Seems to me that the folks who want to restore only "pure", "unsullied", never been near a hatchery fish for wild fish had better concentrate on bull trout and Dolly Varden. The rest of them either have had or may have had a hatchery fish somewhere in the past.

Most of the studies will show a poorer survival for hatchery fish when they spawn in the wild. The reverse is equally true for wild fish in a hatchery; they do worse.

If we stop letting any hatchery fish spawn in wild, if we let what survives in the wild spawn, they will adapt. They will evolve to be the optimum fish in that environment if we give them the chance. If we keep wild escapments down and keep letting hatchery fish out there, of course survivals will go down.

I want to see the streams full of naturally spawning fish. If it takes using Chambers Creek steelhead to start it, and then what comes back stands on its own, that works.

Remember that 15,000 years ago there were no Puget Sound salmon at all, there were no Fraser River salmon. The Columbia was getting flushed with the Bretz Floods. The diversity we see is recent.

But, to say that we we want to only save the pure stocks means we have lost already.