Grandpa

My beef is that WDFW is doing neither of your essential objectives!
They are NOT restoring wild salmon runs and they are not reforming their hatcheries!!!

Their plans for reforming their hatcheries HGMP's were 2 years late and only came out recently because WT sued them. Now the plans for reform are so incredibly vague that now WT has to sue them to get them to actually reform thir hatcheries..

WDFW has beed derelect in their duties to protect and restore wild salmon runs.. They wait for a lawsuit before they do anything at all.
you saw restoration and reform are both essential... well WDFW is doing neither!!!

What should Washington Trout do?? Just let WDFW continue to do nothing at all???

WT should look at what LLTK is doing and try helping them instead of trying to sue WDFW. Look into the efforts on Hood Canal by LLTK.

Listen to the Cedar River hatchery debate. Not many have found anything wrong there.

Remember that WDFW is a governmental agency and is basically directed by a commission appointed (or annointed) by Gary Locke. Commercial fishing bias across the board there. There are far more constituents than just the WT crowd to please. The tribes are co-managers of our fisheries too.

If this were a dictatorship with Rob Allen as head poobah you could plant C4 at all the hatcheries in the state and blow them up tomorrow. Then you and Ramon could high five and jump up and down with glee. Then with no hatchery fish left you could start suing all the people for living here because the population explosion is causing harm to the small number of wild fish left. Then you'd have to go after all the farmers and make them stop irrigating. Blow up all the dams. Shut down all the factories. Sue all the logging companies. Oh and of course you'd have to sue the federeal government to abolish all the treaties with the tribes so they would have to stop fishing and gill netting so many wild fish. Then sue all the fishing tackle companies , except anyone related to fly fishing, of course. Boy you and Ramon are going to be busy guys for the rest of your lives.
Unfortunately for you , that isn't going to happen so you will have to keep suing WDFW to force your minority viewpoint on the majority.

IN the mean time you sound like that same old dog barkin on the porch...woof woof woof

yes, isnt that what its all about ?

When you say that WT believes LLTK's work violates the ESA, what do you mean? We certainly don't beleive that the HSRG hatchery reform process violates the ESA or is even a bad thing. Overall, we support it, as far as it goes.

We are concerned that the issueing of reports is as far as the HSRG process is going to go. The HGMPs certainly provide no evidence that WDFW will implement even one of the approximately 500 HSRG recommendations for improving hatchery practices in Puget Sound.

Hatchery reform isn't about three or four experimental programs scattered throughout the 180-odd programs WDFW runs, no matter how promising they might be. The entire program needs to be reformed, state wide, and in the meantime, it should be significanlty scaled back to reflect the inherent risks to listed species and the acknowledged experimental nature of the reform efforts.

Here is a good analogy made by a guy the other day testifying before the Pacific Fisheries Management Council. He was talking about harvest policy (yes WT works on commercial harvest issues), but I think it applies in this case as well.

He said it's as if we were heading down a dark mountain road at 100mph, in a car with faulty brakes. Any qualified observer could predict disaster. Of course no observer can say at what curve the car will leave the road, which tree it will hit, or how much damage will ultimately result. Nor can they blame with any certainty the faulty brakes on driving too fast.

"Well, I'm sorry," says the driver, "But if you can't get any more specific than that, then I don't see any reason why I should have to slow down. Hold on."

Or the dirver says," Ok, maybe you've got a point, but I already slowed down to 95. Get off my back."

Can anybody see how this is going to end?

Ramon Vanden Brulle
Washington Trout

Ramon,

Nice analogy, but how is that you isolate the reason for the decline of wild fish to hatcheries and how can you statistically justify your position?

WT has never tried to isolate hatcheries as the primary factor in salmon and steelhead declines. What we have said is that they are one of the factors that must be dealt with in order to recover threatened salmon and steelhead populations. What we are saying is that hathceries are a principal threat to recovery; that's different than being a principal decline factor.

We do not advocate reforming hatcheries and nothing else. What we're saying is that salmon will not recover if we don't seriously address ALL the factors that lead to their decline, and that impacts from commercial overharvest and hatcheries will jeapordize salmon recovery if they are not remedied, no matter what else we do.

Salmon won't recover if we reform hatcheries but don't protect habitat or end overfishing. But likewise curbing overfishing and protecting salmon habitat won't work without reforming hatcheries. (Not to mention the fact that we will never be able to end overfishing or adequately protect the habitat if we don't reform hatcheries.)

