To be fair, the issue of hatchery reform has been an on-going discussion for the past 25+ years. The Hatchery Science Review Group (HSRG) came up with some ideas. They recommended that hatchery management should be based the following principles: 1) setting clear goals; 2) scientific defensibility; and 3) monitoring, evaluation and adaptive management.

https://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/research/divisions/efs/hatchery/review.cfm

However, there is always lots of disagreement among those items. For example, what should the hatchery goals actually be? Maximize returns to the river? Maximize returns to the fishery? Minimize interactions with wild fish? Supplement wild fish spawning? Meet ESA recovery goals? Jump start extirpated stocks? Should the programs be integrated or segregated? Should they mitigate for hydropower and lost habitat, or just enhance fishing?

Reasonable people can disagree on the answers to those questions. So there is plenty of room for discussion and debate on this BB. What we must avoid is throwing insults to the folks contributing to this thread. We’re all frustrated with the run-size estimates but throwing insults at your fellow anglers on this BB doesn’t help anyone.

I would note that the low returns for the Columbia Basin hatcheries are not confined to those run by WDFW. Oregon, Idaho, and the Tribes are all suffering from low run-size estimates for 2020. So if you want to make the case that all hatcheries are bad and all of them are run poorly, go ahead. And while you’re at it, you can join the Native Fish Society. They’d love to have you as a member.

Hatcheries are not a perfect solution to anything. They can always be run better. The staff doesn’t always have control over the factors that influence their mission (e.g., water temperatures, disease outbreaks, adult returns). So it is not appropriate to evaluate a hatchery based on factors that can’t be controlled by the people being evaluated. For example, if there aren’t enough adults returning to the hatchery for broodstock because they were all caught off the BC coast, you can’t blame the on-site hatchery manager and the staff. It ain’t their fault that anglers in the Columbia River are getting low-holed by the commercial fishermen in BC.