One of the things that has happened in the Green, until at least 2010, was that the Green was significantly declining in tributary spawners. I think a lot of this was due to tributary development and habitat degradation. So, the EG set in earlier, which included tribs, may be too high. One of the few times when I can see a biological reason to lower a goal; if you aren't going to put fish in a habitat that shouldn't count against goal.

Also, in looking at R/S, in those very few places where you know the actual escapement (you count them through a trap) and have 100% age analysis I have yet to see any steelhead run with an R/S to first return that even reached 1.0. Need repeat spawners. Further, as shown by Keogh and supported by some WA streams, a stream produces (from the same habitat) more smolts if they are age-1 and the age-2 smolts are more abundant than age-3 (if that was all that was produced in a year). The R/S (theoretical) to get 1.0 was at an average smolt age of 1.5.

Another thing about the tributary spawners was a theory of Jeff Cederholm's, based on his long-time work in the Clearwater watershed. He believed that the earliest returning steelhead spawned primarily in the tributaries while the later retaining fish were more mainstream spawners. So, hammering the early returns that co-returned with the hatchery fish, turning off the nutrient delivery to make for older smolts leads to less productive runs. Steelhead are damn complex. And then, they switch to being resident when being anadromous doesn't work.