I'm not anti-hatchery. I like the increased fishing opportunity which hatcheries provide.

But I believe that blurring the boundaries between hatchery and Native Steelhead would be a terrible mistake, benefitting only commercial interests with designs on our rivers and riparian habitat.

The metrics of locality for "local stocks" haven't even been determined. Like Fishbadger said, there can be more than one local stock in a given river system. We get sloppy and talk about Skykomish Natives, or Hoh Natives like that is one local stock. Hell, for all we know there might be a dozen stocks in each of those rivers which are adapted to spawning in different parts of the river system.

There is a lot that we don't know about Steelhead. It's not knowing that we don't know which gets us into trouble. Merging a sloppily identified and hatchery raised "local stock", possibly made up of mixed locally adapted stocks from a given river system, with true Native Steelheed is irresponsible.

"The Real Thing", as Fishing Physician once called it, is precious and fragile. Let's protect our Native Steelhead by leaving them in their rivers. Let's protect their habitat from commercial interests who want to make the problem of endangered Native Steelhead go away by re-defining it out existance.
Let's not get suckered into blurring the boundaries between hatchery fish and The Real Thing.
SS