hatcheries may get some long awaited reform in spite of these bafoons. Look to the fishing organizations to lead the way...(fingers crossed)..good civil discussion for the most part so far. (what happened?)

Salmo, Well said

Please note in Salmo post when he refers to WSC it stand for Wild Cat Steelhead Club not the Wild Steelhead Coalition.

The one thing I know for a fact about the state is... Science facts is what they try to go on because without it they don't have a leg to stand on... but that only comes first untill politics come into play!!!

Politics run the fisheries in this state more so than science! So until everyone votes the tribal treaty rights out (which will not happen!) we have to live with status quoe!!!

On another subject...what does anyone out there know about the very sucessful spring chinook hatchery program on the Nooksack River???