Like I mentioned in Rivrguy's other thread, since cuts are likely necessary due to reduced state revenue due to the pandemic, this is an opportunity like no other to actually prioritize WDFW services based on the return from those services to the WA taxpayers and license buyers who actually keep the GD lights on and doors open at the Natural Resources Building and all regional and district offices of WDFW.

Hatcheries should be audited and prioritized based first on fish returned to recreational anglers. The reason is because recreational anglers comprise the largest group of taxpayers and license buyers who provide much needed revenue to WDFW. Fish returns to NT commercial and treaty fisheries should be second in line. And fish (salmon) contributions to Canadian and Alaska fisheries shouldn't even be part of the prioritization equation since those fisheries provide exactly zero revenue to WDFW.

Much as I'd rather fish for steelhead and salmon, it is the hatcheries that produce trout or other fish for lakes and other landlocked waters that should receive the highest priority. This is because those fisheries return fish directly to anglers who pay WA state taxes and buy licenses from WDFW. This is the classic "twofer" for WDFW, providing fish through Department services to people who fund the Department in two ways, both through state taxes and by purchasing fishing licenses. No other user group even begins to contribute as much revenue to WDFW at as little cost. It isn't even close.

Funding salmon hatcheries that primarily benefit Canadian fisheries was only a good deal for WA when ocean survival rates were high and enough salmon escaped the intercepting fisheries of AK and BC to still provide decent fishing to WA recreational anglers. It ain't no secret that that train has long since left the station and may never come back. Raising hatchery salmon for another state and another nation with little benefit to WA is not only a welfare measure, it is a fiscally stupid welfare measure. (Unless you're an AK or BC fisherman, of course)

Raising hatchery salmon for NT commercial and treaty fishing is a fiscally stupid welfare measure because these two groups comprise less than 2% of WA state's population, and combined they return so little revenue to WDFW as to be negligible. As for treaty fishing being a federally treaty protected right, I do not disagree. Since it is a federally protected treaty right, then let the federal government fund hatcheries for that purpose if the federal government considers that to be an important public interest. Unless and until there is federal adjudication requiring WA state to fund such hatchery production, it simply doesn't make economic sense to do so, except to the extent that treaty fishing incidentally provides sufficient NT recreational fishing to make it economically worth while.

I"m not saying there shouldn't be hatchery salmon raised with WA state money, only that such hatchery salmon rearing be prioritized based on returns to the greatest number of anglers who buy WA state recreational fishing licenses. Some hatcheries will be winners, and some are losers. Stop funding the losers. That's all.

Hatchery steelhead return rates are at all time lows. However, even at low return rates it may make more sense to raise hatchery steelhead than hatchery salmon if more hatchery steelhead are returned to WA licensed creel than salmon are.

WDFW must have some bean counters who can perform this audit. The Department simply doesn't want to, because decisions regarding what Department programs are funded and which aren't have never been made on the basis of fiscal responsibility or returning services to the people who actually provide the Department's funding. This is why we see WDFW consistently make choices to throw recreational fishing and recreational fishermen under the bus in favor of alternatives up to and inclduing fiscal lunacy.

WDFW should consider dropping out of NOF. I've heard from Department people that from December through April of every year, 70% of Fish Program effort is directed at NOF. An objective audit would ask, "what do we get from all that effort?" If, come mid-April, we taxpaying license buying anglers only get the fishing that the treaty tribes approve of anyway, then why are we spending all that state money participating in a process where Ron Warren is just going to throw recreational fishing under the bus anyway. Thanks Ron for letting the Stillaguamish Tribe decide when NT sport fishermen can go fly fish for sea run cutthroat on the Stillagaumish River each year in some delusional effort that it will contribute to conservation of Stillaguamish Chinook, when any fish biologist who understands the situation knows that it won't. And not to pick on Mr. Warren specifically, but since he is the occupant of the new managerial position that Director Susewind created not that long ago, why are we spending scarce WA state funds paying for a Departmental position whose occupant has been throwing recreational fishing under the bus for the last 5 years? There are logical places for WDFW to make budget cuts necessitated by the COVID pandemic, but I don't see much logic being employed in WDFW's proposal. And that, my friends, is probably not a coincidence.