Hatchery Salmon To Count as Wildlife

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page A01


SEATTLE, April 28 -- The Bush administration has decided to count hatchery-bred fish, which are pumped into West Coast rivers by the hundreds of millions yearly, when it decides whether stream-bred wild salmon are entitled to protection under the Endangered Species Act.

This represents a major change in the federal government's approach to protecting Pacific salmon -- a $700 million-a-year effort that it has described as the most expensive and complicated of all attempts to enforce the Endangered Species Act.

The decision, contained in a draft document and confirmed Wednesday by federal officials, means that the health of spawning wild salmon will no longer be the sole gauge of whether a salmon species is judged by the federal government to be on the brink of extinction. Four of five salmon found in major West Coast rivers, including the Columbia, are already bred in hatcheries, and some will now be counted as the federal government tries to determine what salmon species are endangered.

"We need to look at both wild and hatchery fish before deciding whether to list a species for protection," said Bob Lohn, Northwest regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Lohn added that the new policy will probably help guide decisions this summer by the Bush administration about whether to remove 15 species of salmon from protection as endangered or threatened.

From Washington state to Southern California, the decision to count hatchery-bred fish in assessing the health of wild salmon runs could have profound economic consequences.

In the past 15 years, the federal government's effort to protect stream-bred wild salmon has forced costly changes in how forests are cut, housing developments are built, farms are cultivated and rivers are operated for hydroelectricity production. Farm, timber and power interests have complained for years about these costs and have sued to remove protections for some fish.

They are enthusiastic advocates of counting hatchery fish when assessing the survival chances of wild salmon. Unlike their wild cousins, hatchery fish can be bred without ecosystem-wide modifications to highways, farms and dams.

"Upon hearing this news, I am cautiously optimistic that the government may be complying with the law and ending its slippery salmon science," said Russell C. Brooks, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, an industry-funded group that has challenged federal salmon-protection efforts in court.

Word of the new policy was greeted by outrage from several environmental groups.

"Rather than address the problems of habitat degraded by logging, dams and urban sprawl, this policy will purposefully mask the precarious condition of wild salmon behind fish raised by humans in concrete pools," said Jan Hasselman, counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.

"This is the same sort of mechanistic, blind reliance on technology that got us into this problem in the first place," said Chris Wood, vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited. "We built dams that block the fish, and we are trucking many of these fish around the dams. Now the administration thinks we can just produce a bazillion of these hatchery fish and get out from underneath the yoke of the Endangered Species Act."

Six of the world's leading experts on salmon ecology complained last month in the journal Science that fish produced in hatcheries cannot be counted on to save wild salmon. The scientists had been asked by the federal government to comment on its salmon-recovery program but said they were later told that some of their conclusions about hatchery fish were inappropriate for official government reports.

"The current political and legal wrangling is a sideshow to the real issues. We know biologically that hatchery supplements are no substitute for wild fish," Robert Paine, one of the scientists and an ecologist at the University of Washington, said when the Science article was published in late March.

Federal officials said Wednesday that the new policy on hatchery salmon -- to be published in June in the Federal Register and then be opened to public comment -- was in response to a 2001 federal court ruling in Oregon. In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan found that the federal government made a mistake by counting only wild fish -- and not genetically similar hatchery fish -- when it listed coastal coho salmon for protection.

To the dismay of many environmental groups, the federal government chose not to appeal that ruling, though it seemed counter to the reasoning behind the spending of more than $2 billion in the past 15 years to protect stream-bred wild salmon.

"There was an inescapable reasoning to Judge Hogan's ruling," said Lohn, chief of federal salmon recovery in the Northwest. "We thought his reasoning was accurate."

He said the Bush administration will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on habitat improvement for salmon.

"We have major problems to overcome, both with habitat and with improving the way hatcheries are operated," Lohn said. "Run right, hatcheries can be of considerable value to rebuilding wild fish runs."

That last line in the story is such a crock of $hit! I challenge ANYONE to produce a paper or study that shows a wild native run was restored with the aid of hatchery supplementation/enhancement.

This is a major step BACKWARD in salmon restoration that overshadows WSR by several orders of magnitude. What a travesty! Just more ammo for all the camps that subscribe to the dangerous conceit that we can just manufacture salmon at will to mitigate the past and ongoing damage caused by all the various resource extractors.

The phrase "salmon without rivers" was coined by Jim Lichatowich to bring decision makers to an enlightened realization of where we had gone wrong for over a century. It now appears they have embraced the phrase to spearhead a self-fulfilling prophecy toward extinction of wild salmon.

