Restore the Elwha without hatchery fish
WITH removal of the Elwha River dams scheduled to begin this summer, the river can demonstrate a new paradigm for sustainable salmon management based upon wild fish, rather than hatchery production.

The dam removal will open up about 90 miles of protected river for spawning fish. Given the amount and quality of the habitat, biologists predict tens of thousands of wild salmon and steelhead could eventually return to the Elwha River above the dams within our children's lifetimes. The recovery will reach ..... http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2015588897_guest13atlas.html?syndication=rss

That'll work.

Isn't conservative harvest management, at least in WA, an oymoron?

Very interesting prediction about restoring wild runs in two decades.
Wild steelhead retention in most PNW basins has been prohibited for more than 25 years, yet no threatened or ESA list stocks have been delisted.

Wild steelhead won't be restored until wild salmon are. Without the salmon, there will be no steelhead.

Fisheries scientists rate most PS fish habitat as poor, until you address that problem, recovery is just a pipe dream.

There are two good examples above here of speculations about requirements for fish recovery stated as if they were proven fact. I think we should be a little more cautious about making bold statements like that - the fish don't always behave as expected. We fish scientists are notoriously wrong in our predictions. At best those are working hypotheses. The Elwha offers the perfect place to test some of those hypotheses, but - as at Mt St Helens - we are apparently going to toss away the opportunity because of a belief by many that the fish won't recover without our intervention.

The one thing that I have not seen addressed on this recovery subject is Alaskan and Canadian interception of our fish. We have one thing going for the fish, pristine conditions so it could work if other issues could be fixed. Suspect if you want to catch some fish for yourself out of that river, hatchery is the only way. Address the issues, all of them and then get serious for once.......schools out

Might want to add Washington Coastal and Puget Sound to the list but yes your right if the Tribes would need to stop fishing for 20 years so should everyone else.

Those of us that have fished the western part of this sate for migratory fish know that hatcheries, commercial fishing, sport fishing and logging take a toll on the fish. BUT, nothing takes a bigger toll than a f#*king net set across a river. The indians say they want it be the way it used to be but they don't live it. I'm sick of hearing about their customs and rights. It's especially sickening when I see a sh!t load of fish laying on the bank rotting or a net that hasn't been pulled for days. Nets strewn all the way across when they are not supposed to do that. Or in one case 20 to 30 chrome bright steelhead laying in the middle of a dirt road to be used as bear bait. They need to get over it and stop being a major part of the problem. I would be more than willing to keep that river closed for 20 years but the indians need to stay away as well. There is no question that the Elwa would be the perfect river to bring back native stocks as the best part of it is not so easy to get to but I have no faith that the indians will play fair. Why would they start now?
I know it's a hashed over subject but it's the truth. A while back I read that they said if the sport fisherman aren't keeping natives why ca't we have them? What kind of thinking is that? They do not and will not ever get it.

If most PS habitat is poor, how come pinks and chums-who spawn in the same places as Chinook but have shallower redds more prone to scour and go to see upon emergence are doing well? The two worst estuariies are supposed to be Elliott and Commencement bays; put the pink and chum do well there.

If the FW habitat is so poor, how come the native char-bull trout/Dolly varden and anadromous cutthroat are showing strong increases in numbers? The anadromous forms will rear for a couple years in FW (like coho, steelhead, and spring Chinook) and they go out into the same bays.

That does leave the ocean as the place where habitat sucks.

We should petition the sea shepard and its crew to pester the natives when they net. Those guys are mucho intimidating.

What about wild stocks in basins with no commercial or sport harvest?
Why are they not recovering? Many basins haven't had wild steelhead harvests in over 25 years, yet they have failed to recover.
It makes absolutely no sense for one harvester group to point the finger at another harvester group and call them the problem, yet that seems to be the norm with sport anglers.

Even with no steelhead harvest there is salmon harvest. As the late Jeff Cederholm said "Salmon are Habitat".

