This draft "policy" has so many wiggle words in it, it really should not be considered any kind of policy. Lots of suggestions for actions, worded "should be considered" (or similar) rather than any commitment to actions, other than saying that habitat conditions require on-going hatchery mitigation. Since the statement about mitigation is without any additional qualifiers, I can only assume that it means everywhere.

I read nothing in the "policy" committing the co-managers to conserving natural spawning populations of fish. In fact that term is not used at all in the policy (that I could find). When there is a reference to natural spawning populations (several bullets under Principle #4), the terms "should consider" or "should strive" are always used. That's an easy one to get around as in "we considered it, but decided not to do it," or "we strove for it, but just couldn't accomplish it." This appears to be the perfect policy to accomplish nothing new in regard to hatchery programs, so I guess the perfect hatchery policy.