Pretty interesting. Thought I'd pass this along to see what you all thought about it....

Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Don't be fooled by the price tag on that Styrofoam package of salmon. Economists have figured out the cost of Columbia Basin returning from the sea, and it is higher. Much higher.

The cost per fish:

$64.35 for a fall chinook from the Spring Creek National Hatchery on the Washington side of the Columbia River.

$179.39 for a steelhead from the Irrigon hatchery on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.

$4,646.17 for a chinook from the Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery in Idaho.

$7,437.50 for a protected sockeye salmon from the Eagle Hatchery in Idaho.
The numbers represent how much it cost to build, staff, manage and monitor hatcheries that hatch fish, feed them and deliver them to the river system. The young salmon, called smolts, head for the ocean and, if everything works, return as mighty adults in two, three or four years.

Most fish don't make it, hence the hefty tab for survivors.

The value of a legally caught fish is even higher.

The hatchery system comprises more than 100 hatcheries throughout the Columbia Basin. It keeps fish in rivers for recreational and commercial harvest and for the sustenance of dwindling species.

Some exist to create fish for harvest; others exist to replenish specific rivers that have declining stocks of wild salmon; yet others exist to compensate for spawning grounds cut off by dams.

There are no measures by which to gauge hatchery success or failure. Columbia Basin salmon, overall, are not recovering on their own, despite improved runs in the past two years.

Now the Northwest Power Planning Council is on the case.

The council, composed of two representatives each from Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Montana, has started a yearlong review of hatchery policies and practices.

The first step was having independent economists examine hatchery costs by averaging returns over several years.

The study is not yet complete. But their preliminary calculations, among them the price per returning fish at six hatcheries in the Columbia Basin, are startling.

"We have a whole bunch of hatcheries in the Columbia Basin with a wide spectrum of objectives," said Hans Radtke, a member of the economics board. "Hatcheries need to be categorized by measurable objectives. Until we do that, we can't compare one hatchery to another one and find ways to improve the system."

Daniel Huppert, a scientist colleague working on the review, puts it another way: "You have all these different hatchery programs started at different times and places for different reasons and different funding. There's nobody responsible for reviewing them as a unit."

Does that mean $300 or $7,400 is too much -- or too little -- for an individual fish?

The Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery is designed to produce salmon that will breed naturally in the Clearwater River, where salmon are having trouble, and seven of its tributaries.

If that effort to reintroduce fish to the wild works, Radtke says, expensive salmon may be worth the price.

This hatchery may be a cheaper alternative than some other measures, such as taking out dams or restoring habitat, he says.

Likewise, Idaho Fish and Game's sockeye salmon hatchery in Eagle, Idaho, is designed to save Redfish Lake sockeye salmon from extinction.

Just 26 adult hatchery-born sockeye returned last year, and the average in the past three years was 96 fish.

Operating the hatchery and monitoring the results costs $714,000 a year, making each one of those 96 survivors worth $7,437.50 a price that Paul Kline, hatchery manager, thinks may be worth paying.

"How do you assign a price to saving this last remnant of a population?" Kline said.

Until hatcheries are managed as a unified system, it's impossible to make such a judgment definitively.

Some biologists worry that hatchery fish could weaken wild stocks by taking their food or habitat and by interbreeding with them.

Anglers are allowed to keep hatchery-born salmon, identifying them by their missing adipose fins. Most wild-born salmon and non-clipped hatchery salmon, such as the ones from Idaho's Eagle Hatchery, are off-limits to anglers.

Jim Lichatowich, a fisheries biologist, says hatcheries have never solved the problem of declining salmon runs.

"We made a bargain 126 years ago and traded habitat and rational harvest for hatcheries," said Lichatowich, whose 1999 book "Salmon Without Rivers" argues that hatcheries have failed to stop the decline of Pacific salmon in the Northwest.

Hatcheries exploded throughout the Columbia Basin after the region's first one was built on the Clackamas River in 1877.

Now they're operated or funded by each of the Northwest states, by tribes, by utility companies and by federal agencies.

