I'm impressed with the knowledgeable and intelligent quality of the information posted here on this subject so far. Especially that from Salmo g, the old relic of fisheries management too stuck in the day to upgrade to O. mykiss. Your vast familiarity with these types of issues and a bit of research allowed you to speculate correctly upon much of what transpired but you obviously have not been privy to all the facts.

With a bit of research I was able to uncover the basic story behind the cutbacks in steelhead production and hatchery employment.

As mentioned, once upon a time there was the Skagit Tribal Cooperative who, in the year 2001, after several years of negotiation with Seattle City Light, the WDFW, US Fish & Wildlife, The Parks and Forest Service, the Federal Energy Regulators, and the entire host of bureaucracies and citizens groups who gather to decide such matters, developed an Instream Flow agreement. That agreement not only provided for improved flows below the Seattle City Light's dams but for several other things including a considerable amount of money for fish and wildlife mitigation on the Skagit including some hatchery steelhead production.

Salmo g - Assuming that you were in the thick of things as usual, I'm guessing that you may have access to a copy of that agreement and possibly able to provide some of the details that the members of this forum might wish for.

Now to continue with the story. Here we are in 2001 with a nice agreement offering all the parties as much as they could negotiate - The dams have an acceptable operating plan - The fishermen have some guaranteed steelhead plants to fish for - The Forest Service, ecologists and Tribe have money for fish and wildlife mitigation purposes - So we can all live happily ever after, or at least for the life of the agreement.

But of course, things are not always as they seem and in this case the happy ending soon develops into a more tragic affair, or more precisely a lack of an affair. The members of the Skagit Cooperative, a marriage of the Swinomish, Upper Skagit and Sauk Suiattle tribes, soon began fighting over management and allocation issues and two years into the agreement the Upper Skagit Tribe seceded from the pact.

Now the Upper Skagit tribe was happy with the hatchery production but the Swinomish preferred to spend everyone's money on habitat so the Swinomish soon went to work to get some of those mitigation funds reallocated.

Exactly what transpired between the Tribe and the WDFW may never be completely known because it was all done in secrecy. For two or more years they negotiated in secret and the WDFW considered their propositions in secret passing in house memos between parties on a need to know basis that were marked "do not discuss" or "not public information" or "confidential". Essentially all parties agreed not to reveal what was happening until after it became a done deal.

And then about a month ago when the deal had been made the information was leaked to a member of the Wildcat Steelhead Club by an upper management source in the WDFW who was privy to the dealings. A couple weeks later Steve at the Marblemount Hatchery was officially informed of the new deal and Wednesday he was forced to lay off one of his valued employees.

What it means in lost hatchery production is a reduction of about 121,000 smolts per year.

So what did the Swinomish Tribe get out of the deal?

The got all the money saved by cutting back on the steelhead production plus the amount saved by no longer employing one hatchery worker plus an added bonus of $55,000 per year that they promise to spend on habitat improvement studies.

So now you know the rest of the story.

Edited to correct a mistaken assumption about the Tribes.