Boater,

I will sincerely believe you when you say you want wild fish recovered. I don't know that I agree that everybody does. The salmon is a big thorn in a lot of peoples' sides, people who are no freinds to anglers. I believe some of them would be glad to see wild fish out of their hair. I think a lot of others want to do right by wild fish up to some point where it hurts too much. Frankly, I beleive many anglers fall in that category.

The answers to every one of your fair questions is positive. There are many things that WDFW could change about the way it operates hatcheries short of shutting them (or at least all of them) down. Some of the changes may not be enough to eliminate the harmful impacts on chinook, but they would certainly reduce them, possibly enough that they could at least be in compliance with the ESA. So far, WDFW shows no inclination to make those changes. They include reducing the size of fish at release, chanoing the timing of releases, reducing the total number of releases and/or possibly closing certain programs, and most importantly actually carrying out monitoring that will tell managers whether these measures are reducing impacts and by how much. Business as usual will not get the job done.

Grandpa,

I have to take exception. You're using an old and not very nice debating tactic. You are attacking my credibility by accusing me of indefensible behaviour without having any idea if I'm guilty of any of them. As it happens, I've never pitched a tent in the middle of the road, or was ever even close to involved in spiking a tree or any other act that ever put one single person in the slightest physical jeopardy (and I do take personal insult at that ugly implication). I've never tried to shut anyone's water "off." I believe you're for banning nets; do you think that might cause some pain? (Not to you.)

I have tried to be as clear and as honest as I could be. I can honestly tell you that I am at a complete loss regarding my "true agenda." Maybe you can spell out what exactly you think it is, and I can respond.

And actually, well over 70% of the people polled in the Northwest favor recovery of wild fish, and that majority holds up when people are told what it could cost. It may just be the majority of fishers (recreational, commercial, and tribal) who favor the hatchery fish. Oh, yeah, and the property rights folks. (But by the way, being in that 70% doesn't make me think that your 30% should have to sit down and shut up now.)

Herm,

I respect your position. It's clear you at least read what I wrote. You might not want to hear it, but I can tell you that we are at eachothers' elbows on some of the fights you mentioned.

Ramon Vanden Brulle,
Washington Trout

Ramon

My analogies of radical protests were not specific to you personally..sorry if you thought so. Another question I have is what would you and WT do if your lawsuits did not achieve your ends? Would you consider civil disobedience? Would you consider massive fish kills at the hatchery? Would you consider harassing the hatchery workers? Follow them home? Would you consider fire bombing a hatchery or two? Dumping red paint on anyone you see fishing?

When you say 70% of the people are for saving wild salmon you know as well as I do that the way a poll is structured will affect the results. Do you walk to school or carry your lunch? WOW 50% of the population walks to school. I think the average citizen of Washington is going to be for saving wild fish and eagles and spotted owls etc...That is a simplistic thing to ask. Solving the HOW part of saving those wild fish takes a lot more knowledge and information.

One step at a time..first one issue then another (lawsuits) until your final agenda is realized which I truly believe is some pollyanna vision of pristine streams full of wild trout like when Adam and Eve were around. Is there room for compromise in your vision? I'm still not sure.

You're keeping me up late because I can't let this go. In one sentence you apologize, and then in the very next one you start doing it all over again.

Every one of the questions you ask in your first paragraph is inflamatory, unfair, an unfounded in any fact or experience regarding WT. I can answer without hesitation for every staff and board member at WT that the answer to every one of your transparent and dispicable accusations is absolutely no.

You seem like a reasonably competent thinker. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I will not answer any more of your posts. As a representative of Washington Trout, I actually have a responsibility not to debate under these terms. You obviously disagree with WT's position. Maybe you even disagree with our interpretation of the facts. You have never said.

I will say that my interpretion and position is based on a deep familiarity with the controversies involved, and careful evaluation of the known facts, and the most credible arguments on both sides.

What's yours based on, whether you get to keep fishing, grandpa?

If you want to save wild fish there is only one way to do it, Get rid of the fricking nets anything else is in vain and a waste of time period! Open your damn eyes! look what it did ifor Florida and California. Closing the hatcheries is going to toast the native fish faster than continuing on the path we are on now. The poachers are not going to stop poaching, the netters are not going to stop netting, and 100% percent of the take is going to be wild fish DUH! Pull your head out of your arse! Everybody will be bass fishing in ten years because salmon and steelhead will be extinct or illegal to fish for at all, for that matter you wont be able to fish for anything anywhere salmon are present for fear of incidental take. They have already started that crap on the Columbia R. Its closed to all foodfish when its closed to salmon. Its putting a real damper on my shad fishing

Ramon...don't reply if that is how frustrated you are with facing the fact that WT is moving in an extreme direction. My examples are exteme in the sense that they pose a rhetorical question as to what WT may become. You take this way too personally.

