The following was extracted directly from the front page of Washington Trout's website:

I am offering this in the context of the best salmon fishing season I have seen in many years with more wild fish showing up than in recent memory. Washington Trout is a radical animal rights extremist organization bent on closing all the hatcheries in Washington and other states. The newest weapon they are employing is the review process granted to them as a result of the "settlement" of the lawsuit they filed against WDFW, the director of WDFW and the members of the WDFW commission. The settlement resulted in a big cash payday for WT and gave them a new way to try to force their narrow agenda on the rest of us. Their conclusions are thinly veiled as based on a comprehensive review but their conclusions are the same as their predetermined "cause"..close all hatcheries to save wild fish...or so they claim. I claim that WT is not a fishing organization but an animal rights group of left wing radicals who ultimately would like to close all fishing except catch and release fly fishing from kayaks or from shore.

Here is what their website says on the front page:


Washington Trout Comments on WDFW Puget Sound HGMPs



On August 1, a six-week public comment period ended for 79 salmon and steelhead Hatchery and Genetic Management Plans (HGMPs) developed by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for submission to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Washington Trout prepared and submitted comments regarding HGMPs for WDFW’s chinook, coho, and steelhead hatchery programs in Puget Sound. We found the HGMPS inadequate to warrant ESA authorization, and recommended that WDFW withdraw them for significant revision, and/or consider scaling back or discontinuing its Puget Sound hatchery program.



After reviewing all the chinook HGMPs and all the coho and steelhead HGMPs, WT identified several general concerns that run throughout all or many of the documents. These include our assessment that:

In general, the HGMPs fail to adequately describe clear program goals, justifications, performance standards and indicators, or adequately detailed monitoring and evaluation protocols or timetables;
A number of erroneous and/or unsupported assumptions run throughout the HGMPs;
Many of the HGMPs contain critical deficiencies and omissions;
There is a consistent failure to quantify, as required, the estimated take of listed Puget Sound chinook;
The overall size of the chinook hatchery program in Puget Sound is far too large with respect to any reasonable “acceptable levels” of competition, predation, and related genetic and ecological impacts upon indigenous wild chinook;
The overall size of the coho and steelhead hatchery programs in Puget Sound are far too large with respect to any reasonable “acceptable levels” of competition, predation, and ecological impacts upon indigenous wild chinook;
The HGMPs are often in direct conflict with critical elements of WDFW’s own Wild Salmonid Policy.