To start let me be clear that I believe that "watch dog" groups are important in resource managment. They keep the managers on their toes and foster debate. Through debates postions are clarified, information and viewpoints exchanged and by- standers educated. All very good things; in addition I throughly enjoy a good discussion/debate.

Secondly I have had the opportunity to meet may of those working for Washington Trout and have found them to a very talented group with enviable didication. Washington Trout is fortunate to have such a staff and should be congratulated for bring such a group together.
They have been able to do some very good work in developing new infomation.


However I find Washington Trout's methods in the public arena very distributing. When attempting to be a catalyst for change their actions and retoric seem to indicate that their philosophy is that the "ends justify the means".

An example of what I mean. In WT's recent news release regarding their lawsuit against WDFW's steelhead and coho hatchery program it states: "The problem can be significant. A California study reported that 532,000 hatchery salmon consumed 7.5 million wild chinook fingerlings in the Feather River. Each hatchery juvenile ate an average of 14 wild salmon." According to Sam Wright's declaration on WT's web site that information is from Sholes and Hallock, 1979. A review of that artilce (found in Calif. Fish and Game 65 (4): 239-255, 1979) I found that the salmon doing the predating was chinook yearlings. While the above quote is techincally correct I feel it is deliberately mis-leading in defining the potential problem from steelhead and coho yearlings. As we all know each of the salmonid speices have significantly different behaviors and what is true of one may or may not be so for others. In addition I found that the hatchery yearling chinook were released in January and Febraury right on top of what were likely newly emergent fry. The very life stage at which they would be most vulunerable to predation. Whereas in the Puget Sound area the coho and steelhead hatchery smolts are released later in the spring when the chinook fry are large, more mobile, and likely elusive as they have survived for several months in a hostile environment loaded with predators (scuplins, whitefish, cutthroat, bull trout, wild coho yearlings, wild chinook yearlings, wild steelhead parr and smolts, and resident rainbows). I am all for attempting to error on the side of the wild resource however when doing so it might be more honest to state that your case is doing so.

In my various dicsussions (debates?) with Ramon he has chided my a number of times for using information that was not peer reviewed (I often note my observations from field work whether published or not). He noted his information is the "best science" avaialable from peer reviewed literature. The Sholes and Hallock paper "An evaluation fo rearing fall-run chinook salmon, Onchorhynchus tshawawytscha, to yearlings at the Feather River hatchery, with a comparison of returns form hatchery and downstream release" was not a study to look at predation but rather a comparison in release stratgies. The WT news release quote from above is found in the discussion section of the paper. The information was a personall communication from 2 Cal fish bios; not a peer reviewed study. Apparently Ramon and WT have different standards for themselves than for others.

In the same news release it is stated that coho can take chinook fry up to 46% of their body length. That infomation comes from Pearsons and Fritts, 1999. The 46% came from their experiment #1 where an individual coho was place in a partitioned hatchery incubation trough with 6 chinook of 3 sizes; there were 8 cells or replicas. The hold area for the each test was 16.1 inches by 16.1 inches by 12.6 inches deep. The fish were held in the area for up 29 days without being feed. While the study certainly helped clarify the potential maximum forage size of coho I not sure how often they would b able to catch a healthy unconfined fry of that size. How often willthey find a fish in an area the size of a bread box and have 4 weeks to catch them? The authors did note that the larger fish were eaten after the smaller fish had been taken. Again I find the implication in the news release that hatchery coho busy eating fry 46% of their length misleading.

WT as stated that residual hatchery steelhead ate juvenile salmonids up to 44% of their length. This information is in the discussion section of the Pearsons and Fritts paper and is from unpublished Oregon Department Fish and Wildlife data. Peer reviewed?

It is my opinion that such bias selection of data is counter productive to salmon recovery. It not only taints much of the excellent work the WT's staff has done it also undermines all those working in the recovery arena. It is further counter productive in that these various law suits focus the discussion on salmon recovery on hatchery and harvest issues allowing those habitat abusers a scape goat to divert attention from their actions. While fully support and have work hard to correct hatchery and harvest problems we can not let those issues use our precious resources (very limited) but rather we need to direct those resources to the larger issues - the habitat/hydro. In those rivers that I'm most familar with the complete elimination of all fishing and hatcheries would not result in noticeable long term improvement in the status of the chinook populations. With current and ongoing degradation of key habitats the chinook populations are doomed.

Unfortunately WT's news release on the hatchery steelhead and coho law suit is not the exception but the norm. While it may be tempting to excuse the mis-leading information as a honest mistake I'm not sure that is the case. Especially after Ramon's statement earlier in this thread - that is his position is based on "careful evaluation of the known facts".

my $0.02

Tight lines
Smalma