Originally Posted By: Double Haul
R&G, The follow up post to that statement.

I think the key word is science-driven management. If the science tells us that hatchery steelhead are a detriment to wild recovery are folks willing to accept that and support it without bias to their opportunity at the expense of wild steelhead or blinded to their economic gains by forsaking wild steelhead for hatchery fish. It all depends on your priorities. My personal priority will always be to put wild steelhead first, to me, there is no substitute and I want them in my future and my children's future. If I don't, I personally feel I would be selling my soul. So in the end, regardless of what I wrote at the top, yes, I am pro wild steelhead and they come before hatchery steelhead in my preferences, but I will whack every hatchery fish I get my hands on to get them out of the system. I hope I don't get the "elitist sucks" , emoticon, but if I do so be it.


Science driven would mean you need to quantify the harm that hatchery steelhead do to wild steelhead first. Then we decide if that harm to the wild stocks is worth the fishing opportunity provided. Let's say for sake of argument PS hatchery steelhead releases depress wild steelhead returns by 5%, is it worth losing an entire fishery to improve the wild fish run by 5%?
When words like "harm" and "detrimental" are used without numbers it sparks emotions in people, and science should be devoid of emotion. We shouldn't take drastic steps to "improve" wild steelhead returns, if we don't know how much they will improve by and at what cost. The WFC gets paid to do lots of fish habitat "improvement" projects but if those projects do not produce any additional fish, they are a waste of money. I also did not see any spawner counts before/after their projects were completed, so we have no benchmark to see if they were cost effective or successful.