well, my understanding of the park service's offer to pay for clipping of salmon river hatchery steelhead was that it was only for one year... in hope that another funding source could be found.

as far as i know, there has been no offer of funding to clip the salmon from that hatchery, which would definetely improve the sportfisheries due to the marked fish requirement and the low number of hatchery fish clipped (wire-code program only).

personally, i sure would like to see all the tribal hatcheries jump on board with the fin-clipping program. imo, this could open up the ability for their members to selectively fish when killing the by-catch would close their fishery (of course, they couldn't use gill-nets, but if we could put a man on the moon 30 years ago, we can figure out how to fish without killing by-catch). marking is the future.

of course, i think the best way to get tribal hatcheries to comply with marking is to contact your congressman and senator and ask them if they could possibly include funding to the tribal hatcheries to allow them to mark fish... because potter is correct that it takes money to mark fish, and even though marking jobs are tedious and don't pay extremely well, i'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to find people who would want the work, especially if it would help the fisheries.

cb