Good discussion regarding wild steelhead recovery from various stakeholders in Hood Canal, please read on. http://www.lltk.org/roundtable/summer-2010

Good read. I see that every view that most of us have here are covered by one or more of those involved and they are as varied as ours are. Thanks DH. I'm looking forward to Salmo g's take on the discussion and what he can add, as I suspect he's able to view it all more objectively than us lay people and is familiar with some of the current efforts.

Nice read. Just walked the upper 20 miles of the Dose last weekend. Beautiful up there and just as nice below the falls in the spawning grounds. You would think if any rivers have a shot at recovery and are in better shape it is those. Can only hope as I fished these rivers daily as a child and would love for my kids to do the same.

I wish I weren't so cynical, but softball answers like those in the roundtable discussion seem to inspire that cynicism.

What are the challenges and opportunities? The challenge is to the body politic to preserve the quality habitat that remains and to stop the continuation of habitat degradation that is our society's trademark and legacy. Our track record says that we won't do it. The opportunity is that HC is practically a "clean slate," as most of the endemic wild salmonid populations have been extirpated, or nearly so.

What will it take for current recovery efforts to work? It will take long term commitment and financial resources and a strong attitude of optimism in the face of never-ending actions that are inconsistent with, and work contrary to, recovery. It probably wouldn't help to harbor the thought in the back of one's mind that HC recovery isn't possible in the near term; i.e., 50 years.

How can we ensure that HC recovery is supported and effective? Taking this question at face value is tough. Supported and effective might be mutually exclusive. Effective might require imposing unacceptable and expensive development and habitat restrictions, even to the point of making them partially retroactive. Frankly I don't see much public support for that at all.

For recovery to last? That's almost the easy part, since getting to recovery in HC is likely to be unacceptably painful and expensive. Should we somehow get there, it would mean conditions are so inhospitable to human habitation and development, it just might stay that way in order to protect the huge investment made in recovery. Or, human nature might prevail, and society would just bugger it up again as part of the relentless swatch of ever-expanding human populations scarfs up every available unit of land and water to meet those expanding human needs.

Sorry, but I'm not trying to write a glossy sales brochure that would require ignoring the huge "elephant in the room." An honest response requires adding up all the environmental data, economic data, and human demographic data, and some things I'm probably leaving out at the moment, to assess the needs and prospects for recovery. Funny thing is, while reading the roundtable discussion I noticed that no one said, "well first off we have to stop doing the things that wiped out the endemic populations in the first place." Kinda' telling, isn't it?

Sg

I have to agree with Salmo g. The whole concept of recovery is flawed, that some how we can return fish populations to the levels that they were at some point in the past. Habitat is always evolving, humans have influenced that evolution but that doesn't mean that they can control it for some desired end. In the case of salmon their habitat includes the ocean where they spend 50% to 80% of their life. No matter what restoration efforts happen in Hood Canal the ocean habitat will not be changed. From the viewpoint of a chinook or chum Hood Canal may not be such a bad place. The fish doesn't know if it was born in a hatchery or in a pristine stream and it doesn't know that it is going to die when it returns. For salmon I suspect Hood Canal is best suited to be a state run ocean ranching operation as it is now. When humans are gone the salmon will return to utilize whatever is left that will support life.

This is depressing. Some of the better habitat in the state and we can't do anything more than make it a fish factory. What's worse, it's a CHUM factory.

Painfully blunt.

Sort of begs the question of how much pain we are willing to incur specifically for wild steelhead recovery in those waters (and/or others) when there is little return on investment because of factors outside our control.

If there are natural factors at work at sea that severely limit returns maintaining a good spawning opportunity would seem a worthwhile goal but how much do we want to expend to improve that riverine capacity and have it unutilized.

I would add that I am not against habitat restoration work as long as we are willing to pay the cost and do the work. Ocean conditions change and fish runs may improve. I think it is important to recognize though, that there is no basis for the expectation that local habitat work will improve local fish runs. What is does do is improve the local environment, a sort of real estate development that enhances living in the area. From that viewpoint maybe more of the cost should be paid by the local property owners that benefit.

WN1A - You are rapidly running into the quagmire of expenditures for habitat improvements and who should pay for the short term expenditures as well as potentially increased taxes related to improved value. Lots of luck sorting out that fuzz ball.

Not that I disagree.....but, well, good luck!

I was on the verge of posting something as cynical as Salmo G. earlier, but I deferred to... I guess I'll jump in now.

Although I think any earnest discussion about wild steelhead recovery is "good," discussions about the Canal streams always frustrate me. For example, aside from the issues already raised, when I look at the Duck and Dose, I see habitat likely to select for a relatively large number of stream-maturing fish - fish which, Re: the comment of Neil Werner, never received an ounce of consideration on paper, and probably never will.

If someday in my lifetime a handful of redd-mined ocean-maturing hatchery fish begin returning to these streams I will have to read about recovery "success." In fact, I think success will have to wait until resident rainbows like the one I watched resting beneath a ledge at my feet last weekend are again able to benefit from anadromy. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime (or on purpose), but I'm hopeful it will happen sometime.

As for the salmon, I'd say they'd better plan on re-evolving, or calling in strays from waters north.

-IS

I don't see a chance in hell for HC or the south sound with of all the fishing pressure the fish have to endure on their migration.

You can see how serious WDFW is about recovery of the ESA listings by virtue of the agreement for commercial fishers to pay for the operation of the McKernan hatchery without requiring selective fishing methods. We're still going to pretend "timing" of the fisheries will protect other species of concern.

Yeah, right.