Cheapskate Piper: PLEASE see if you can get in a biblical debate with CFM. I'm sure that could exceed the size of the recently close WSR tthread.

If wild fish are so much better how come they are endangered? simple question but true.

Lol Dave,
Just you imagine the souls he could save if he got as fired up about the bible as he does about the cowlitz...

Look out Billy Grahm!

To answer your question... Its the same reason for every other animal that is endangered or extinct...

Mankind is the sole reason... Habitat destruction and overharvest...

Not to start another debate but dont the Hatchery fish come from wild stocks and some point in time?

yes they did come from wild stocks at one time...

inbreeding and transfering stocks from one drainage to another got us where we are today...

Great post CFM, very informative and very interesting, i thought about majoring in anthropolgy, but after the second quarter it was just too much reading and work so i went into the computer field.

There's all the science that anyone could ever want to read showing the short comings of hatchery fish, the problems they cause, and where and why they have caused declines in wild fish.

I will post the Kathryn Kostow report that I got permission from Kathryn to use showing useing DNA on Clackamas steelhead where the adults of hatchery and wild winters and hatchery summers were identified along with naturally produced out migrating smolts through DNA testing.
You will see where no serious cross breeding has taken place throughout the years as again identified through DNA and where hatchery summer steelhead were surprisingly more sucessfull at spawning in the wild than had previously thought but didn't survive the "round trip".
Yes as science has shown us many times before, naturally produced hatchery fish are on a one way trip for the most part.

And probably most important of all in the study you will see how the hatchery summer steelhead caused a decline in the wild and native winter steelhead on the Clackamas River.

Perhaps the best, most interesting hatchery report I have ever read.

Should answer some questions and open some eyes.

Dano

Todd- Thanks for the info. It is interesting to see that HxH fish become smolts but not adults makes a person wonder why. But I still don't see this study adressing the issue of HxW off spring breading with WxW or HxW adults and the subsequent survival rate of these fish. If survivial rate increases as the number of Wild genes are introduced over the generations then I see hope for the use of hatcheries in re-building wild stocks. If not then I will have no choice but to support the elimnation of hatcheirs as quickly as possible.

offspring from the wild hatchery cross only in extremely rare cases survive to adulthood and therefore whether they are wild or hatchery is completely irrelevant..

however what has happened in your senario is that a wild female full of eggs has been removed from the reproducing population just as if it had been killed by a seal , tribal net or sport fisher.. a wild female spawning with a hatchery male is exactly like a wild female that never spawned.. it's an extremely sad occurance and all the more reason to never release the hatchery steelhead you catch...

Well, believe me, if I ever catch a hatchery Steelhead, it is coming home with me!

Anyhow, it was interesting to read all the posts as I have heard so much about these wonderful "native" fish that I started to think about if they actually knew the difference (the fish). They have the amazing ability to find their own birth places and I wondered if they actually could sence another native or would just go to town with any fish. We joked about the mating ritual and of settling for a hatchery mate. Maybe their are fish cliques too! Thank you for all the research and my question was also asked be FDB. Aren't they all originaly native? I could see how the hatchery fish are babied and may not be as strong as the fish that survive in the wild, but aren't they still natives? Oh well, I will read on.