A few have come to the conclusion that this is NOT an allocation issue between user groups and they are correct. This is a law issue. Closing down 18 hatcheries would not distribute opportunity to C&R anglers because you can not have a directed fishery of any type on listed stocks without a NMFS exception.

Also, they are targeting closure of chinook producing hatcheries, not just chinook production so with closure of the hatcheries goes any other salmon production at that facilities. Most of you know that wild Puget Sound Coho stocks are not ESA listed, but generally are not healthy enough to provide much opportunity.

Part of the problem is the ESA itself. The legislation was never written to apply to fish. It was written to apply to birds and whales and species that you can get a specific tally on the number of animals that live. With fish we don't know how many there are. There are thousands of wild chinook that return to puget sound rivers every year but its not like we can send someone down to count them. In California there is a proposed ESA listing on Boccacio rockfish, but the estimated population is close to a million fish. But they really don't have a clue how many are down there either. We have a law that is not written to apply to fish and it requires judges to make decisions that they really should not be required to make.

WT is an anti-hatchery organization. They say so themselves:
"Hatcheries were used early on to replace wild fish runs destroyed by various land uses and overharvest. Not merely expensive, short-term fixes, hatcheries often help prevent wild fish recovery, and are fraught with problems that will eventually cause their undoing. By destroying or blocking habitat, polluting waters, creating massive competition with wild fish and toying with complicated genetics, hatcheries create more problems than solutions"
Unfortunately, despite Todd's post, the information I am receiving so far is that WT is going for the closures and not trying to just leverage negotiation. I tend to believe the information I am getting from my source at this point because of additional information I received in a meeting a couple weeks ago.

The meeting was not specifically about Tokul creek, in fact it was about blackmouth, but the two top officials in the WDFW made a point to bring it up (can not remember specifically if it was Peck or Koenings). Tokul creek trout hatchery is not involved in this lawsuit but a separate lawsuit WT has against the department. The official pointed out that the department does have a specific plan for fixing the Tokul creek facility and even though WT has knowledge of this plan they are going to court anyway. I have heard just about every opinion imaginable about the leadership in our department, but I will add that it is extremly unlikely that they would be untruthful about having this plan with both Senator Oke and Representative Doumit at the table.

I am not taking blame off WT for this one because of a inadequately written law. They are choosing to go after hatcheries knowing that there was no possible way to bring all these hatcheries into ESA compliance quickly. The funding has not been there, the design has not been there. It was not that long ago that we found out what the standard for ESA compliance was. All of this is going on while NMFS is still trying to make up its mind if we have endangered salmon at all.