Here are three editorials/letters to the editor from today's papers...two ripping the new policy, and one response from NOAA...

PI Editorial

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Salmon recovery efforts must be based on science

RON SIMS AND LARRY PHILLIPS
KING COUNTY OFFICIALS

The Pacific Northwest faces a new threat to the long-term survival of our wild salmon runs: environmental policy decisions based on federal politics, not science.

The Bush administration proposes in a draft policy to count millions of hatchery fish as part of West Coast wild salmon runs, when in fact they are very different animals. The administration is all but saying that hatchery fish production can make up for land use and industrial actions that destroy salmon habitat and harm water quality for people. The administration is wrong.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that hatchery fish are no replacement for wild ones and large hatchery runs are no excuse for dodging or delaying meaningful habitat protections for chinook, kokanee and bull trout. Hatcheries are extensions of -- not replacements for -- habitat protections that will ultimately be the foundation of sustainable and harvestable salmon populations.

We've proven we can fertilize and hatch salmon eggs in a pond but when compared to wild fish, hatchery fish are genetically inferior, more susceptible to disease and less adaptable than their wild counterparts. Their size and number threaten wild fingerlings by attracting predators and competing with them for food and habitat.

Because hatchery fish are brewed in a tank, they don't imprint on their home streams like wild fish do. Like an unleashed computer virus, once launched into the wild, hatchery fish travel freely to a variety of streams, bringing with them increased risks to wild fish.

Recent headlines proclaim record returns of salmon. But the question to ask is, "Record returns of what?" The answer: returns of hatchery sockeye or chinook that represent a tiny percentage of the historic runs of wild salmon that used to thrive in our rivers.

Using the federal government's own scientific review from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, nine rivers around the Puget Sound have lost wild chinook runs. About one-third of the Puget Sound basin's historical chinook runs have gone extinct and current returns may be one-tenth -- or less -- of what they were. This means, on average, where we had 5,000 chinook returning in the past we now have only 500, and where we had 1,000, we now have only 100. This is a terrible and alarming record that spans more than a century. But we can recover some of what we've lost -- if we base our recovery efforts on science.

King County is preserving key habitat areas in Bear Creek and the Cedar River. King, Pierce and Snohomish counties are implementing the road maintenance standards that received NOAA approval for the habitat and salmon protections they support. We are also moving toward implementing conservation plans for Lake Washington and the Green and Snohomish rivers, and working through the shared strategy process to have a chinook recovery strategy in place by June of 2005.

People also benefit from the environmental conditions needed to keep salmon viable. Habitat preservation and restoration help keep the drinking water clean for approximately 20,000 Kent and King County residents who get their water from Rock Creek.

Now is not the time for the other Washington to gut the efforts of local citizens and their government partners. Puget Sound and Pacific Northwest people have made tremendous investments to return our salmon populations to robust health and preserve our quality of life. It's unacceptable for the Bush administration to forsake us by defying local policy and long-established scientific evidence to allow hatchery stock to count the same as wild salmon. Current Endangered Species Act protections save salmon, promote healthy habitat for fish and people and support sustainable fisheries. Don't defy the scientific evidence and threaten our success by miscounting our fish.

Ron Sims is King County executive. Larry Phillips is chairman of the King County Council and represents District Four.


Another PI Editorial

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

New hatchery policy part of attack on ESA

JEFF CURTIS
GUEST COLUMNIST

Officials at NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for managing salmon and administering the federal Endangered Species Act, recently admitted they were going to consider hatchery fish along with wild salmon in deciding which of the 27 stocks of ESA-protected salmon will remain on the protected species list.

In defining a salmon population, NOAA will lump wild fish together with all of the hatchery fish that are "genetically no more than moderately divergent from a natural population."

Aside from using an incredibly vague standard (a friend pointed out that, genetically, humans are no more than moderately divergent from chimpanzees), the policy reverses a long-standing policy under ESA and contradicts virtually all of the recent scientific studies confirming that, in fact, wild fish and hatchery fish are different.

