Blake is intentionally trying to minimize the significance of WDFW's historic hammering of wild WB chinook.... burying the harvest abuses in WB within the greater aggregate of the much larger ESU. Essentially he is saying WB does NOT matter in the greater context of the ESU... other streams in the ESU should be the driver.

This idea that a smaller population within a larger aggregate is inconsequential is the very mindset that has destroyed historic salmon population EVERYWHERE.

Once you've decided a component of the population is expendable, then it's just a matter of time before the entire population becomes expendable.

Viable salmon populations can only be as strong as their component sub-populations. As go the parts, eventually so goes the whole. It's just a matter of time.
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"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!