Steelhead in Washington are separated into 7 Evolutionarily Significant Units, or ESU's...an ESU is the population parameter that is looked at when assessing the health of steelhead populations, and assessing whether or not the ESA will kick in.

The ESU's are:

Upper Columbia
Middle Columbia
Lower Columbia
Puget Sound
Olympic Peninsula
Southwest Washington
Snake River Basin

Steelhead are listed as either "endangered" or "threatened" under the ESA in five of the seven ESU's...only the Olympic Peninsula nad SW WA ESU's are not listed.

The OP runs are being overharvested in many instances, but the habitat is good, and marine conditions for those fish seem to be holding out, so they aren't likely to be listed soon.

The SW WA ESU includes the Chehalis basin...in fact, the Chehalis Basin is the majority of the SW WA ESU.

The Chehalis Basin suffers from serious habitat degradation, from the very bottom end along the banks of the Chehalis itself, to the top end of streams that are overlogged...this will eventually limit the productivity of those streams for steelhead, and I doubt it will be all that long.

Right now, however, the Quinault Nation is overharvesting the runs in the Chehalis...and overharvesting them badly.

My guess is that if this is allowed to continue, and habitat loss continues unabated, that the SW WA ESU will be number 6 out of the 7 ESU's to be listed, and not that far in the future, too.

Fish on...

Todd