Okay, educate me on these numbers. How are they determining that the return rate is nearly zero? Is there a lot of genetic testing being done and they don't see any half breed fish coming back and spawning on the native spawning beds? Do they take a hatchery fish, a native fish, spawn them in the hatchery, put them through all the same routine as hatchery fish and put tags in them?

I just need to understand the methods to determine how many mix breed fish are returning. If they are taking a wild fish and a hatchery fish and spawning them in the hatchery this could skew the numbers big time. Maybe the resulting cross breed is simply stupid from all the stuff it goes through in the hatchery. Maybe the cross breed can't cope with the chemicals and such and is so weak when released that this is the cause. Do they sample large numbers of spawning fish on the spawning grounds for genetic cross breeding? Could it be just a simple case of native fish genetics being so dominant that even if they spawn with hatchery fish that it may be almost impossible to tell if it is a cross breed? Could it be that the methods that are being used to cross breed these fish is the reason they are not survivng and not that the cross breed is actually that weak?

I am not trying to be controversial, quite the contrary. I want to understand the methods that are being used to determine that this is true and fact. Should we let hatchery fish spawn with native fish, this I can't answer because I don't have the answers to these questions yet.

As for taking wild stock and raising them in the hatchery, same questions apply. Will the simple fact that these fish are being raised in a hatchery result in a geneticaly deficient fish that doesn't know how to feed itself in the wild as a fry or alvin? Can it be done where the fish are spawned and they immediately go into the wild as an alvin and must learn to fend for themselves the way a wild fish would? I have seen this done, hatchery boxes put on the side of of a stream where the eggs hatch and the alvin drop into the stream without ever being exposed to chemicals and artificial food. I don't know if it worked but I have seen it done. Maybe the overstock of hatchery fish need to be raised this way, if they don't return they don't, if they do then they should at least have a chance to spawn in the wild and their fry would have the chance to learn to feed naturaly and survive keeping the cycle going and revive wild stocks. Maybe this could be done with a small percentage of wild fish to help the eggs survive through all diversity and that could help revive wild stocks.

Lots of questions, are there answers to them or does there need to be more done to answer them? If all of this has been answered, please enlighten me, if they have not then the facts need to be re-evaluated before any such conclusion can be made about any run of fish anywhere.
If they don't know the answers then knowing them could be the means to end this debate once and for all and return both steelhead and salmon runs to historic highs instead of record lows. At the very least it would give rock solid facts based on science that works and has been tested by every means neccesary to make sure one factor isn't making the numbers look worse, or better than they really are.