Counting hatchery fish as wild fish is beyond irresponsible, it is reprehensible. Reminds me of a Saturday Night Live spoof about the Federal Reserve based on the old Smith Barney motto, "We make money the old fashioned way, we EARN it!" The Fed version goes something like this...."We make money the old-fashioned way, we MAKE it!"

"The phrase "salmon without rivers" was coined by Jim Lichatowich to bring decision makers to an enlightened realization of where we had gone wrong for over a century"

That phrase was originally said by a Washington state fisheries manager touting the "success" of hatcheries in the 60's or 70's

Still a little green on this one so be patient with me.

Am I reading this and the above responses correctly to understand that they will be counting the overall return to a river (hatchery + wild) to determine whether the wild run is healthy? Are they trying to say that if the hatchery run is strong then the ecosystem has stabilized and the threat to the wild fish is not significant?

They are trying to say or do anything that will sweep the problem under the carpet and remove the restrictions on the poor industries that rape habitat. Vote in November.
So where will this lead? Reducing hatchery production will now be against the law? Will hatchery production be instead stepped up? Can you have regulations for clipped versus non-clipped since the government say's they are both wild? I see a lot more court time to follow.

Thats just lame... First thing I saw in the paper this A.M

Yeah, I can't imagine that any sane judge would agree with this if presented good sound science. Hopefully the courts will expose this.

That is unbelievable! But, I can't imagine this would get by without a lawsuit.

The ninth curcuit court has already upheld Judge Hogans ruling.

Duroboat,

You honestly think that hatchery fish=wild fish?
Maybe on the dinner plate, but not on the spawning bed.

Perhaps, is it just that you think that habitat should be sacrificed on the alter of short term economic gain?

From an ecological point of view this is going to have disasterous long term consequences.

If this policy really becomes law of the land, the only way to save wild fish in many places will be to adopt WTs close all hatcheries agenda.

What a mess . . .

Yep.......the right direction. I can't wait until a painting of a forest becomes a National Park.

In fact, if we had a half-dozen redwood decks side-by-side, we could call it Sequoia National Park and claim we had DOUBLED the number of redwood forests nationwide.

Ooooh, I just love the clever wording and thinking from the Bush Administration.

Same story, different article:

____________________

PORTLAND, Ore. - In a dramatic shift in salmon recovery policies in the Northwest, the Bush administration intends to count the hundreds of millions of fish produced in hatcheries when deciding whether salmon deserve federal Endangered Species Act protection.

In a policy to be announced in the coming months, the administration will adopt a strategy that considers the indoor tanks and concrete raceways of hatcheries extensions of natural rivers and mountain streams where salmon spawn, The Oregonian newspaper reported in Thursday's editions.

This means that salmon, long the focus of billions of dollars worth of restoration projects and bitter environmental conflicts, could more quickly be declared healthy. Previously, the government had drawn a clear distinction between salmon capable of reproducing in the wild and those reared in hatcheries.

The new approach could sharply redefine the standard for declaring when an imperiled species has recovered. A salmon population could be removed from endangered species protection even if it requires ongoing, multimillion-dollar hatcheries to survive, said Bob Lohn, regional administrator of NOAA-Fisheries, the federal agency that oversees salmon. "Just as natural habitat provides a place for fish to spawn and to rear, also hatcheries can do that," Lohn said . "Properly run, hatcheries can become a kind of extension of natural habitat."

The policy would relieve power generators, farmers and property owners of endangered species burdens - including limits on farm irrigation and the electricity production levels of dams - imposed by the federal government.

He said the benchmark for recovery under the Endangered Species Act is that a species is not likely to go extinct. But he said the species need not sustain itself without help.

"That doesn't preclude human assistance or intervention," he said by phone late Wednesday from Washington, D.C. The policy is now in draft form and headed for publication by June in the Federal Register.

Conservationists have said such a policy is akin to declaring a species safe if it can be reproduced in a zoo, while turning over its habitat to development.

"It sounds like the government is going to be setting salmon recovery back about 100 years," said Jim Lichatowich, an Oregon-based fishery biologist and author of "Salmon Without Rivers." Lichatowich said federal and state agencies attempted to use hatcheries to compensate for habitat lost to dams, mining and development for most of the 20th century but failed to stop the widespread collapse of salmon runs.

________________________

I find it extremely disconcerting that Bob Lohn, the head of NOAA, would say such things. NOAA Fisheries knows the problems associated with hatchery fish spawning in the wild, lower survival rates, and generally lower levels of fitness. This whole issue was started by agricultural interests in Oregon, but its the potential changes in regulations regarding power generation at Columbia basin dams and irrigation withdrawals in California (likely WA too) that have very real adverse consequences to salmon. Can't help but think this will affect spring flow requirements over the dams to facilitate juvenile outmigration on the Columbia. Take lots of pics of those springers we're now catching.

