If you want wild fish, naturally reproducing in the ecosystem and evolving to the conditions as they exist then you allow the wild fish to spawn unimpeded by fish that did not evolve in that environment (hatchery fish). They key here is actually wanting to restore the wild fish by putting them on the grounds. Since listing, how much has the wild escapement in the Kalama increased?
If it hasn't significantly increased since listing, and it should be double or triple (at least) what it was at listing then it seems to me that listing is not intended to restore the listee but to control people's actions in the watershed.
As many have noted, the history on most all out streams is a mongrelization of stocks; Aryan Purity doesn't exist any more. But, if you stop putting in hatchery fish, if you significantly increase the wilds, then what you get is a fish adapted to the river.
I would add to the last sentence "as it now exists."
The word mongrelization may be overstating the result of hatchery supplementation and especially where hatchery fish are released in basin. And may be more accurate when those releases have been out of basin.
Bushbear on this site has State stocking records for Puget Sound rivers for a number of years going back to the Dept. of Fisheries. The number of out of basin Chinook releases number in the tens if not hundreds of millions of fish. It is important to understand that we are likely not protecting genetically pure aboriginal stocks.
Rather, the push for wild fish is to allow the genetics to evolve with a minimal of hatchery "contamination."
That may be an admirable goal but it is important that folks understand what we have now as well as the end game if they wish to buy into that approach and to establish some metrics as you suggested.
A prime example is the failure to establish a viable wild run of mid Hood Canal Chinook which is one of two stocks contributing to the extremely limited marked selective fishery in Puget Sound. So the question posed is if those mid Hood Canal efforts fail repeatedly should the Governments (NOAA/NMFS and WDFW) continue to try?
Anyway, good post. Thanks.
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