No kidding, where'd you get the intel? From that same genie in the bottle Todd was talking about?

Keith

One of the best courses I took at the UW was on the Glaciation of the Pacific Northwest.

The ice age is coming, dude. Global Warming be damned! It's not gonna stop the fact that we're gonna be under ice in 10,000 years or so.

We're in an ice age now. Just on the "warm" side of the event, but it's getting colder.

You just have to expand that mind of yours past the 50 or 60 years of your lifespan.

Start thinking in 25,000 year blocks. Pretty wild stuff. Kinda makes the here and now pretty insignificant.

Here's another one for you all - do you HONESTLY believe humans will be on this plant and alive in 10,000 or 25,000 years from now?

Look at how much destruction of the planet we've done in a 100 years. Look at how much the population has increased in 100 years.

Think we can stick around for 10,000 years?

I don't. This virus we call ourselves will be long gone by then.

Ahh jeez Parker. I have those people knocking on my door all the time talking about Armageddon.... Now you're going off the deep end.....

But I do believe man-kind will be gone within 5000 years, heck I'm sure earth will get smashed by another asteroid or comet....

Keith

Armageddon? Not even close.

Only WA will get covered by ice - and only part of that.

Besides, it's only temporary. Another 25,000 years after that the ice will retreat again.

I've pitched this movie idea to Hollywood, but the thought of a glacier taking thousands of years to form, and to move a couple of feet a year isn't apparently action-packed enough for the masses yet.

And no, I'm not worried about 2012. I don't buy in to that. Sorry.

Dang that would be a good movie. That would rate right up there with a movie about "Watching Paint Dry"....

Keith

The survival of the offspring of this inbreeding is minuscule but you make a good point.
For instance if a hatchery male fertilizes a wild females eggs then that negates those eggs because their survival is so poor.

ODFW has planted their broodstock "scum" throughout the Wilson river and so this interaction is facilitated by ODFW themselves.
Why do you think they opened the south fork after all these years?
The populations of wild winter steelhead were recovering in the Wilson and Nestucca rivers until the implementation of the steelhead broodstock programs and now are in decline. Volunteer to do redd surveys on either of those rivers and you agree.

Stew,

Help us understand what the answer is then....

Maybe I'm reading between the lines but the perfect world for "YOU" would be all the Oregon coastal rivers having no hatchery plants or broodstock fish and bait restricted rivers that guides wouldn't be allowed to fish?

Hey, you don't flyfish do you?

Keith

They will no doubt refer back to a study done on the Hood River back in the 90's that supposedly supports the broodstock offspring fitness.
It was done by Hiram Araki of OSU.
I contacted him by email and he said that further research proved that the broodstock offspring were indeed unfit.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but with only 4 years of history on the Wilson broodstock program, it is hard to have any sort of pattern to follow. Two years ago was teh best steelhead fishing I have had in many years on the Wilson. Lots of wild fish and broodstock. 30 fish days were not out of the relm. Last year was alot tougher, but water conditions were also different. Who is to say that last year wasn't some sort of down cycle for all steelhead. I know the nehalem was inconsistant for wild fish.

You can say the redd counts are off from previuos years, but there is no history or pattern to follow that shows the broodstock is the reason for this.

How did the broodstock program hurt the redd counts in the main nehalem last spring? Keep in mind that for those of you who are unaware, the main nehalem has 0 hatchery fish planted in it. NF does, but not broodstock fish. Are the redd counts consistant with rivers that have broodstock and wild fish, or are they consistant accross the region. I think you will find a poor return is present in both fish rather than just one. So is it fair to say the broodstock fish are the problem when wild fish in only wild rivers are having trouble or are in a decline?

The Broodstock program is fairly new for the NW, but the Coquille has been using it for several years. i'd like to get some opinions from those folks that fish it. Is it better or worse for wild fish now?

How has the Umpqua wild fish been effected? I know the fishery is pretty darn good down there. Is the Broodstock program having an effect on that fishery?

Sure, the agencies get paid big (mitigattion) money, by the feds (and their proxies) and the PUDs. Kind of like the wolf paying to keep the henhouse stocked. Even the Columbia Crossing (I-5 bridge replacement) organization has been up here in the Upper Columbia, announcing that they're shopping for recovery projects for mitigation of their impacts.

Keith,

Wild broodstock programs do have one other purpose aside from harvest augmentation. When a salmon or steelhead run has been extirpated, such as occurred upstream of the dams on the Cowlitz and NF Lewis, broodstock programs are the basis for restoring or recovering populations of the lost fish. PacificCorp is reintroducing salmon and steelhead in the upper watershed above Swift Dam. Since only or mainly hatchery steelhead return to the trap at Merwin Dam, obtaining wild broodstock is necessary in order to have suitable steelhead (Chambers Ck stock aren't allowed) to stock in the upper watershed.

Otherwise, Todd and Parker are correct. Broodstock steelhead programs augment harvest, but do not contribute as much to population productivity as leaving those same broodstock in the river to reproduce naturally. We tried this in the Sauk and Skagit Rivers in the late 1970s and mid 1980s. Fish returned, and impressive numbers a couple times, but on average the return was less than if the wild fish had been left alone to spawn naturally in the river. Both programs were terminated. The important lesson of the programs was that broodstocking could be used for recovery if and when natural reproduction gets so bad that it's necessary to intervene to avoid extirpation.

