Teedub, there's another whole thread on this with the full discussion, but in a nutshell:

There is no monitoring of the Snider Creek program at all, other than harvest data. There is no monitoring of what the program's contribution is to wild fish, what reduction (or not) of fitness occurs due to the Snider fish spawning in the wild, or what the effects of Snider program smolts competing with wild fish may be.

Only a handful of broodstock programs have actually had these things measured.

In every one...every single one, 100%...the results show that the wild fish would be more numerous and have higher reproductive fitness if they had never been mined for eggs and sperm to make hatchery fish.

In every one.

Ask anyone that works on any broodstock program anywhere and they will acknowledge this, but have anecdotal evidence that "their" program is the "one" that actually does work...without ever measuring any of the actual metrics that matter.

This happens every single time, with programs in B.C., Washington, and Oregon...they acknowledge that every single time it has actually been measured, it fails to do as well as leaving the fish alone...for free, I might add...would do without the program.

They always think "theirs" works.

While it's not impossible to think that "theirs" might be the only one that actually does work, it's damned unlikely.

Fish on...

Todd