This should not come as a surprise. Hatchery fish are spawned in plastic buckets, incubated in plastic trays and raised in concrete raceways. Wild fish emerge from the gravel of the streams and rivers and spend their time before migrating to the ocean foraging for food, dodging predators and imprinting on their home waters. No wonder scientists have discovered that hatchery fish show evidence of domestication after only one generation.

The science tells us that each salmon population is genetically and behaviorally distinct. Hatchery fish are more likely to get eaten by predators and get lost in migration and they are less successful in spawning. When hatchery fish mate with wild fish or each other in the wild, their progeny are less likely to contribute to the next generation. In many instances hatchery fish compete with wild fish for food, cover and, by interbreeding with wild fish, harm the species' ability to adapt to river and ocean cycles.

The hatchery policy is part of a larger Bush administration attack on the ESA. By allowing for hatchery fish to be "counted" when the administration makes the upcoming salmon listing determinations, the result will very likely be that some salmon stocks will be removed from the protected species list for the stated reason that using hatcheries will reduce the threat to the species.

Salmon listings provide a significant degree of federal protections on just under 150,000 square miles of federal land as wells as providing constraints on hydropower operations and a host of other development activities. Salmon advocates won't be surprised if species that are at the heart of some of the major controversies in the Northwest, like Snake River fall chinook salmon, Oregon Coast coho salmon and the Southern Oregon/Northern California coho stocks (which include Klamath River coho) will be among the victims of this policy.

Trout Unlimited is not opposed to hatcheries. To the contrary, we have recently published a report written by two of the top salmon scientists in the region that provides a blueprint for hatchery reform. Properly designed and managed hatcheries that are integrated into the watersheds in which they are located have a role in salmon restoration and providing fish for commercial and recreational fisheries.

But the determinations of which species deserve ESA protections should be based on the health of the wild salmon and not on the abundance of hatchery fish. To do otherwise would condemn the wild salmon that we are doing so much to restore to a very uncertain future.

Jeff Curtis is western conservation director for Trout Unlimited

NOAA\'s Letter to the Editor

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Letters to the Editor

NOAA, like court, doesn't equate wild, hatchery fish
Your recent article on salmon hatcheries made some interesting points but didn't tell the entire story.

It is important to realize hatcheries have existed in the western United States for well over a century. There is now a scientific case that historic operations of hatcheries have contributed to the loss of genetic diversity, reduced productivity of wild populations and encouraged unsustainable harvest rates. Hatcheries have also helped maintain and rebuild populations that would otherwise be extinct. Recovery of natural salmon populations remains a priority. However, run properly and used carefully, hatcheries can serve as gene pools -- safety nets -- for populations on the verge of extinction.

Why is the federal government looking into this issue? A federal court has ruled that the way NOAA Fisheries accounted for hatchery fish when it considered listing salmon under the Endangered Species Act was wrong. Once we defined a population of salmon, the court said, all the salmon in that group, hatchery and wild, had to be listed, or not listed, together. Lost in the intense debate that followed was what the court didn't say: It didn't say one hatchery fish is the equivalent of one wild fish or that a listing determination is a mere numbers game. The real question is not how many fish a hatchery can add but how it can, or cannot, contribute to the overall recovery of the total population, including naturally spawning fish.

NOAA Fisheries is developing a draft hatchery policy that will take into account all the effects of hatchery fish when it decides whether listing an entire group of Pacific salmon is warranted. If listing is warranted, all members will be listed. This draft policy will be open for public comment for at least 90 days.

I must emphasize this does not mean we will no longer need other recovery measures because some hatcheries contain fish that are genetically identical or closely related to fish in the wild. Habitat improvements and protection of naturally spawning runs will remain at the heart of salmon-recovery efforts in California, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Recovery will remain essentially a story of restoration and conservation of the ecosystem upon which living resources depend.

Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr.
Under Secretary of Commerce for
Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
Washington, D.C.

Sorry but Ron Simms is one of the biggest bafoons I have ever seen. A complete moron. He is an authority on nothing other than how to spend other people's money for worthless projects to make himself look good. ICK!!!

So... are you gonna discount the message just because you hate the messenger WFL?