Sg

Aren't there more than one type of hatchery broodstock program? One program, once it is integrated, uses hatchery returnees for a certain percentage of the parents and still integrates wild parents ( ie
The clackamas program). And the second type of broodstock program uses only wild parents every year.

I think that WDFW is kind of schizophrenic about the whole recovery thing...they speak good overarching policy goals about it, but the details of how they implement it sometimes, if not oftentimes, work directly against it.

At the end of the day, recovery and harvest come hand in hand...recovery is often defined as a stock reaching an abundance level that can support sustainable fisheries without having to use hatcheries to do so.

That being said, in an effort to continue to provide harvest opportunity they employ techniques, especially the desire to use broodstock programs, that directly impede recovery of the wild fish.

The thought is that continued harvest opportunity coupled with other recovery efforts will eventually recover wild fish populations, but I'm not so sure that will ever work on most, if not all wild populations.

It's unfortunate, but most "recovery" efforts do little more than slow the destruction of habitat and infiltration of undesirable phenotypic and genotypic traits into the wild populations.

Parker, I think that the wild fish genetics can eventually overcome the infiltration of hatchery influences, but only if the infiltration of hatchery influences stop...it's like the fable about the guy sticking his fingers into holes in a leaky dam...if you don't plug all the holes, the water is still coming through...and right now we've got more holes than we do fingers.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. I agree with Salmo that there are some applications where a broodstock program is necessary, but only in situations where the situation is so dire that it's done as an emergency measure to keep a population from total annihilation...Redfish Lake Sockeye come to mind.

I actually pasted the 2004 reference to the Hood River steelhead project about the reduction of fitness. I am still waiting for those that think broodstock programs are great to post published papers about the benefits. I honestly want read the other side that has been studied not just fishing was good. I like seeing both sides but all I can find so far the negatives but I am sure Kevin will have some positives papers on it since he asked for data on the negatives and it was provided (2 steelhead, 1 coho with three posts in a row back some).

Please enlighten me. If the published data doesn't change your mind what will since that is what you were asking for?

JJ

PS: Todd nice post

I don't mean to speak for the proponents of broodstock programs, but I often hear that the effectiveness of them is based in "look how good the fishing is now!", which may not have anything whatsoever to do with the actual effectiveness of the broodstock program.

As Salmo pointed out above, the presence of broodstock fish to fish for is not likely in any way indicative of the effectiveness or quality of the program...there are some factors that need to be measured, and the quality of the fishing isn't one of them.

For every two steelhead removed from the gene pool to enter the broodstock program, how many wild fish would they have produced if they were left in the river? How many fish did the program make out of those two fish? Perhaps far more importantly, a few generations down the road...what does the legacy of those two fish look like now?

Are their children and grandchildren contributing to the wild stocks? Comparatively, how many fish are produced three or four generations down the road by leaving the wild fish in the river? How many are produced by taking them into the program?

At what cost? It's debatable as to whether a broodstock program can even produce the same amount of recruits as leaving the fish in the river can, but it's not debatable as to the fitness and success of the progreny of truly wild fish versus the broodstock fish. What is debatable, also, is the long term effect of the program.

Will it, like other basic hatchery programs, inbreed itself out of existence? Will there be enough wild fish influence left to keep that from happening?

My fear is that the answer to that question is no...and once we realize it, we don't have any true wild fish left now, either, as they've all been co-opted into the broodstock program.

I think it's a big mistake to equate "look how good the fishing is now!" with "the broodstock program is working"...because you're talking apples and oranges on that call.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. Speaking just for myself, I contribute to broodstock programs in this way...if I catch a broodstocked fish, I kill it just as fast as if it were a Chambers Creek turd, and greatly lament the fact that wild fish gametes had to be removed from the gene pool to make it.

Like it or not, having opportunity to harvest is mandatory. If you don't people are going to want to harvest the Nates. The broodstock program supplies that.

How many broodstock pair are needed for XX river? A couple hundred? How many Nates would be taken from that same river through harvest? No question the Broodstock program is the lesser of two evils.

I've got no interest in bonking a native steelhead, but I know lots of people that wouldn't think twice about it.

On some rivers, for example the SIletz and Alsea in Oregon, only 35 pairs of wild fish are used in each system. They must be collected at different timings of the run (i.e., 2 pair in Dec., 4 pair in Jan, 8 pair... etc.), and from different locations in the system (i.e., NOT all from a trap at the upper reaches of the river, or all from the lower river...)

*note, the pair collection numbers/dates are not factual, they are for example only... you hair splitters!

ODFW's mission statement says they will manage native stocks so limited harvest is possible.
A good example can be seen in many Southern Oregon rivers.
The rub is the habitat must be in good enough shape to support this management goal.
Sadly most rivers in Oregon have severely compromised habitat, like on the Northern Oregon coast, so harvesting wild steelhead is nothing more than a dream.
And one more time for AuntyM "It's The Habitat Stupid".

For treaty tribes with right to fish, that's how the treaties are currently intrepreted. For the rest of us- not true.