Reason number 1, 000, 001 to get Bush out of office, NOW!!

I can think of more reasons than that

Well, the solution is obvious....we simply need to:

Tear down all dams and hatcheries

Forbid irrigation and production of sewage (gotta cork?)

Halt all construction

Stop all fishing (except of course, Tribal fishing - that wouldn't be PC)

This must come from the same science that swore there were wmd in Iraq. Let's show this F*&^head the door.
President Bush, Wrong on Salmon.

As you all might expect, WT has a strong position on this. We have maintainted for some time that beside the negative biological and ecological impacts of hatchery production, the political, policy, and legal impacts are just as damaging. Hatcheries make habitat destruction and overfishing possible and "acceptable." NOAA has now made it official. The chicken is coming home to roost. Now hatcheries will operate for the benefit not just of commercial, tribal, and recreational fishers, but for the benefit of irrigators, loggers, and other industrial/economic stakeholders.

I would imagine that this development may cause some to reevaluate how they feel about WT's position on hatcheries and their impact on the recovery of our wild-fish resources. But I should clarify that WT's agenda has never been "close all hatcheries (as characterized above, or in a related thread). WT's agenda is fix all hatcheries or close them. It is true that we believe many hatchery programs are beyond repair or reform, and we are skeptical any hatchery program could meet what we would consider responsible performance standards. But we are absolutely willing to allow hatchery reform efforts to play out (we do believe they should get started yesterday).

We have been asked what we would accept. The minimum that we would consider acceptable is the following: Any hatchery program should included clear, measurable performance standards both for benefits and impacts (ideally including high, low, and intermediate performance thresholds and indicators); the program must include a monitoring plan adequate to determine if the performance standards are being met; the program must include detailed options for management responses to the monitoring data. For instance, take stray rates: an individual hatchery program must include a performance standard for the percentage of hatchery fish allowed to spawn in the wild, say 15%; the program must include a monitoring plan adequate to determine what percentage of hatchery fish actually are spawning in the wild (would include 100% marking and annual field surveys to determine spawning percentages); a suite of potential/contingent management responses to the monitoring data should be described (ie: at 20% stray rates the program might a) cut production, b) change release strategies, c) change brood-collection practices, d) make no change but increase monitoring effort; at 25%, a) cut production, b) change brood stock, c) suspend program; I'm completely making up numbers and options here, but you get the idea). Admittedly, that is a much more expensive program than any we now have; we have suggested that the overall program be cut to make money available for remaining programs to include the above measures. I expect this position will be unpopular in some quarters, but I hope most can at least accept that it is not "close all hatcheries."

But whatever; rest assured this new attempt to weaken ESA protections and jeopardize salmon and steelhead recovery won't go without a fight. TU (national and state), Oregon Trout, WT, Native Fish Society, Earthjustice, American Rivers, and a host of other fishing and environmental groups are working together to oppose this policy. Expect more details to come.

In the meantime, here is a Press Release from national TU. WT doesn't necessarly endorse every single thing in the PR, but it does present most of the main arguments.

Press Statement April 29, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Pages: 2

Trout Unlimited – National Wildlife Federation
- Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations –
Earthjustice – American Rivers – WaterWatch of Oregon

Contact:
Jeff Curtis, Trout Unlimited: 503.827.5700 x. 11; c. 503.419.7105
Jan Hasselman, National Wildlife Federation: 206.285.8707 x. 105
Glen Spain, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns: 541.689.2000
Steve Pedery, WaterWatch of Oregon: 503.295.4039 x. 26
Jim Lichatowich, Alder Fork Consulting: 503.366.6959
Kristin Boyles, Earthjustice: 206.343.7340 x. 33

Bush Administration Poised to Strip Federal Protections from Pacific Salmon Stocks

Broad collection of fish interests joins to oppose new policy

(PORTLAND, Ore.) – Calling it the latest in a series of administration failures to protect imperiled stocks of Pacific salmon and steelhead, conservation and fishing business groups and scientists today condemned a new and yet unreleased Bush administration policy that could remove federal protection for many, if not most of the 27 listed salmon and steelhead stocks from the northwest tip of Washington down to southern California and inland to central Idaho.

“This policy circumvents the most basic tenets of the Endangered Species Act and effectively lets the federal government off the hook for any responsibility to recover salmon and healthy rivers and streams up and down the West Coast and inland to Idaho,” said Kaitlin Lovell of Trout Unlimited. “Hatchery fish certainly have a role in restoring salmon runs and mitigating some of the damage inflicted by salmon declines, but they have no place in determining federal protections.”

