Saw this on another more informative site and thought that I would post it here for those who are pro-hatchery fish. It only takes a minute fill out and send.

https://www.votervoice.net/mobile/CCAPNW/Campaigns/35668/Respond

Updated

Nothin' wrong with a bunch of 3lb hatchery fish.

No thanks, I prefer wild steelhead

Double Haul, what I noticed you said before you edited your comment is "No thanks, I am pro-wild stealhead." Well I am pro-wild steelhead as well and also pro-responsible hatchery management.

I will not sign the petition, as I simply don't sign internet petitions, but the italicized text below is the message that I take from the petition:

Please click here (or below) to send an email to WDFW Director Phil Anderson and the Fish and Wildlife Commission urging them to support the continuation of Puget Sound hatchery programs now and into the future through continued responsible, science-driven management that recognizes the importance of wild steelhead recovery and the value of steelhead fisheries to our state's economy and way of life.

That is an approach that anyone that has any common sense should support. Keep in mind that even though you will probably prevent the release of these 900K fish this year because of lack of action by NFMS, WDFW, or both, that is a long way from showing that these particular programs are likely to prevent the recovery of Puget Sound steelhead.

I think the key word is science-driven management. If the science tells us that hatchery steelhead are a detriment to wild recovery are folks willing to accept it and support it without bias to their opportunity at the expense of wild steelhead or blinded to their economic gains by forsaking wild steelhead for hatchery fish. It all depends on your priorities. My personal priority will always be to put wild steelhead first, to me, there is no substitute and I want them in my future and my children's future. If I don't, I personally feel I would be selling my soul. So in the end, regardless of what I wrote at the top, yes I am pro wild steelhead and they come before hatchery steelhead in my preferences, but I will whack hatchery fish get my hands on to get them out of the system. I hope I don't get the "elitist a sucks" emoticon, but if I do so be it.

If you cared about wild steelhead, the threat from hatchery steelhead should be on the bottom of your list of known problems preventing healthy natural steelhead populations.

Perhaps you could put some effort into educating people about the effects of substantial loss of habitat and alteration, dams, dikes, development, agriculture, and logging.

Also, when it can be proved that hatchery programs inhibit the performance of natural PS steelhead, please put me on the mailing list so I can get the evidence.

Put me on your mailing list too.

I haven't seen evidence of hatchery Steelhead improving the performance of Native run Steelhead, have you?

That link works as well as my local hatchery.

If all wild fish work so well, why have we not got huge runs now in the Nisqually river. Its been closed to catch and keep steelhead for about twenty years..........

You can't beat wild steelhead down to the tipping point and then say "see, it doesn't work to protect them".

I clicked on the link and it said file not found. Was the petition removed?

Why not, Jerry? isn't that exactly what we are doing?

There's no doubt in my mind that losing the very people who care most about wild steelhead...steelhead fishermen...is very detrimental to wild steelhead.

Fish on...

Todd

I updated the link so that it works as of right now. I get the feeling that some of the mods around here don't want it to work.

I think that the Nisqually is an excellent example of why getting rid of hatchery fish will not work to bring back the wild fish.
The Puyallup river and the Cedar river are other examples of wild steelhead not recovering in the absence of hatchery fish. If it did not work in these rivers then it will not work to close down the rest of the puget sound steelhead hatcheries. I don't know why you would need any more of scientific evidence than that.

Would you also blame the decline of wild fish on the Sauk because of hatchery fish? The blame there is in part due to those of you who fished on them when it was open and you know who you are. Many of the same people here on this forum who fished on those native Sauk fish are now advocating to close down the hatcheries. The decline of the Sauk fish is also in part due to pollution and some decreased habitat. But there is no doubt in my mind that the people who claim that they care so much about wild steelhead are also the ones who were fishing for them when the Sauk was open thus causing detriment to the wild fish themselves.

Do you have some sort of proof to back this up? Maybe something was wrong with your link. These guys are smart enough to copy and paste a link.

