Guys and gals, no need to get your nipples in a wringer over this - the bottom line is in ESA consultatons science, not politics, rules. If the science that WDFW is using to manage recovery of chinook is valid, and I would think that it is because they actually are recovering, and in the Columbia, where they have been listed 7 years longer, they are recovering even better - whitness the last two years of record returns, then that is what will come out of the consultation and be the result of the biological opinion. We all know that if we can get to the point where all the hatchery fish are marked and we c&r all the natives, we will have virtually no impact on listed chinook survival, certainly not compared to the impact that dams, dredging, commercial, industrial, and residential development has. And because huge areas of freshwater and estuarine habitat have been lost, hatcheries that raise fish to a size that enables them to enter saltwater without using the freshwater and estuarine rearing area that the smaller wild fish need will not impact their survival. And because native stocks are depressed compared to their numbers historically, there is plenty of room in the ocean for growout of these hatchery fish. All WDFW and NMFS has to do is figure out how to harvest hatchery chinook without killing wild chinook, and we sportfishers are the best bet for that dirty little job. So I say bring it on