The new policy, said to be released in June by NOAA Fisheries (the federal agency charged with protection of salmon and steelhead) effectively allows hatchery fish to be considered alongside wild fish in determining whether the wild stocks retain current federal protections. Instead of working to improve river habitat for listed species or other viable recovery measures, the policy instead relies on hatcheries for long-term recovery.

“Wild salmon and steelhead are still at risk of extinction throughout the Northwest,” said Jan Hasselman of the National Wildlife Federation. “Rather than address the problems of habitat degraded by logging, dams and urban sprawl, this policy will purposefully mask the precarious condition of wild salmon behind fish raised in concrete pools.”

“The Bush administration has proven itself to be no friend of salmon,” added John DeVoe of WaterWatch of Oregon. “Under this new policy the wild coho of the Pacific Northwest could go extinct, but as long as we produce millions of manufactured fish in concrete tanks the administration would call it good. This is a continuation of the flawed thinking that strangled water flows in the Klamath River during the summer of 2002 and left us with 34,000 dead salmon.”

The groups said the new policy could also have devastating effects on wild stocks through loss of habitat currently protected by the listings. Over 148,000 acres of federal lands in four states are managed to provide habitat for salmon. It could also mean the end of federal safeguards for fish such as requirements to protect sensitive watersheds and improving the operation of hydroelectric dams.

“Reducing protections for wild salmon means that protections for river habitat will also be reduced,” said David Moryc of American Rivers. “And when habitat protections are reduced, clean water is threatened, as are all of the economic and social benefits healthy rivers provide.”

A large number of scientists recently have concluded that a policy including hatchery fish alongside wild fish when determining the need federal protections spells danger for the wild stocks.

“The resulting false impression of abundance this policy creates could have devastating effects on wild stocks,” said Jim Lichatowich, author of Salmon without Rivers. “Interbreeding between wild and hatchery fish could reduce the fitness of wild populations and reduce their ability to survive, and the productivity of wild populations could be further reduced by forcing them to compete with large numbers of hatchery fish. Relaxed protections on mixed-stock fisheries, too, could lead to over-harvest of wild fish.”

The groups are quick to point out that de-listing of salmon and steelhead stocks should be the goal of any group, individual or interest vested in the future of those fish, but that de-listing should be due to the return of strong, healthy fisheries, not simply to avoid the responsibility of species and habitat protection.

“Genuine salmon recovery should be an investment in a future with sustainable, harvestable fish runs as nature intended them, in the wild,” said Glen Spain of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “This new Bush administration policy abandons true recovery and moves us closer to a world where salmon only exist in hatcheries, not watersheds.”


Ramon Vanden Brulle,
Washington Trout

Just more reason to shut down more hatcheries.

As you long as you continue to support Bush my friend that will never happen....and I think you know that.

Thanks Ramon for a concise report. This issue will no doubt get much attention. I appreciate your restraint from simply using this as a Bush bashing exercise like most have done. You obviously have a more fact based grasp of the issue. I think it is worthwhile to point out that it was the PLF who filed suit and won in the courts. The ninth circuit is not exactly a Bush mouthpiece and that court upheld the ruling. The ruling purports to have been made on science so it would be most helpful to address that science which obvioulsy is at odds with what most of us see as the the real problems causing declines in wild salmon and steelhead. I think it is also a good idea for those of us who value wild fish survival to accept the fact that the "other side" is not made up of whacko fools who have no place at the table. The farmers , loggers et al are citizens with concerns that must be atleast considered even if we only see things in black and white terms of saving the wild fish at all costs. They do not. We cannot simply dismiss them as evil.

Perhaps the money spent on fish recovery in this region has been largely wasted as well, furthering the argument of the "other side".

I'm not ready to jump on the WT or TU bandwagon but not ready to accept the "other side" either. Keep us informed Ramon if you will as to the science behind what is right from your viewpoint.

H2O,

I cant make my decision just based on the issue of fish and the environment.

Truth be told the only reason why I will support bush is for his hard line stance agianst anyone who threatens the United States. Bush has made it clear that no one is going to tell the US what to do if it is not good for the US.

In todays world we cannot be passive and ignore the threats out there to our way of life. I like being an american and like may way of life. If I wanted someone else making decisions about my security I would live in Europe and the UN would do that for me.

I have no choice but to vote for Bush agian even though I do not agree with much he has done.

I dont feel good about it but he makes me feel safe and that is what matters more than anything else.

I guess my point is that since you helped vote in the administration responsible for this policy change I don't see much room for complaint....as you had to know that these environmental policies would be the result.

As far as security goes I suppose that's an issue for the off-topic forum...BUT...since you brought it up...

You honestly 'feel safer' now than before 9/11? That Bush downplayed the Al Qaeda threat presented him by the previous administration gives you a sense of security?

