Keta,

The Yellowstone River in YNP has been CNR since 1973. Do you think the National Park Service is managing Yellowstone cutthroat trout for MSY? We're talking about river ecosystems that are producing fish at their natural carrying capacities, albeit the Yellowstone is near pristine and the Skagit, not so much. If you don't allow CNR (CNR, no less, we're not talking about full tilt boogie wild fish bonking here) when the population is at least 150% of it MSY escapement, when, if ever, do you? 200%? 300%? Based on what? That it's a bigger number and unrelated to the basin's carrying capacity?

Either adopt reasonable and rational management objectives and standards or lock it up and make it a museum/zoo.

The bite that the tribes want is for the steelhead ESA listing to not limit their salmon fishing, which it does to some extent presently. Did you miss the part about limiting total impacts to 16% of the larger runsizes? That's a slippery slope that more steelhead should be managed for. The plunkers and bonkers can whine all they want, but the train they are looking for left the station in the last century, and it isn't making a return run. Yeah, shoulda' been born in earlier times.

Sg