Originally Posted By: Salmo g.
Carcassman posted, "I am more of the opinion that we need to separate hatchery and wild. Mixed programs (integrated stocks) merely reduce the productive capabilities of both populations."

Yes! I think the only sound case for integrated hatchery programs are those where the hatchery effort is directed at recovering a wild population.


I agree.

But then there is the curious case of the Snake River fall Chinook…..

In the 2008 U.S. v Oregon Agreement, the Tribes were able to secure a provision to stock ESA listed Fall Chinook in the Snake River by the millions. Every year. The result was huge numbers of adults returned to the Lower Snake River over the past 10 years. Lots of fish. This program was intended to mitigate for the Lower Snake Dams, but it also had the effect of supplementing harvest (tribal, recreational, commercial) and helping with ESA recovery (abundance, not productivity or diversity).

In the recent past, the numbers of adults on the spawning grounds above Lower Granite pool has greatly exceeded the amount needed for recovery. And these are wild adults. They are likely direct descendants from the previous generation, which were all hatchery origin. But they’re wild fish nonetheless.

At some point, it’s not hard to ask whether we have achieved ESA recovery when the numbers of returning wild adults greatly exceed what’s in the recovery plan. NMFS would say that recovery means recovery in the wild (i.e., without hatchery influence). So to reach ESA recovery, the stock needs to be self –sustaining. That is, it must be able to persist without continued stocking. The Tribes immediate response is that we can’t stop stocking since the purpose of the program is to mitigate for the dams. And as long as the dams are standing, stocking will continue. They have a point.

So now we have a fully integrated stock that puts huge numbers of wild adults on the spawning grounds with no hope of recovery, regardless of their abundance. The bottom line is that these fish will be ESA-listed regardless of how many wild adults return to the spawning grounds. Presumably, we could achieve historical abundance on the spawning grounds (millions), and still not achieve ESA recovery.

So if we are going to use hatchery fish to help recover an ESA listed population, at some point we gotta stop stocking, and see what happens. But in some cases, I’m not sure that ‘stopping stocking’ is even possible.



Edited by cohoangler (12/23/19 10:33 AM)