Maybe, just maybe I'll give you that, but only in our backyard and that's highly arguable. Now...how about if you were a us citizen travelling abroad? Tahoe...if you read this I know you are about head to the continent for awhile...do YOU feel safer as a travelling american? I doubt it....

Rich, the person responsible for the attack against the united states is still at large, the head has not been cut off the dragon so to speak. I submit to you that any sense of security you are given by the current administration is a false one. My position is that we are MORE at risk now from terrorist attack because of Bush's war in Iraq than we were if we had just left it with bombing the crap out of afghanistan.

Hehe...I know we aren't going to change each other's mind on this....

Your right about not changing each others mind so there is no point in the debate.

Is this the same 9th Circuit Court that recently ruled that hatchery sockeye could no longer be planted in Tustumena Lake (Kasilof AK) ?

Why the disconnect between their ruling in Alaska and what they propose for the PNW?

The more I stew over this hatchery = wild ruling, the more I am stunned by how such a decision could have been made given the available science. Or could it be that the best science was suppressed or simply omitted when the case was being heard. Obviously they need to hear the rest of the story.

And wild salmon advocates need some real lawyers to argue their case.... is Todd for hire?

I dont get it. why the fuss?

It seems pretty plain and simple to me that you cant put chinook on the endagered species act if the are hatcherys raising millions of them! How can they be endangered?

What kind of moron does it take to spend 700 million dolars on salmon recovery and not be able to show major improvement in wild stocks? how many more millions of dollars are you willing to spend before you realize what your doing aint getting the job done.

How many commercial licenses could 700 million dollars buy?

Micro,

I believe that the major fuss over this has to do with habitat degredation. If fish don't need to actually spawn in the wild why protect the natural habitat? Does this mean more hatchery production? Probably, but that is not really a good thing. Hatchery fish are designed to support harvest and relieve some pressure from naturally spawning fish, not replace them and that is what will happen. In many PS systems naturally spawning chinook are in grave danger of reaching critical levels, or already there. There may be thousands of fish returning but only a small amount are spawning in a natural habitat while the gross majority swim back to the hatcheries.
This opens the door for even more logging, mining, development and countless other negative impacts. The ESA listed spotted owl is the only reason we still have old growth forest outside of the parks.
This is a victory for big business and big business only. If you believe you will be harvesting more fish, think again. And even if you do have a problem releasing struggling wild chinook when there are clipped fish bred for the taking I feel sorry for you.
As a lifer in Washington I hate seeing these types of decisions made outside, especially in Cali where it's all about money. I'd like to see this "science" if anyone knows where to find it becasue I can't.

So micro are nets the only problem facing salmon?

And if you feel this is a win for fisherman, please explain.

I think Judge Michael R. Hogan's (I think he is a Democrat) precedent is flawed. The term ''endangered species'' means any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range... The intent of the law was to save wild species and subspecies in certain geographical areas. His ruling (stayed by the 9th circuit court) removed protection for central Oregon coho. He ruled in favor of development, logging, and agriculture interests. These interest groups are going to challenge 24 of the 26 ESA listed salmon stocks along the west coast.

What can we do about it? Write, email, or phone your representative. Vote for whoever you want to for president because Kerry will win WA, OR, and CA and the election will be determined by Jeb in Florida anyway. $700 M seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the 100s of billions being spent to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Enjoy salmon fishing while you still can.

This is going to be a dry summer and the rivers are going to be drained for hydro electric power and they're going to divert the Columbia to California and then Texas.

"Think it through! Impacts to wild fish wll be removed and allow the commercials and tribes to take every single fish they are allotted."

....and sportsfisher-menandwomen.

Since 'wild' fish and hatchery fish are the same I s'pose this means we should be allowed to harvest the wild fish....right?

Just a couple quick questions for which I would like informative (non-political) answers:

Are wild and hatchery fish genetically the same with the difference being their upbringing? (I assume they take "wild" eggs and sperm to make hatchery fish)

Didn't Oregon try to get the distinction between wild and hatchery coho removed recently?

I will definitely continue to contribute to this discussion, but right now I'm getting ready for a meeting in about two minutes, and then I'm going camping. Let me say really quickly that while Grandpa does make some legitimate points, he's a little off on the 9th Circuit decision. The Appeals Court did not actually "uphold" the original Hogan Ruling. As with most legal stuff it's more complicated than that. Basically they declined to hear the appeal, which has the immediate effect of "upholdng" the original ruling, but not as a matter of law (the 9th circuit never officially endorsed the "fish is a fish" doctrine of the Hogan decision). What the court said was that the appellants had to wait until the bad thing they fear actually happens before they can come back and make their arguments. so isn't this the bad thing? Sort of, but for the 9th circuit's purposes, not until everything is finalized which won't be for several months. I would imagine that if it goes that far, resubmitting the appeal may be part of the fight against this policy change.