For the CCA Voter Voice Link go to ccawashington.org and click on action......


www.ccawashington.org/‎
Puget Sound Steelhead Lawsuit. Tue, 08 Apr 2014... On March 31, 2014 the Wild Fish Conservancy filed a lawsuit against the Washington Department of Fish .

something not right here, should be a live link, google same and you will get there, perhaps something wrong with this website.

It seems Wild and in basin hatchery stock do very well in Oregon, mixed togather, look at the Umpqua, they have met Wild carrying capacity for 30 years and still have some hatchery fish as a surplus.

The problem we face, is in Washington we manage for minimum escapement, and anything over is considered harvestable by the Tribes and to some extent by the Dept. Until we shift to managing for maximum carrying capacity, We are going to gain nothing as far as wild fish are concerned.

Responsible hatchery practices do not hinder wild fish, they do not compete with wild fish, until carrying capacity is achivied. And in Washington we will never see maximum carrying capacity, So let responsible supplementation begin or continue.

So as long as netting continues, wild fish are retained by both interests and we manage for minimum escapement, Wild fish filling our streams is just a pipe dream. Shift all focus to maximum carrying capacity, with all parties on board and it will become a reality...

I'm with Double Haul on this one. Science based evidence in there! Chambers creek hatchery fish are detrimental to wild stocks period!

Any out of basin stock is detrimental to a system they are not native to. In basin stock is a different story. But in the end it comes down to Minimum escapement or carrying capacity, the two sciences, and we can't getwe the tribes or Wdfw to align to the one that will put more fish in our rivers. Manage for Maximum carrying capacity, anything over is surplus for harvest. This can be done with Wild or supplementation, but the thought process has to be changed

Terms like "science-based evidence" are easy to throw around, but biologists in Puget Sound don't agree with you or double haul.

The fact is, there isn't any evidence that suggests detrimental effects from these programs is or has caused declines of the native populations. The data that does exist shows extremely limited introgression to the point that no one can make any claims about detrimental effects.

If you have evidence that biologists haven't seen yet, you should reveal it.

Hatcheries are one of the 4 H's and has much of a culprit as the others you listed above. The good news is that we have better immediate control how we control hatcheries. The film Wild Reverence will a very big opportunity to educate the public on the plight of wild steelhead and the culprits standing in their way. I highly recommend a viewing when the opportunity presents itself. We can do better, if we allow our selves and have a little faith.

Are you actually suggesting hatcheries are as bad for native natural populations as dams and habitat loss? If you are, I'm a little surprised anyone could be that naive.

The Umpqua has a hatchery, and has 50K wild fish returning this year, and has met maximum carrying capacity for 30 years. It has the same habitat issues our streams face, but what it does not have are Tribes that insist on managing for minimum escapement, until you get the non selective fishing practices out of our waters and change the mind set from minimum to maximum, you will have no more then you have now. It' s not Hatcheries, it's the Greedy mindset of minimum Escapement, what say you DH

P.S we can not do better unless all parties are on board.

The four H's Hatcheries, Habitat, Hydropower and Harvest. No I can not attach exact percentages for each, but you should educate yourself to understand how they ALL effect recovery for wild steelhead and what can be done to minimize their impacts.

In WFC' suit they claimed that recent average steelhead numbers across Puget sound are approximately 3% of what they were in 1900.

Any review of the available data clearly indicates that big players in that decline has been habitat loss (including hydro power impacts) and declining marine survival. In fact those two account for virtually all of that loss. NMFS at the time of the ESA listing indicated that harvest was not a significant problem. With the sweeping changes in hatchery practice over the last 30 years even hatchery/wild interactions over all have been reduced to very levels.

If we are really concern about the future of Puget Sound steelhead we can continue to nibble around the edges of remaining hatchery and harvest issues which even if completely eliminated would mean almost nothing for the wild steelhead resource or we can step up the plate and attempt to address those things that are limiting our steelhead fishing and any potential opportunities to fish in the future.

