It will be interesting to see how this works out...the thousands of hatchery Chinook released in the upper reaches (below the dams) has really taken a bite out of the wild trout populaton up there...I wonder how 300,000 more salmon smolts will effect them? I read that they also want to eventually put in another quarter million sockeye smolts.

No mention on where the coho smolts are coming from in the article, but a little research turned up the source...a mishmash of Cascade River hatchery coho, Lewis River hatchery coho, Little White Salmon hatchery coho, and a remnant from the lower Yakima itself.

The paperwork also says that the program's purpose is "every purpose"..."conservation, recovery, education, harvest, research, and mitigation for dams, and will be an "integrated" program, meaning those fish will hopefully spawn in the wild.

Haven't we been shown...repeatedly...that out of basin hatchery fish used to implement every conceivable purpose and being allowed to spawn in the wild doesn't really work? There are wild rainbows, wild cutthroat, and wild steelhead up there...I wonder how they will react? Their own documentation shows four upper Yakima wild steelhead stocks, all listed under the ESA, all at "low" levels, and all of "high biological significance", and that "Ecological interactions through predation and competition may occur between the hatchery population and other populations, and natural populations may be incidentally harvested in fisheries targeting a more abundant hatchery stock."

These fish won't be clipped, since they'll be intended to spawn in the wild, and are eventually intended for commercial harvest in the Yakima River itself.

While I can see why the Yakamas might like this program, I can't see why anyone else would...for the rest of us and the wild populations there this is all risk, and no benefit.

Fish on...

Todd