Just saw an article about steelhead in a stream in Idaho. The stream gets a lot of water from a sewage treatment plant. The nutrients in the wastewater do, at times, exceed Clean Water Standards. That stream has the densest population of juvenile steelhead in the whole watershed. The fish populations are starving. The functional system had salmon as the prime source of nutrients for the whole watershed. Much of the base rock in many of the PNW watersheds is sterile; the anadromous fish-salmon, sturgeon, smelt, lampreys all brought nutrients back to the streams.

Until we fix the system, and that includes streamflow, access, riparian cover, plood plain, and spawning salmon we won't get anywhere.

Our rivers are far from sterile. That's another myth. I've fly fished almost every stream on the Oly Pen and others in Western Washington. They are full of caddis, mayflies, stone flies, crayfish and many more species of bugs. The upper Elwa has no migratory fish to suppliment the bug population and if you've been up there you've seen the amazing hatches and the large numbers of rainbows in the river. The upper Skokomish which is now closed and almost void of migratory fish has tremendous hatches. Remember when these rivers had thousands of smolts at the very least and maybe at one time millions they were supported by insect life in order to grow and hit the road to the ocean. I'm sure that dying fish add to the health of the insect populations but believe me there are streams that support populations of cutthroat and rainbows in Western Washington and the Oly Pen with absolutely no migratory fish to add to the health of the river. I used to believe that the rivers were too sterile to support native cutts and bows but 30 years ago when I started fly fishing it obviously led me to learn about insects and their numbers in rivers and I found that there are good healthy populations of the above mentioned bugs. There are certainly enough bugs to get a run started and as the run grows and fish die the insect populations will grow as well. But again, the rivers are far from sterile.

There are certainly enough bugs to get a run started and as the run grows and fish die the insect populations will grow as well. But again, the rivers are far from sterile.



I too have fly fished many NW rivers and I love chasing the small native trout. But they are small because our western Washington streams lack the huge diversity of insect life found in the less acidic streams like the Yakima and a the famed river of Montana.
Years ago the WDFW made the Middle fork of the Snoqualmie C&R only with much fanfare and predictions that it would one day become a destination stream like the Madison. Never happened simply because the rive lack enough bugs to make lots of big healthy trout. Our local rivers are not sterile but they sure as heck won’t grow trout like the Madison, Bighole, etc. That’s why I am headed to Montana next week.

Your argument is with the prevailing science, and it says for the most part OP and PS in stream habitat is poor.
So how would anyone conclude that it's not the leading factor for recovery?
FYI a fishing pole isn't a research tool, you can't gain any fisheries science knowledge using one.

"FYI a fishing pole isn't a research tool, you can't gain any fisheries science knowledge using one."

Not true, well maybe true regarding a "pole," but a fishing rod and tackle in reasonably competent hands is a legitimate sampling tool, just as is an electrofisher, a beach seine, and a snorkel survey. Typical sport fishing gear has often been used to systematically collect data on species presence and relative abundance and density. Admittedly in most instances there are more efficient tools, but not always.

We now return to the regularly scheduled Elwha thread.

And while western WA streams are not sterile, they are exponentially less rich than the famous trout streams of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Sg

The habitat is poor for a variety of reasons. Lack of salmon should be high on the list. Among other things, the literature shows they provide nutrients that increase smolt numbers, increase smolt size, increase marine survival of smolts, increase insect production, decrease insect generation time, increase bear productivity, increase mink reproductive success, increase tree growth, remove sediment from the gravel, provide protection of redds from freshet, produce better wine, and I suspect more is on the way.

And, a biologist unfamiliar with the use of and "individual sampler" is not utilizing the best tool available. Too much biology is conducted in front of a computer.

I can agree Salmo, but for the most part sport anglers base their opinions on what they see and catch while angling, while totally ignoring what the research says.
Like blaming another harvester group for declining stocks, that's nothing more than pot, kettle, black logic.
I'm basing my position on what science is saying, and they are not blaming any harvester group, but rather climatic changes, ocean conditions and in stream habitat as the leading factors for recovery..