If not to fish then why are you so panicked to save wild fish? To look at them? I think all of these efforts to improve fish runs are designed to improve fishing opportunities. Apparently you don't.

Grandpa, salmon are very important ecologically. Their only purpose is not just for people to catch. Just thought I would point that out.

In answer to the original question, I would, do and continue to support WT. I don't always agree with their specific tactics, but in general, I support maintenance of wild fish, and they are effective in that goal.

If you can think past the goal of how many hatchery brats you want to catch next year, and want to think about whether your kids will be able to fish for salmon and steelhead fish, I'd encourage you to support them as well. Hatcheries are a short term solution, which becomes unstable when budget shortfalls happen, as they are happening now. If you depend on hatcheries for your fishing, when the money goes away, the fishing stops. Oregon is going to suck in three years.

That is why wild fish matter.

Hello mcfly, you just said it yourself!!!!!!
"when the money goes away the fishing stops" What the hell do you think the lawsuits doing? whether the hatcheries run out of money our are closed due to lawsuits the result is the same. No fishing! DUH!

To start let me be clear that I believe that "watch dog" groups are important in resource managment. They keep the managers on their toes and foster debate. Through debates postions are clarified, information and viewpoints exchanged and by- standers educated. All very good things; in addition I throughly enjoy a good discussion/debate.

Secondly I have had the opportunity to meet may of those working for Washington Trout and have found them to a very talented group with enviable didication. Washington Trout is fortunate to have such a staff and should be congratulated for bring such a group together.
They have been able to do some very good work in developing new infomation.


However I find Washington Trout's methods in the public arena very distributing. When attempting to be a catalyst for change their actions and retoric seem to indicate that their philosophy is that the "ends justify the means".

An example of what I mean. In WT's recent news release regarding their lawsuit against WDFW's steelhead and coho hatchery program it states: "The problem can be significant. A California study reported that 532,000 hatchery salmon consumed 7.5 million wild chinook fingerlings in the Feather River. Each hatchery juvenile ate an average of 14 wild salmon." According to Sam Wright's declaration on WT's web site that information is from Sholes and Hallock, 1979. A review of that artilce (found in Calif. Fish and Game 65 (4): 239-255, 1979) I found that the salmon doing the predating was chinook yearlings. While the above quote is techincally correct I feel it is deliberately mis-leading in defining the potential problem from steelhead and coho yearlings. As we all know each of the salmonid speices have significantly different behaviors and what is true of one may or may not be so for others. In addition I found that the hatchery yearling chinook were released in January and Febraury right on top of what were likely newly emergent fry. The very life stage at which they would be most vulunerable to predation. Whereas in the Puget Sound area the coho and steelhead hatchery smolts are released later in the spring when the chinook fry are large, more mobile, and likely elusive as they have survived for several months in a hostile environment loaded with predators (scuplins, whitefish, cutthroat, bull trout, wild coho yearlings, wild chinook yearlings, wild steelhead parr and smolts, and resident rainbows). I am all for attempting to error on the side of the wild resource however when doing so it might be more honest to state that your case is doing so.

In my various dicsussions (debates?) with Ramon he has chided my a number of times for using information that was not peer reviewed (I often note my observations from field work whether published or not). He noted his information is the "best science" avaialable from peer reviewed literature. The Sholes and Hallock paper "An evaluation fo rearing fall-run chinook salmon, Onchorhynchus tshawawytscha, to yearlings at the Feather River hatchery, with a comparison of returns form hatchery and downstream release" was not a study to look at predation but rather a comparison in release stratgies. The WT news release quote from above is found in the discussion section of the paper. The information was a personall communication from 2 Cal fish bios; not a peer reviewed study. Apparently Ramon and WT have different standards for themselves than for others.

In the same news release it is stated that coho can take chinook fry up to 46% of their body length. That infomation comes from Pearsons and Fritts, 1999. The 46% came from their experiment #1 where an individual coho was place in a partitioned hatchery incubation trough with 6 chinook of 3 sizes; there were 8 cells or replicas. The hold area for the each test was 16.1 inches by 16.1 inches by 12.6 inches deep. The fish were held in the area for up 29 days without being feed. While the study certainly helped clarify the potential maximum forage size of coho I not sure how often they would b able to catch a healthy unconfined fry of that size. How often willthey find a fish in an area the size of a bread box and have 4 weeks to catch them? The authors did note that the larger fish were eaten after the smaller fish had been taken. Again I find the implication in the news release that hatchery coho busy eating fry 46% of their length misleading.

