Rivrguy,

I'm no expert on the Nooch, and I likely miss a lot of things many places. I didn't mean to imply that the Wynoochee was some kind of mainstay of Spring Chinook production, only that the limited habitat capacity for producing springers was compromised and degraded by forest practices in the upper watershed, same as occurred in the upper Chehalis, Skookumchuck, and Newwaukum. None of the Chehalis basin has been prime spring Chinook habitat in the last 200 years. But parts of upper watershed reaches marginally provided the habitat conditions necessary for them to be there, so in those former times of salmonid abundance, spring Chinook occurred wherever the environmental conditions favored their existence, even if the total abundance was low.

Darth,

Now ya' got me curious; I'm going to take another look at that EIS. It's been decades for me. As naive as I was then, I didn't understand how WDF decided salmon mitigation beyond temperature regulation wasn't required and that WDG took a lump sum of $$ for steelhead mitigation. Those conclusions just don't pencil out over the prospective lifetime of a dam.

20 Gage,

What makes you think 1968 was "peak" returns? I think we have cumulative data suggesting that larger returns of wild steelhead occurred earlier than that. The 1968 - 1972 time period mainly reflects the peak combined harvests of hatchery and wild steelhead for many river systems, and not the peak abundance of wild steelhead.

RunnGun,

I'm sorry to see you use the term "excuses." I don't see anyone here trying to excuse anything. IMO we are making observations and trying to explain what has happened and why it has happened. That's not an excuse.