I think there’s some miscommunication going on here. The professor primarily seems to be saying that when we plant fish they return. There’s no argument that we can always get fish back if we keep the hatchery churning them out... It looks to me like most of his examples do not qualify as reestablishing a healthy run that no longer relies on hatchery supplementation.

The real question is, can hatcheries help reestablish wild runs? I think the answer there is a qualified maybe. I believe prudent hatchery practices have, in limited instances resulted in reestablishing wild runs. I believe some Hood Canal summer chums have been recovered with the help of hatchery programs.

To avoid semantics games, in my mind, it’s a wild fish if its parents spawned naturally. To the extent hatcheries can help with that, I’m all for them. And in urban areas or those so degraded that it is unrealistic to reestablish wild runs, I believe large ongoing hatchery plants are the way to go. There is also a place for hatchery supplementation of healthy wild runs IF we take great care to assure that the hatcheries are not operating in a way that damages the wild runs. That is what hatchery reform is all about.

But I do not believe that it is reasonable to count hatchery raised fish when determining weather the stock are endangered.