Slabhunter,

WDFW isn’t the culpable party when it comes to the status of Stillaguamish Chinook. WDFW controls harvest, and harvests have been heavily restricted for 30 years. The only additional harvest reduction available would be to totally close the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound to Chinook retention year around, and that wouldn’t save many Stilly Chinook, while precluding the harvest of many other hatchery Chinook. Chinook habitat in both the NF and SF Stilly has been trashed beyond usability, mainly from forest practices, and WDFW had zero influence on that during the time period when the damage occurred.

Driftwood,

Why should the Tribe spend its money on restoring the Chinook or the habitat when it wasn’t they who destroyed it? The habitat was legally trashed under both state and federal forest practices in effect at the time.

FNP,

The Stillaguamish Chinook may not be in a recovery mode; perhaps they are simply on life support. It’s too soon to know. What we do know is that without the wild Chinook broodstock program the Tribe has operated on the NF for about the past 25 years, the NF Chinook would very likely be gone by now. This program simply extends an existing practice to the SF Chinook. NF Chinook were returning less than one recruit per spawner when the Tribe began its wild broodstock program in the early 1980s and trending toward extinction. The hatchery offspring most likely are less successful in natural reproduction in the natural habitat. However, those spawners, even with their lower reproductive effectiveness, are more successful than not having any natural spawners at all. All anyone can do for now is to continue the broodstocking program until such time as enough natural habitat recovers so that some naturally spawning Chinook can consistently achieve a greater than one recruit per spawner. As far as I know, this program is the last stand between Stillaguamish Chinook salmon and extinction.

As Aunty mentioned, it appears that ESA listed Hood Canal summer chum have been recovered via short term hatchery intervention. The population initially declined due to a combination of habitat degradation and over-harvest, especially the latter. The short term hatchery programs have been discontinued. The Quillcene population seems to have recovered to the point of producing a harvestable surplus the past 3 or 4 seasons.

Your comments about what salmon really need in order to recover are exactly correct. The first has been in place for 30 years. The only meaningful harvest reduction left would be to totally close Chinook fishing off the coast of BC/Van. Is. and the Gulf of Alaska, and we know that ain’t happening. The second, well, I mentioned above that the habitat is trashed and will take years to recover. When it does, so will the Chinook, if there are any left.

Hatchery intervention probably has less effect on stock genetics than for Chinook, coho, or steelhead due to the limited freshwater rearing phase. The only way to know if it can be successful with these species is to try it. And the techniques for doing so are changing. The folks at Long Live the Kings in Hood Canal, working with people from WDFW and NMFS are re-writing the book as it were, on salmon and steelhead recovery using conservation hatchery techniques.

GBL,

The Great Lakes salmon and steelhead runs simply aren’t relevant to the Stillaguamish Chinook situation, but thanks for reminding us that salmon are abundant elsewhere.

PUG,

The lack of tribal self sufficiency is a complex subject worthy of its own thread. I could contribute some information, but I’m really not qualified to discuss it extensively.

Blue Water Pro,

Yes, the Stilly Chinook might be done. The fact is, we don’t know. What we do know is that if these measures are not undertaken, then the option of preserving them for future generations is definitely lost. Given that choice, I favor the Tribe’s program.

Aunty,

You could very well be right. Maybe that’s what some folks at the policy level think. I don’t know. They don’t share their inner thoughts with me. But I can tell you that many fish biologists with the tribes, state, and federal fish agencies are as committed as humanly possible to recovering salmon and steelhead populations, either with, or sometimes without, the agencies’ support.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.