You have certainly focused on the practical consideration - thank you!

Despite all of the sniping it has remained apparent to me that the most effective way to put more Chinook in front of SRKW in the shortest time frame is to reduce the pinniped population.

While waiting for the start of yesterday's session of the WDFW Commission meeting turns out I was sitting next to a person who was there to testify against culling of pinnipeds. She was adamant that such action would not solve the problem and stated that there numerous instances of cullings that did not achieve the underlying goal. When I asked her what she recommended she said removal of the Snake River dams. Well, that simply won't feed the bull dog (or in this case SRKW) in time. If the SRKW are truly in the dire distress as purported then timeliness is a critical factor.

Now, is Orca recovery actually a ploy to achieve salmon recovery? I don't believe it is that overt but efforts to achieve Orca recovery can certainly have positive impacts both in the short term and long term and the further out on the time line the more blurred the goal and results (habitat restoration). But in the short term if reducing pinniped numbers and their predation impacts results in more wild origin smolts surviving to adulthood and returning to spawn that is a good thing for the fish and prospectively for our recreational fisheries. Think of the Stilly returns and how that impacted the initial salmon management plan (edit) which is now under re-write.