Hi again, folks. This isn’t to respond to my own post, but rather to some points several of you bring up. Eric, Tacoma publicizes the Cowlitz relicensing, but you have to get on their mailing list to receive the newsletter, which does exude a warm, fuzzy pro-Tacoma slant. But that’s OK. Reasonable people expect and see through that. I don’t know why WDFW doesn’t publicize it. Perhaps because it’s just one of many such actions that are going on all the time. It’s just that the Cowlitz is higher profile than a lot of the dams, or at least the resultant fisheries. Also, it seems common to not report half way stories. That is, nobody seems to know what the final outcome is going to be, since a lot of decisions are yet to be made. Reporting something now could cause problems later, if the story keeps changing every time. And the story probably would change every time because the outcome is still under development. I mean, look at the uproar on this BB over mostly rumor. Imagine the whining and wailing if every step of the decision process was reported each week in the paper. The people responsible for getting the job done couldn’t get around to it because they’d spend all their time responding to each week’s rumors and possible developments. I do agree that public input is an integral part of these decision processes. I assume that’s why Friends of the Cowlitz, Trout Unlimited, and American Rivers are at the table with Tacoma and the agencies as they develop an agreement. Remember, no agreement and FERC decides the whole shebang back in Washington D.C.

Chuck - you da’ man! I’m with you. Tacoma’s environmental report notes that the best alternative for wild fish recovery is dam removal. Naturally, that isn’t their proposal. So it comes down to working out the best alternative that could restore wild fish with the dams still in place. It means smaller wild runs than would be possible without the dams, but it will still be larger wild runs than at present. Remember, when they bagged fish passage in the early 70s, wild salmon and steelhead became extinct in the upper Cowlitz. The new passage facilities can partially (maybe I should note that PARTIALLY) restore wild spring chinook and steelhead. There is a new dam at Cowlitz Falls, and BPA spent millions adding fish guidance and collection facilities there. They are still working to make it work right, but wild, native steelhead have now returned there for the past three seasons. Over 160 wild steelhead this winter and spring. That ain’t recovery, but you gotta’ start somewhere. And, the wild steelhead survived at 3 times the rate that their hatchery counterparts did, and wild smolts are only half the size of the larger hatchery product. True, the hatchery run was larger than the wild run, but only because they released a zillion smolts. One of the biologists there thinks most of the hatchery smolts don’t even make it to the ocean alive because the hatchery is such a disease cesspool. So they haven’t got recovery. NMFS will have to do a recovery plan, not only for the Cowlitz, but all the listed stocks areas. Recovery won’t look like historic numbers, because historic habitat quantity and quality no longer exists, for one thing. Even without the dams.

As for the Baker sockeye, I don’t know if they consider them recovered or not. But they were a candidate for ESA listing a few years ago. And then year before last, NMFS took them off the list. I presume that’s because the run has been pretty consistently above the spawning escapement goal for the last few years. The WDFW even allowed limited fishing for them a year or so ago. So it should be getting better.

Neanderthal, I think the reason for the conflicting info on hatchery v. wild is at least twofold. First, there’s a lot that isn’t known, so the field is wide open to speculation, even among scientists. Second, among the things that are known, the results vary according to species, stock, etc. For example, hatchery coho from many stocks, at least here on the west side, seem perfectly able to reproduce in the wild along with, and probably mixing with, native wild stocks. There may be detrimental effects, but I don’t think anyone’s been able to measure them. Yet, Chambers Creek steelhead apparently don’t reproduce successfully in the wild. They’ve been bred to spawn so early that the fry come out at the wrong time. Hatchery summer runs spawn successfully and produce smolts, but according to an Oregon study, those smolts don’t survive to return as adults. It seems to me that we have to take it on a case by case basis. Broad, sweeping conclusions look like a sure way to be in error.

As for the Columbia tribes not agreeing with NMFS, that makes sense. First, NMFS will probably be wrong part of the time, just like anyone else. But since they’ve got the expert scientists, hopefully they will be wrong less often. Second, the tribes have been clear that they want to use hatchery supplementation of wild stocks to increase their harvest opportunity, not necessarily to restore wild stocks. From the limited information I have, I guess that sometimes counting a hatchery fish spawning in the wild will prove to be a good measure, and in other cases the wild run will continue to decline, no matter how many hatchery fish are allowed to spawn naturally. When a party, such as the tribes, choose a biological strategy to achieve a non-biological outcome (fishing harvest opportunity), it seems that there is a higher likelihood of being wrong.

I can understand why WDFW wouldn’t have a position on something like this, since there is a lot of scientific confusion, and different stocks perform differently. I don’t have the facts about this example, but let’s consider what I’ve heard about the Carson stock hatchery spring chinook this season. Apparently they are whacking them up on the Methow, where they don’t want them to interbreed with endangered native Methow springers. That might make sense if there are native Methow springers that can be used for the recovery program there. (According to a WDFW source, the Carson stock is a mongrel spring chinook stock that was created by randomly grabbing springers out of the Bonneville Dam fish ladder and taking them to Carson hatchery for fish culture.) Now, over on the Wenatchee, they are proposing to use the same Carson hatchery fish for a spring chinook recovery plan. The difference seems to be that there are no native springers left to use for recovery there. I can certainly see how folks over there could take the biological uncertainty, mix in a few half-truths, add east side politics, and end up with the intelectual [Bleeeeep!] fest they’re having over there this spring. I don’t know what the right course of action is, as if anyone does, but I would defer to the recommendations of the fishery biologists that are least likely to be under the pressure of political or special-interest hammers.

It isn’t right that WDFW would treat the public like simpletons who can’t handle controversial information, but I think I can understand why they might. There are a lot of simpletons out here in the public, and very influencial simpletons at that, who can make WDFW’s life very difficult. Naturally, I’m referring to our cretin legislators who never let their lack of intelligence get in the way of pursuing solutions sought by their handlers, managers, owners, etc. Oh, the current director of WDFW came from ADF&G, so stay tuned.