It wasn't the Department that caved; it was the consequences of ESA and Squaxin wouldn't stand for it. WDF actually tried to see if the Chinook would naturally reproduce in the Deschutes and the result were that so few unmarked fish came back that they were either "wild" or "drops" from the marking of hatchery fish.

Last I had heard, and this in the early 00s, was that Nisqually was trying to have both a hatchery program and a wild run. That required, as modeling showed, a rack in the river. That was done but the wilds still didn't respond. Don't know what happened.

I do know, though, that Feds set "recovery exploitation rates" for a number of WA Chinook stocks that were higher than MSY. Which means they were really "recovery extinction rates" but since they ran the show that's what was going on. My somewhat fuzz memory is that to recover the SS Chinook one needed to reign in Alaska and NOAA was not about to do that.

The current fight over trawl bycatch up there shows that conservation is not a NOAA value.