I don't think you've got the right read on this.

First, there is no mention of "mitigation" which is cause and effect--the enhancement of one fishery directly because of the loss of another. There simply following there mandate to provide additional fishing opportunities.

Second, if anything, this is "mitigation" for ESA listing, which is the Feds taking opportunities completely off the table. Because of wild/hatchery fish interactions, you can't necessarily replace wild ESA fish in a basin with hatchery fish and start fishing. Recovery of ESA fish is painful because it usually means sporties, commercials, developers, etc. have more stringent restrictions put on them all until the stock is recovered.

This is not giving up on steelhead; I think its an issue of equity and dollars. ESA has put the kabash on many Puget Sound (Puget Sound chinook) and Columbia basin streams (several stocks). And the money to enhance the hatchery runs on all of these streams would cost a hell of a lot more than dumping 7,000 triploids in area lakes throughout the state.

I'd personally love it if WDFW stuck the extra money into improving hatchery runs on the Snohomish basin, but what about folks around the rest of the State? You could probably argue that a stream like the Sky provides loads of fishing opportunity because its centrally located close to the population hub in the State, but its still not spreading the wealth geographically. Whether this is a strong arguement or not, I'm not sure. Probably yes for you and me, but perhaps not for someone from Eastern WA.

Finally, if the State does give up on steelhead, I think this would be an economic travesty. Unlike the various salmon fisheries, steelhead provides opportunities 12 months of the year. And I imagine after you consider the money spent over 10-12 months of pursuing one species of fish, it probably ranks reasonably well as one of the States economic assets as far as natural resources goes. And as Saukit said, triploids are not steelhead. You won't see me buying the latest loomis to go triploid fishing.