Most funding comes from federal tax revenues or from the Bonneville Power Administration. But no agency is in charge of calculating how much is spent to run hatcheries. A tally by The Oregonian found federal and ratepayer funding last year exceeded $80 million.

The evaluation Lichatowich longs for, however, has begun.

It will be guided by the power council study and a separate assessment titled the Hatchery and Genetic Management Plan, to be carried out by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages Northwest salmon recovery.

When it's done, every hatchery in the Northwest will have been examined, with its goals identified and its ability to meet its goals gauged.

Wouldn't a cost benefit analysis be more meaningful if they had chosen to include the "benefit" side of the equation?

What is the economic and cultural benefit derived from the cost of producing these fish?

Why did the Oregonian not include this side of the story?????

Does balanced analysis really sell less papers???

That is a very intersting article. Those sockeye are sure expensive. Still I am glad they keep my tax dollars going tword saving those delicate fish.

...if that's what the ones with the clipped fins cost, what would the ones without the adipose run?

What are the costs to NOT have fish available to catch I've spent about $300 this year on springer tackle (in addition to what I have already!) and haven't caught one yet. However, I wouldn't buy it if I didn't think I had a good CHANCE of catching one.

Lottery machines are expensive too but they bring in money, so they keep putting them everywhere they can (to tax people who are bad at math )to generate a predictable income stream.

Good or bad, hatchery fish generate a predictable income stream to the economy. License sales are just the tip of the iceberg.

By publishing the estimated costs, at least we have an idea what it takes to produce hatchery fish. I never knew and I'm glad I do. It's a good starting point.

Rivers are pretty and people like to look at them. However, people won't pay to go fishing in a river that's empty.

Whose representatives? (How about the governor's)

It was pointed out that the study is not yet finished and it will be interesting to see what the costs are for other hatcheries. We Oreo kind are hung up on the closure of the Trask, Salmon and Cedar Creek hatcheries. These are in Tillamook County and most of the tourism money is really fish related. As one city of T offical pointed out, tourist don't come there to see the cows get milked or smell that stuff that they pump onto the pastures to make the grass grow. There isn't anyway out of the treaties made years ago. Those costs could go on as long as a salmon is in the Columia system. What the real costs are and what the real benefits might be, seems to be something that everyone would like to know. Who will ever say? Do you think a group hired to be consultants to power interests will ever give the fish a fair representation? Did you notice that only 26 fish were back for the Eagle facility? That drove the price per fish up nearly 400% over last year and the two prior years. What if no commercial gillnets were in, might it be only one tenth that or one hundredth that cost per fish?
I don't know and I doubt anyone else does. I think
there is a lot of merit to both the pro and con
arguments of hatcheries. I do wish we would put a dollar sign on what fish mean to various economies. It might mean that we need them here or there, and would be better off if closed in other places. The article speaks of this as an $80 million dollar issue for the northwest. Thats a lot of money. Not so much however when you remember that Oregon alone brings in several times that amount just from the sale of Christmas Trees each year. My hope is we can keep it all in perspective and make some good decisions. If government had behaved in a more honest and responsible manner in the past I'd say let them make the decision that needs to be made. I do not believe that this the proper approch at this point in time. That means to me that we should talk about this. Try to be well informed and give the guy who dosn't take your side his full share of time to say what he thinks. In the meantime catch the hell out of them even if you put them all back!

To most of us on this board those fish are......as they say.....PRICELESS!

Ng

Hey, if you think those hatchery fish are expensive. Do the calculations for a bushel of Columbia basin wheat!

Read yesterday's Oregonian about the $180-BILLION farm subsidy bill.

Basically, the choice was made to sacrifice the Columbia river to farming interests so they could have free water, cheap power, and barging to move large quantities of low-value goods.

The Columbia hatcheries were supposed to 'mitigate' the damage done.

The danger is, at some point there may not be the willingness to accept the escalating costs of mitigation, nor change/improve the river enough to make it favorable again for salmon.

"Hey, if you think those hatchery fish are expensive. Do the calculations for a bushel of Columbia basin wheat!"

Most excellent Gary!