I don't think this hatchery situation should be looked at in a strictly economic veiw. These hatcherys were supposed to mitigate known environmental degredation. It's like we have done the environmental damage and replaced the natural spawning runs with hatchery production (or at least tried to). So the damage was done and years latter we find the hatcheries aren't doing what was expected, the cost per fish doesn't make economic sense so just shut them down and forget about the salmon. If we make real progress in restoring some natural spawning runs and it is determined that hatcherys have no use in salmon recovery then we can take a hard look at production cost. I hope we don't decide that these fish cost too much and let them go the way of the passenger pigeon.