But regardless, there is no doubt that science does not support this new policy. And the implications are so complicated and far reaching that it will take a lot more time than I have right this minute to go into, but Aunty sure has a point when she says watch how the commercials react.

I'll be back on Monday, if by some chance interest in this issue remains high.

Ramon Vanden Brulle
Washington Trout

Today's Seattle PI:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/171320_joel30.html

FNP,

The best available science was presented to the administration. This science doesn't meet the administration's policy needs. Consequently, the administration is/has developing/developed its own science/ ESA interpretation, and is issuing a policy consistent with its needs.

A suitable anology may be found in Weird Science, the website that described the ANWR study of 200 some pages over 2 years that described the threats of oil drilling in ANWR to wildlife. That study was at odds with the administration's needs, so Secretary Norton found (apparently, never figured out who they are) two USGS scientists, who in 2 weeks produced a 2 page report that oil drilling wouldn't harm wildlife. That was declared the best available science, at least the best available science that supported the administration's policy. I believe we can expect more of the same on behalf of the new salmon policy.

Fortunately for salmon, the administrative record is very strong with respect to ESA listings generally, and the distinctions between hatchery and wild salmon. The environmental groups will likely use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the best available science when they sue the government, which the courts will probably find doesn't support the the administration's policy. But the election will be over by then.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

"A suitable anology may be found in Weird Science..."


I thought for a minute you were going to say that Bush had a bra on his head when he formulated this particular political stance.

Funny thing is not only can I picture it, I'd also believe it.

of course nets are not the only problem but the fact is that nets do not discriminate that puts them at the top of my need to get rid of list.


nets.
seals and commorants.
dams.
hatchery reform
poachers.
people unwilling to adress the above issues first.

Hogans ruling, says that salmon are salmon whether hatchery or not. Bushes decision does not do away with current enviromental protections. you still cant go dumping chemicals in a river or logging it to the waters edge. The only thing that has changed is that salmon will not be on the endagered species list.

NETS- Increased netting due the lack of a need to allow suitable escapement. If overharvest occurs which it will, they now have a cure all for themselves which is pump out more fish from our hatcheries. You put the nets at the top of your list and this will only increase netting activity exponetially.

SEALS- Maybe, but they only cause major problems in areas where fish are trapped such as behind a DAM. Other than that they are just a nuissance.

HATCHERY REFORM- Well now all that's going to matter is the amount of fish produced. Quality obviosly is of no concern when you consider how fish farming does business. And I'm afraid that any new hatcheries will only be located on the bottom 5 miles of a river.

DAMS- The ESA is the only way to restore native runs in the upper Columbia tributaries. There is no way dam removal will be an option when it doesn't really matter how much river is needed to sustain a hatchery run. Those dams will stay as will the 2 on the Elwha which is even a bigger shame.

POACHERS- The successfull poacher will never be caught. And now it's about time that individual tribes are taking resposibility to patrol and prosecute tribal poaching. It still has a ways to go.

The point of all this Micro, is that this ruling will set back all of these concerns you share with your fellow angler years. It's taken how many years to get commercial netters to adopt new practices including ways to target specific fish and protect certain runs. Granted it still has a LONG way to go, but I felt we were on the right track.

The only people unwilling to adress the above issues are our current leaders. This is in the interest of very few, very wealthy businesses that don't give a damn about the environment and they make me sick. This whole thing makes me want to do away with hatcheries altogether.

Here is something I found on the web.

Enjoy:

Environmental Activists And Their Editorialist Allies Boo-Hooing About Hatchery Salmon Policy
By Dennis M. Becklin

It was inevitable. Radical environmentalists made the ridiculous claim that hatchery salmon are different than wild salmon. They tried to make it stick by pressing lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act. They lost. Now, they and their allies in the media are crying the blues. Poor babies.

The enviros' concept that a hatchery fish of the same species is biologically, or culturally, different than the wild fish that provided the eggs and sperm for the hatchery fish hatchling...has always been asinine.

Asinine?...yes. Expensive?...very. Hundreds of millions of dollars has been poured down the proverbial rat-hole as a result of lawsuits brought by the wild fish gang.

Just another example of the extremes that the environmental law firm industry (i.e. the environmental movement) has gone to in padding its own pockets with ESA awarded legal fees...and the extent to which the slow grinding of the American legal system has been manipulated to cause this wild fish travesty to go on far too long.

Thankfully, it's now over. Sanity is returning to salmon fish policy in the west.

