CM -
I agree whole heartedly that any meaningful chance at significant improvement in our Chinook and steelhead population will require addressing large scale ecosystem problems.

The first decade of this century Puget Sound saw astounding pink returns providing an opportunity to see the effect of having significantly large biomass of spawning salmon improve steelhead survival. Consider the following Snohomish/Skykomish example:

In the 1980s the average pink escapement was 165,000 and the average wild steelhead escapement was 3,072.

in the 1990s the average pink escapement was 143,000 and the steelhead escapement was 3,715.

For the first decade of the 2000s the average pink escapement was 1,263,000 and the average steelhead escapement was 2,171!

Since 2010 the pink escapement has been 699,000 and the steelhead escapement has been 941.

Clearly increase spawning salmon biomass did not produce the expected results. That does not mean that nutrient question isn't important; it is. However I believe without stable flows and complex habitat features to capture and retain those carcasses we will not see the expected benefits.

The fact that increasing carcass biomass, reducing harvest, eliminating hatcheries, restoring estuary habitats, etc. are not producing the expected results in increased abundances of our Chinook and steelhead is a clear indication that the dominate limiting habitat factors are not being address and appear to continue to deteriorate.

For me it is clear that the simplest and most politically acceptable restoration actions are not moving the recovery needle Without a paradigm shift in recovery strategies towards the more complex and less politically acceptable actions the fish are doomed. Equally it is also obvious that for society as a whole that shift is not acceptable.

Curt