OncyT,

Sorry to carry this thread drift, but I think it is germane to the issue. You may as well have said, "The Emperor is not wearing any clothes!" Some of us might even say that the Puget Sound Chinook Recovery Plan is a sham. The Plan gives much lip service to recovery but preserves Chinook fishing at nearly all costs. It's not just the Puyallup, but if you notice that all four of the south sound rivers with major hatchery Chinook programs, all using Green River origin hatchery Chinook (the Green, Puyallup, NIsqually, and Skokomish) include harvest rates that conform more to preserving the harvest of hatchery Chinook than to the recovery of wild Chinook populations in those watersheds. I've been disappointed with the PS Chinook recovery plan since its approval because it's more about "harvesting our way to recovery" than it is with actually recovering Chinook in PS. Of course the flip side might be addressing the reality that wild Chinook recovery in south sound watershed like the Puyallup isn't feasible with the extant level of human development.

It really does illustrate how ludicrous it is when the PS salmon management agreement hinges on an 8% discrepancy of 300+ wild Chinook of Green River hatchery origin descent as though it really matters in terms of the ecosystem.Sg