WT as stated that residual hatchery steelhead ate juvenile salmonids up to 44% of their length. This information is in the discussion section of the Pearsons and Fritts paper and is from unpublished Oregon Department Fish and Wildlife data. Peer reviewed?

It is my opinion that such bias selection of data is counter productive to salmon recovery. It not only taints much of the excellent work the WT's staff has done it also undermines all those working in the recovery arena. It is further counter productive in that these various law suits focus the discussion on salmon recovery on hatchery and harvest issues allowing those habitat abusers a scape goat to divert attention from their actions. While fully support and have work hard to correct hatchery and harvest problems we can not let those issues use our precious resources (very limited) but rather we need to direct those resources to the larger issues - the habitat/hydro. In those rivers that I'm most familar with the complete elimination of all fishing and hatcheries would not result in noticeable long term improvement in the status of the chinook populations. With current and ongoing degradation of key habitats the chinook populations are doomed.

Unfortunately WT's news release on the hatchery steelhead and coho law suit is not the exception but the norm. While it may be tempting to excuse the mis-leading information as a honest mistake I'm not sure that is the case. Especially after Ramon's statement earlier in this thread - that is his position is based on "careful evaluation of the known facts".

my $0.02

Tight lines
Smalma

I'm not saying that hatcheries are the problem, rather, I think there are an ineffective solution. The statistics clearly indicate that hatchery management, as currently implemented in the state of washington, returns fewer fish, by at least an an order of magnitude (you do understand what that phrase means, don't you?) than wild fish smolt populations of the same size.

Therefore, tribal and commerical pressures are not the point. They are merely a pressure point on an ineffective solution, which can lead to steelhead returns such as we saw this past season.

I agree with WT other organizations to a point, that hatchery stocks apply pressure to wild stocks, and are therefore deleterious to wild stocks, but my belief is that the problem is different. We are clinging to a belief that hatchery production can keep us fishing,when the data indicates that hatchery returns are getting worse, for a given plant of fish. We are on a path to a train wreck. And no one is paying attention.

I generally support Washington Trout. I certainly believe that Washington Trout has the wild fish's best interest in mind.

For the most part, this has been an interesting and informative thread and some good ideas/information have been shared.

One interesting point noted by many here is that there are SO many groups and activities negatively affecting wild salmon/steelhead. Dams, siltation, netting (whatever the skin color), sport fishing, and land/river use. Unfortunately, the WDFW belongs on this list. While I am not for "banning all hatcheries", I do believe that some hatcheries do more harm than good. For example, there are hatcheries the block upstream migration of fish. This is no different that a dam. If we can't agree that dams hurt fish, then the pro-fish/pro-fishing movement will get nowhere.

I think that one point that often gets lost is that Washington Trout would not sue if the WDFW was following the law. In many cases, they are not. If WT just frivolously sued to harass, they would not be winning!

Having said all this, I believe that Washington Trout has made a disastrous mistake with the scope of this lawsuit. I think that they have shot themselves in the foot and will lose supporters. I am not saying that the idea of going after some hatcheries now is a bad idea, but going after all of them (essentially)without the broad support of fishermen is a mistake. I do believe that they could have waited several years, and continued to gather public support as their credibility grew and as their progress in other areas became apparent.

Even with my reservations regarding the current law suit, I still support Washington Trout. They HAVE opened up miles of spawning habitat. They HAVE protected many streams that were improperly classified (talk about a "hidden agenda", who did the original classifications?). They HAVE identified, and thereby protected, genetically distinct resident trout in places that would have been destroyed. For these reasons, I support Washington Trout.

Smalma

Thanks for your well thought out assessment of some of the facts. It is obvious that just because someone says something in print doesn't make it so....

And AuntyM...once again you make excellent points and state your case beautifully.

The rest of you that I disagree with are making your points known in a positive way so thanks for them,too. The majority will decide.

