Todd

You got it right, brother. I am a Lichatowich disciple as well.... by far the best authority on the decline of the West Coast's premier chinook salmon superhighway. Decades of overharvest, habitat degradation, mining of wild eggs for broodstock and piss-poor hatchery practices took their toll on the mighty Columbia and had her well on her way to the coffin before the first of the concrete was poured. The dams were just the nails used to seal it!

One of the greatest myths ever perpetuated in this century-long tragedy is how hatcheries would ultimately help us to recover wild stocks. We were lulled into a dangerous conceit that we could artifically manufacture salmon at will without regard for the various habitats that are required to fulfill their natural life histories... hence the title "Salmon without Rivers." Never once has hatchery production proven itself superior to wild production... the key is decent habitat.

Yes we can get more of those eggs to smolt stage faster and in greater numbers than Mother Nature, but then what? These hatchery mutants have such dismal estuarine/ocean survival that perhaps only 1 or 2 percent survive to adulthood. The true measure of production is not how many eggs or how many smolt, but rather how many returning adults.

As our hatchery practices evolve more and more toward drainage-specific broodstock programs, the key question fish managers must be held accountable to is whether the hatchery's productivity at least matches that of the brood river's natural productivity. If we are going to mine eggs for artificial propogation, we damn well better be sure we're getting back at least as many returning adults as we would get if the eggs had been naturally seeded in the gravel. My $0.02.... okay that was a little long.... call it $0.03!