Wait... don't answer that. 100 to 1 says I already know the answer.


Sometimes, even complete bufoons can occasionally be right! You know... the whole "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then" kinda thing.

Here's a post I put on a different forum on the subject...I think it will be appropriate here, now, too.

*********************

I think I can boil my personal feelings about this policy shift down to one single issue...which all the rest will flow from.

How is "moderately divergent" defined?

It's the type of definition that really means nothing, and when those types of definitions are used by the experts (which the courts define as the agencies charged with implementing the policy...i.e., NOAA Fisheries and probably the USFWS), the courts tend to defer to the definition given by the agency.

The broader the definition, the more hatchery fish will be counted, and the less money and time will be spent on upgrading concerns within the 4 H's. The narrower the definition, the more protections...

Here's a BIG issue for me...if it is defined broadly, then more effort will go into broodstock programs to create more "essentially" wild fish, using hatchery raceways as "habitat" to help recover salmon and steelhead stocks.

All of the science shows that this does not work, that with proper habitat, two wild fish left in the river to do their thing will produce more returning adults than will the same two fish put into a hatchery situation.

Accepting that as a truth (it continues to be debatable, for some reason, but no one has ever produced a peer reviewed study to say anything but that), there are two options.

Option one is to NOT have broodstock programs, continue to have hatchery fish that are more than "moderately divergent", the so-called "segregated" hatchery programs, and use manipulation of the other 3 H's to recover wild fish.

Option two is to rely on broodstock programs to create loads of fish that are less than "moderately divergent", utilize hatchery raceways as the preferred habitat of these "wild" fish, and continue to degrade the river habitat, which won't be necessary to recover wild runs because of all the raceway habitat that we will have.

If option one was the one that the administration was going to go with, then they wouldn't have had to do anything...it's essentially what we're doing already...only counting truly wild fish.

So...since they're attempting to change somthing, rather than keep it the same, I see Option #2 coming down the pike.

By the time the science is proven out in widespread practice, that this won't work, it will be too late. With no more truly wild fish to rely upon to create more "wild" hatchery fish...well, I don't even want to go there.

This is how the runs will eventually end...to maintain the less than "moderately divergent" status of the hatchery fish, there is a certain amount of truly wild fish that must continue to be introduced into the hatchery stock to, a percentage, say, 25% for argument's sake.

As the amount of truly wild fish dwindle, so does its contribution to hatchery programs. To maintain the proper percentage, less hatchery fish will have to be utilized. This, of course, will lead to less fish overall. As the cycle continues...less and less fish return, until all are listed again under the ESA, only now we have less fish and less habitat.

The tradeoff for this is increased revenues for the habitat destruction industry, for a limited time, which will also stop when the re-listing occurs.

Again being cynical...short term economic benefits for a few, long term economic and ecological costs that will almost certainly outweigh those short term benefits...but that will be someone else's problem by then.

This assumes, of course, that there are fish left to re-list, , which is far from assured, unless we use fish that are "moderately divergent" from hatchery fish that are "moderately divergent" from wild fish. And so on...

Fish on...

Todd
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Fish on...

Todd

This is clearly administrative double speak. What the heck did he exactly say?

It's not a numbers game? Well does that mean when there are no wild spawning salmon left that we no longer have a problem? Of course it's a numbers game!

The real question is not how many fish a hatchery can add? I'll agree here.... the real question is how many more wild fish the ecosystem will be made capable of producing... in other words, how much closer wild runs are getting to historic abundance.

The last sentence is the most disturbing. If a listing is warranted, then both wild and hatchery salmon will be protected. I can interpret that to mean only one thing.... more closures and the end of selective fisheries as we now know them.

This NOAA response makes no sense and does nothing to allay the fears of conservation-minded anglers throughout the PNW.

As always thanks Todd-

I think this one statement should reverberate the most amongst all of us in the region.

In fairness, I should apologize for the negativity in my last post... I should have first expressed kudos to the authors of the the first two editorials. Nice to see informed and articulate challenges to the NOAA policy in the local media. Any body know the best way to get exposure of this issue on network TV?