Without the lawsuits and deceptive propaganda coming from WT I can see myself supporting much of what they try to do. Most of us here acknowledge that there is much to do to improve habitat, in particular, and obviously harvest and , of course, hatcheries. The three "h's" are the building blocks of salmon and steelhead recovery on the West Coast. It is ok for a group to zero in on one of the three and try to make a real difference there. What is not ok, in my opinion, is to use fund raising to fuel a war chest for the purpose of suing one part of the problem, WDFW. Everyone should realize that WT is going to , once again, settle the latest lawsuit out of court and get all of their costs paid for by YOU the taxpayer. I REALLLLLY object to that. How much money they receive in this latest outrageous suit will be plastered all over the internet.

What is the end game here? Is it to end fishing as we know it? What is WT's goal in the end? When all the hatcheries are closed and there are only wild fish do they want to see how long it will take for there to be no fish so they can go down in history as saying I told you so? I just cannot see the goal. Just to continually point to the "fish" is too simplistic.

Even though this has brought out predictable responses and some excessively emotive rhetoric on my part I think it has served to get the majority's opinion out on the table and that is that WT is going down the wrong road and has lost alot of potential support for what they do that is good.

Wake up Ramon..you guys stepped in it this time.

Folks -
Please note that nowhere my previous post did I discuss the merits of the WT's law suit(s).
My issues are with how information is or is not presented to the public.

It is my opinion based after many years of working with public, indsutrial and governmental groups for the protection of the wild salmonid resources of the State of Washington that such suits nearly irrelevant to the recovery of those resources we all care about. At best they can serve as a catalyst for action. State and Federal policies and laws are continously at risk from special interest groups - it is the American way! The continuation of, the development of, and enforcement of policies and laws that most of us would consider favorable to fish is going require the support and vigilance of a broad spectrum of vocal users -THAT CAN BE US! It will not be a narrowly focus organization though they should be natural allies.

Again it is my opinion that success of such a coalition is likely to be dependent on two factors: 1) Information - knowledge is power, especially in swaying that vast majority of fence sitters and 2) the ability to focus on the key larger issues. My earlier post attempted to address the first, BSing the public will return to bite us in the rear. Some of the discussion of this thread illustrates the need of the second.

Continually this business of banning gill nets keeps coming up. Now I'm not of fan of gill nets and am concern about by-catch and the potential of selective pressures that gill nets can put on a population. However I find that they are very minor player in the depressed status of salmonid populations that we care about. Is the status of upper Columbia/Snake chinook and steelhead largely the result of gill netting or water withdrawal. power generation, and habitat degradation? Is the status of Oregon Coastal coho the result of gil netting or habitat degradation, hatchery/wild inteactions, and general over-harvest? Is the status of Puget Sound chinook the result of gill netting or the loss of estuaries, stream channel simplication, other freshwater impacts, over-harvest, and hatchery/wild interactions? Is the status of bull trout throughout the west the result of gill nets or habitat fragmentation, non-native species interactions and over fishing?

I submit that the answer in each is the latter not gill netting. Obivously gill nets are part of the harvest equation but only part. The battle over gill nets in reality is by enlarge about catch allocation, if the nets didn't catch their fish someone would be stepping in to catch the fish. If you wish to fit for a larger piece of the allocation pie knock yourself out - just don't so in the name of resource protection. If you wish to work for healthy wild stocks then lets address those larger issues. I have attempted to provide some of my limited knowledge and experience to the readers of this forum for that cause - Have I been wasting my time?

Tight lines
Smalma

Ramon,

Will WT be endorsing/supporting the HSUS/PAC again, if they do what Lisa Wathne stated they would do if Locke signs SB5179..

Just why did WT support the efforts to take away a wildlife management tool and in turn cause more expendatures?

Auntym, when or if they do come up with a way to kill fewer listed fish, its not like the state will lower the percentage of listed fish the netters will be able to kill, they will kill the same amount and take more hatchery fish, this isnt a conservation effort on the part of the states, its all about harvest and removing excess hatchery fish.

In answer to the very first question - yeah, I like WT.

Anyone who aggressively advocates for allowing wild salmonids to continue their existance - preferably with robust populations is alright by me.

Pretty telling about this board too that so much venom is directed at conservationists -rather than the industries that are drawing the curtain on salmon in the northwest.

When advocating for wild fish becomes 'too radical', this board becomes irrelevant.

Conservation at any means and or cost?

Not to get off the topic, RacerDan, but I'd suggest losing our wild salmon stocks is TOO high a cost - don't you agree?

Im all for saving wild stocks, as most people are. Its the method of how to do so that is being debated. If you think sueing WDFW will help attain that goal thats your opinion. The debate swirls around the science of WT not whether one is for saving wild smolts.