NWmallard,

It seems like the new rule wouldn't have any effect on the mid-C and tribs. Like you say, everything has been WSR or closed for several years now.

Please don't give science a bad rap. Science is just a systematic way of observing things and explaining conclusions. Science can't help it if human decisions take other factors into account. (Actually, I wouldn't suggest that decisions be based exclusively on science, or exclusively on one factor.)

The mid-C is complicated. Wild spring chinook and both hatchery and wild steelhead are listed as endangered under the ESA. The ESA directs federal agencies to "recover" those populations. Yet the ESA lacks the authority in some cases to recover species, and where it has the authority, agencies (acting as agents of society) lacks the political will to invoke the actions necessary to recover species populations. Hence the kind of ugly standoff we see now.

Most of those populations will never be self-sustaining natural production because of the "harvest" rates of the hydropower system. If our collective political will cannot effectively address that, the best those species future can be is sustaining through hatchery supplementation. Unfortunately, the laws we are made to work with don't seem to acknowledge that kind of outcome. Meanwhile we observe goofy-looking situations of stocking huge numbers of hatchery smolts in rivers where no fishing is allowed, and natural, self-sustaining recovery is highly unlikely to occur.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.