Jim Buck is also sponsoring and co-sponsoring many bills to gut the Hydraulic Code and prevent WDFW from protecting fish habitat. Among the more insidious of these is a bill to exempt tide gates for agriculture and flood control from the requirements of fish passage, so if this one passes any farmer and diking district can now tide gate any river or dike off any wetland any time they want. How would you like to see a tide gate across the Snohomish River? No one inthe state will be able to prevent it.

Of course he is on the side of hatchery fish, he feels that wild fish are a nuscience species that inhibit wholesale development of our shorelines. Don't get me wrong, WT is dead wrong on this issue, for one thing there are many studies where stomachs of hatchery coho and steelhead have been sampled that show that hatchery fish don't eat wild fish in wild conditions - hell, most of the hatchery fish die in the first two weeks after release from starvation and predation - they have no idea what to eat or how to get away from predators and wild fish do. But Buck isn't on the side of the fish, he's on the side of the developers, and hatchery production has always been the develpers answer - dam up a river and build another hatchery, right?