C'mon Auntie, can't you be nice? I'm trying to meet you folks halfway here. You and I AGREE about commercial fishing. In fact I dare say that if WT didn't work on anything else, you might be a member, based on our commercial-harvest positions.

And actually, industrialized commercial salmon fishing and hatheries appeared in the NW about the same time. The first west coast salmon hatchery started production on the Sacramento River in the 1870s, and there were several hatcheries opperating on the Columbia before the turn of the century. Early 20th century hatcheries in Grays Harbor and on Lake Quinault were actually owned and run by cannery operations (trying to cut out the fishing middleman). Large scale hatchery schemes were operating in the NW long before wholesale habitat degradation ocurred, and even before the major declines of commercial catch rates (read Jim Lichatowitch's "Salmon Without Rivers").

But that's really neither here nor there relative to today's reality. Hatchery-salmon production (particularly in the Columbia) subsidizes commercial and tribal fishing; it makes it possible. They cannot be seperated. By supporting current levels of hatchery production, you indirectly support current levels of commercial harvest. If you believe, as WT does, that curent harvest levels are too high, and you are working to reduce those levels, then you are necessarily working to reduce levels of hatchery production.

WDFW runs 165 salmon and steelhead hatchery programs in Puget Sound and in the Columbia Basin (plus another dozen or so programs on the coast). If you think that number is about right, then you should actually thank the commercial fishing industry. If you think the number is excessive, then our positions are closer than you may believe.

Ramon Vanden Brulle,
Washington Trout