The enviros and their media allies need to get used to it. The decision is in. Hatchery fish and wild fish of the same species both contribute to the acknowledged populations of salmon and steelhead for purposes of determining if their populations are threatened with extinction.

As might be expected, the wild fish gang is not willing to take their defeat gracefully. The latest surge of editorial comment and editorialized journalism smacks of the kind of bias that contributed to the wastage of an immense amount of time and money by governmental agencies and taxpayers who were whip-sawn by endless wild fish abuses caused by ESA lawsuits.

The enviros weren't alone in pursuit of the wild fish fantasy. They had lots of help from government. In particular, Oregon government, past and present, made major contributions to the creation and nurturing of the asinine wild fish policies.

Right at the top of my list of wild fish wastrels is former Governor John Kitzhaber. This governor spent eight years in office pushing the radical environmental salmon agenda. What did he gain for the state? Economic disaster. Kitzhaber's fixation with saving un-threatened salmon ushered in a calamitous loss of timer industry jobs, countless costs for litigation expenses by resource based industries and an era of economically threatened Oregon communities.

Governor Kulongoski's natural resources advisor, Jim Myron, is right in there with the best of the Kitzhaber era. Myron was appointed by Kulongoski after working as a wild fish advocate for years as an employee of Oregon Trout, one of the prime movers behind wild fish initiatives in Oregon. Note Myron's continuing, prominent, public role in his latest musings in the Oregonian article above.

I've never made any bones about my position on this subject. And I'll put my conservation ethic up for comparison against any of the wild fish gang or latter day fish purists. As part of a four generation fly-fishing family, we've always practiced good conservation and good care for our environment. As for the wild fish baloney...it's simply that...baloney. Two of my previous editorials on this subject can be found by clicking on the following links:

To Adipose or Not to Adipose:
http://grantspassnews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=110880&cp=004277

Oregon's Coho Are Partying Tonight:
http://grantspassnews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=177728&cp=4277

Get out and enjoy fishing and eating west coast salmon. They're plentiful and they will continue to be plentiful as long as wild stocks of these fish are supplemented by hatchery fish of the same species.

Let the enviros and their wild fish buddies eat crow. They're plentiful, too....

Dennis M. Becklin, Publisher
SouthernOregonNews LLC
GrantsPassNews.com
MedfordNews.com
NewsAshland.com

And Dennis Becklin, an obvious cracker, makes the ridiculous claim that they're the same.

And here you are making yourself look like a cracker by posting his drivel. Good work, Plunk.

if this does become law does that mean we dont need to worry about a stinken extra fin ???? and will they still clip any????

Plunker,
Thanks for posting that GREAT editorial!!
Anyone who thinks that if you take a salmon egg and furtilize it with salmon sperm.That you wont end up with a salmon needs to go to a biology 101 class.

I guess it all depends on how closely related the male and female are...

I wonder what chance your kids would have if you mated with your sister...

There is a much greater chance of interbreading in fish when you are taking a small sample of the population and mating them, like hatcheries do. I kind of think the reason the hatchery fish are mostly on the small side is due to poor breading practices.

just my opinion.

Yeah.......you get A salmon. So?

If you take Michael Jordan's mom's egg, and his dad's sperm, do you get Michael Jordan every time? Or better yet, if you DO get Michael Jordan, and you raise him up in a concrete box for the first 6 years, do you get an NBA superstar?


The Judge's ruling looks, sadly, to be a literal interpretation of the ESA. Species-wise there is no discernable difference between a hatchery steelhead and a native steelhead. But anybody who isn't a complete cracker knows there IS a difference between them. However, the ESA does not allow for this distinction. You can't really blame the judge.

The stand-up thing to do would be to amend the ESA to acknowledge the difference between a native fish and a hatchery born fish. Otherwise, what's next.........counting net-pen fish as part of the population too? I can see it now.......Puget Sound salmon are no longer endangered, just look at those net-pens teeming with fish! :rolleyes:

But, waiting for the Bush administration to make an amendment to the ESA which actually increases the protections placed on a particlar specie could be a long proposition.

Piper,
Maybe its what your using for bait.I have caught lots of large hatchery fish.Got a 21+ lb hatchery silver hanging on my wall that was caught in marine area 11 afew years ago.

Dont remember saying all hatchery fish were that way??? There are exceptions to every rule... after all, even dwarfs parents can make full size kids...

I was reading some background on this issue today and saw where the scientists said that hatchery fish were larger than their native cousins and therefore were able to outcompete the wild fish for food....Lots of theories flying out there on this one.

Not really my style to post in this fashion, but after reading Plunker's last post, there can only be one conclusion:

Dennis Becklin = SUPREME IDIOT

Did I really say that? Damn, the truth hurts!

