I'm new to this board but am glad to see some strong, informative dialogue going on.

I live in So. Oregon and have been pretty active in fish issues in our region, especially the Rogue for some time. I am active in the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association and make my living peddling Sporting goods as a wholesale distributor rep.

I am of the school that says we should be doing the most we can while disrubting the fewest possible to rebuild naturally reporoducing runs of fish in our NW rivers.

My thoughts are that the arguining over the genetics is, to some degree at this point in time a moot point and not where our energy needs to be focused.

The fact is, after over a 100 years of pouring hatchery fish into our systems they still can not sustain themselves without the yearly infusion of more hatchery fish in the vast majority of cases.

Genetics be damned (for now) these fish do not reproduce succesfully, period.

My fear as a fisher and one that dpends on the industry to support my famimly, is that if we succumb to the pressure to list hatchery and wild as one in the same, the next time our return numbers go down (and they will go down) we will get cut off from fishing. Protected fish must not be 'taken', regardless of their origin

We are told that NMFS will relist after their one year study and make accomdations to take hatchery fish out of the count mix in some fashion.

The problem is, this will take at least two years to get done but what will come of the restoration efforts that have gained great momentum? How many restoration steps backwards will we take in two years?

The property rights folks are applauding this because it is the directives of the ESA, in order to protect listed COHO, that prevent the continuing resource trashing that, in a very large way, has put us where we are today in terms of fish populations.

The property rights folks feel they should be able to do just as they please on their property with no thought to the responsiblity these rights bring with them to be good stewards of the resources.

As in many cases, not all resource extractors or developers are bad or do there thing in a negative fashion. Unfortunately we need the power of the ESA or something similar to keep the bad apples in check.

These same property rights folks are the same ones that will scream the loudest that since a judge (not a bio) determined that hatchery fish are 'ok', we need to stop 'wasting' tax money on habitat restoration. What will become of the funding?