You don't have to agree with WT, but I like it better when people disagree with WT's actual position.

Ramon Vanden Brulle
Washington Trout

Auntie,

The LLTK hatcheries included in our suit were in technical violation of the ESA because they were operating without ESA Authorization (actually they still are).

Everybody involved, including LLTK, WDFW, and NMFS, acknowledge that hatcheries harm or "take" listed fish. That's not the pertinent issue. The issue is whether the "take' is minor enough, or justified enough, or going to get better enough, that the hatchery can qualify for a pass around ESA regulations. Running a good program should get you that authorization; if the LLTK hatcheries are as good as you think, they should get it no sweat. But being good doesn't mean they shouldn't have to apply; they still have to prove they're good.

And Jeez, give me a chance will ya? I hadn't even seen your post when I wa drafting the above reply.

Ramon Vanden Brulle
Washington Trout

Bob and weave...bob and weave...at the end of the day it is the same end game: Stop the hatcheries at any cost.

I think I read Rob Allen say that WT is going to have to sue WDFW again to force them to implement the reforms and closures WT wants to see. If they do I won't be one of the surprised ones.

On the point of minimizing the successes or should we say promise of some of the new practices being tried by the likes of LLTK. Ramon seems to dismiss those very exciting new hatchery reforms by saying they are isolated or mini-reforms and therefore not significant. I suppose in comparison to his goal of shutting most of the hatcheries down completely they seem insignificant. They are , however, experiments with promise. The practices being tried with successes could be adopted in many systems and perhaps we could find a way short of extreme measures to save fish AND fishing.

If you buy into the program WT is selling fine. For me the more I read the more convinced I am that their extreme agenda is dangerous to fishing in general and very selfish and one sided. WT and the people who support their agenda think in their hearts that they are right and the majority is dead wrong. Could it be that the majority is more right and WT is dead wrong? I think it is entirely possible.

LLTK's project will ONLY be a success IF!!!! they can one day stop planting fish! Simply raising and planting fish doesn;t have anything to do with saving the species unless thoes fish return to spawn on their own AND!!! thoes offspring survive to adulthood and spawn themselves!!! Anything that is not selfsustaining isn;t restoration but just another hatchery program!

PS I am waiting to hear back from an LLTJ bio on this very subject..

I say we do away with all planting of salmon and steelhead that way we can focus on catching bluegills at the local lakes.... nuclear war wouldn't kill them off...

LLTK is trying to prevent the extinction of runs of fish until habitat can be restored.... once the runs are gone It wont matter if the river is restored to pristine or not... there wont be any fish left to reproduce...

Aunty M there is a difference between spawning and reproducing and self sustaining!!! Just because a fish spawns does not mean it reproduces!!!!!

Aunty you might also remind them of the huge summer chum(SC) runs in the Union and Quilcene Rivers this year in the Hood Canal portion of the SC ESU. Quilcene run returns have been a huge success for bout 5 years. Also Chimacum and JimmyComeLately Creeks last year in the Straits portion of the SC ESU. All supported by hatchery efforts and changes in harvest management. Expand these efforts to a couple more rivers and we'll have our first delisting of a threatened salmonid. BTW none of these hatchery efforts are intended for the long term but just the same they are really working to restore these fish. BTW Rob these runs are spawning naturally and at least in the Quilcene self sustaining.

Goose, do they still plant the Quilcene?

Yups. Never seen this many summer chums in my 14 years of fishen that river.

Well let me know when they quit planting it and the fish still come back..

I quit reproducing about 19 years ago but still like the spawning ritual pretty well. I think salmon have a similar urge.

Rob can you and Ramon stomach a success story concerning a hatchery operation? I doubt it.

Hatcheries cant be all that bad. Huge success for summer chums. Union River topping 4000 fish this year already, compared to about 700 last year. There spawning about 20 fish a day and letting the rest spawn naturally.

Off the top of my head I know of two. They are releasing smolt earlier and they are seeding rivers with carcasses.

There are also some programs that are trying to retrieve fertilized eggs directly from natural redds and incubating them in a hatchery to increase the survival rates of wild salmon...Not totally natural but it appears to be working to speed up rebuilding wild stocks.

This one has promise and I'm sure Rob and Ramon will bash it somehow... fire away boys!!