Grandpa, I believe that when the hatchery fish are released from the pen into the river they are larger than the natural smolts because they are on a steady diet of pellets in reletively low current ponds, whereas the natural smolts are fending for themselves in the river...

Its when they return that the difference is pretty clear... How many bogy brats are over 6 lbs?

I'm shocked and disgusted with the attitudes of some people
So what it boils down to is "As long as I get my share who gives a rip about wild fish"
Kudos to Doc, DanS, Sparkey, B-Run, Jerry Garcia and others for seeing the blatant greed behind this ruling

You're right Grandpa, but they were specifically referring to smolts... the ones released from the hatchery are MUCH larger than their wild counterparts of the same chronologic age. That's just one more way a genetically inferior creature is given an unfair advantage over one with superior genetics. That big fat smolt is gonna have a major survival advantage in terms of size, and it stands a good chance of returning to spawn in the wild. But pity it's poor progeny that don't have the proper genetics to produce returning adults. That lineage basically gets snuffed out in one generation.

In the meantime, wild fish are losing out at multiple levels in their natural lfe cycle. Hatchery smolts outcompete their wild counterparts by out-eating them and displacing them from the prime juvenile riverine habitat which is already in short supply. If that hatchery smolt returns as an adult to spawn in the wild, the spawning habitat it occupies will not be made available to a wild native fish. And for what? For its lineage to be snuffed out in the next generation?

That folks is a waste of the finite carrying capacity of in-river habitat.... mutant fish are taking up space and consuming limited resources, but producing no self-sustaining population. Those resources could serve a much higher and greater purpose if consumed by much more productive self sustaining runs of wild fish.

That's like replacing the best workers in a factory with lazy, good-for-nothing employees that turn out zero product. Let's see how long that factory stays in business! Carry that analogy to all the rivers up and down the west. What were once some of the most robust and productive natural "fish factories" have slipped into perpetual decline as more and more hatchery fish are pumped into them.

For the past century we have relied on hatcheries to make up for the lost natural productivity of degraded river systems. Habitat degradation becomes easier to ignore as long as fishable numbers continue to swim upriver to support the various fisheries. Too bad that the majority of those fish are artificially produced.

The science to support this is clearly there, but obviously, decision-makers have chosen to ignore the mistakes of the past and instead continue down the path of doom started 150 years ago. Short-term economic gain has foiled meaningful salmon recovery at every crossroads during this entire period. Unfortunately it seems nothing has changed.

AMEN, KK, AMEN!

Been reading this forum for years now. Now this latest scam comes down from DC. And wouldn't you know it, the exact same people who are going to war against WSR are sitting here arguing that a fish is a fish is a fish.

Is a zoo tiger the same as a wild tiger??? Same blood, same fur, same teeth. Yup, my BIO 101 class tells me that it's a tiger. How about taking that zoo tiger and releasing it into the wild? What happens? It dies because it does not know how to fend for itself- IT CAN'T HUNT TO FEED ITSELF. But now the guvmint (not scientists, but the damn courts???) tells me that a zoo tiger is identical to it's wild counterpart and will be counted as part of the world population. See, no more tiger problems because they aren't going extinct any time soon. The pen is mightier than the sword.

Start breeding a handful of zoo tigers to increase population and not add any new blood. All the relatives are having cubs, endlessley recycling the same genetic materials. Now what do you end up with??? Eventually these inbreed jeds (ya with me plunker?) are going to develop some serious problems and that will be the end of the tiger population. Kind of like all the eggs in one basket.

Hatchery fish work the exact same way.

If a good % of people who spend their time caring about or harvesting salmonids don't even know the difference between hatch or wild fish, are the 'esteemed gentlemen' in DC going too?? (And may all the greedy ba$tards who sell their souls, either on purpose or ignorantly, ROT IN ETERNAL DAMNATION) Of course not, and with one swoop of the pen, all is now well. Move forth and multiply as we can mitigate through hatcheries. Somewhere in the past century our guvmint has played this exact scene...history does repeat itself.

I agree that the ESA has been abused- but from boths ends. The guvmint has failed to act upon the science by getting the riverine ecosystems locked up in a quagmire of 'studies', buying time for some legal precedence and go full scale policy. Bingo, 30+ years of scientific study, with minimal change to the status quo, and a couple of years after the Hogan decision this comes out???

Does this mean 'we' will give up??? Hell no, this is not going to end with DC making BS policy about something they know nothing about. The biggest long term investment we have is our kids. Mine are being taught at home, AND IN SCHOOL, that this world is all we have and that extinction IS PERMANENT. There is more to this life than paper, electricity, and oil.

William

PS- Hatchery smolts DO NOT return as adults anywhere near as efficiently as Wild fish. It is pretty pathetic, all things considered.