Curt

Which site would that be?

Profound! Thank you.

And, (gasp), I have to agree with Todd on this one. Stopping hatchery plants would have little if any positive impact on wild fish populations in P.S. (based upon information I have read) and would effectively end sport fishing for steelhead. Once that stakeholder group moves on to other endeavors good luck in generating the necessary interest/support to fix the real problems.

Stopping the planting of hatchery steelhead would have a significant benefit to the early-returning wild fish. The simple presence of "harvestable" hatchery fish allows the co-mingled wild fish to C&R'd or killed in gillnets.

Even if there was absolutely no genetic or ecological conflicts wild fish will still die.

Carcassman, have you ever fished any of these rivers?

I have fished them for 30+ years and have caught maybe 7 natives prior to Jan 15th. There has not been an "early run" in my lifetime.

If not for hatchery fish in these systems a whole bunch of us on this board would have never gotten hooked on Steelhead.

So you are in favor of no C&R until wild fish are recovered to some as yet to be established level? Just to be clear.....

And, you haven't responded to the idea that having no fishery will rapidly deplete the already thinning ranks of steelhead advocates thus further undermining recovery efforts.

I've seen at least three 20+ wild fish on the Snohomish system prior to New Years Day.

If you've been fishing these rivers for 30+ years you remember the "Flagpole" hole filling up with nates in Dec. And those weren't little nates.

Ahh the flag pole/schoolhouse drift.
I don't recall December ever being full of them.
I do recall February being incredible there.

C&R is not the problem. Nets are. When I actually worked traps and studied wild winter steelhead in western WA we had at least, I believe, 30% of the spawning done by March 15.

Wild winter steelhead, as was mentioned before, formerly had good returns in November, December, January. They had (and the current strong populations still do) have significant (>30%) repeat spawners, they used spawn at least from January to July. We will not recover them until we can get the stocks back in that direction. Those segments of the run were there so that the run could be successful. Without them, no success.

What we have going here is what is known as shifting baseline. The "old" guys, who fished in 30s, 40s, and 50s have a view of the when and how many significantly different from anglers whose memory may go back to the 80s or 90s.

1) If the object is not to kill wild fish, then they are each a problem in and of themselves.

There was a discussion on here several years back where the take produced by catch and release enabled the tribes to net their share of steelhead on the OP.

2) If that is true, then CnR not only kills wild fish but then enables others to kill wild fish also.

You would think that these organizations that want to protect wild fish would not like that at all.

Broodbuster/backtrollin

Lots of fond memories of the good fishing at the School house/Flag pole during the 1960s and 70s.

I recall well those "wild " three salt fish we caught in the Snoqualmie and other PS rivers starting as early as Thanksgiving weekend. I did however recall that many of those fish had stubbed dorsal fins and they disappeared in the mid-1980s when the hatchery fish were all massed marked (fin clipped). Still caught lots of 3 salt fish in that same time of year but they all had missing adipose fins. While I was never fortunate to catch one of those 20 pounders I did see several caught in December that were hatchery fish.

Curt

I do too! I just want to fish my local rivers. I will fill it out. South Puget Sound wild runs will never recover enough in the future to fish on anyway.

R&G, The follow up post to that statement.

I think the key word is science-driven management. If the science tells us that hatchery steelhead are a detriment to wild recovery are folks willing to accept that and support it without bias to their opportunity at the expense of wild steelhead or blinded to their economic gains by forsaking wild steelhead for hatchery fish. It all depends on your priorities. My personal priority will always be to put wild steelhead first, to me, there is no substitute and I want them in my future and my children's future. If I don't, I personally feel I would be selling my soul. So in the end, regardless of what I wrote at the top, yes, I am pro wild steelhead and they come before hatchery steelhead in my preferences, but I will whack every hatchery fish I get my hands on to get them out of the system. I hope I don't get the "elitist sucks" , emoticon, but if I do so be it.

Science driven would mean you need to quantify the harm that hatchery steelhead do to wild steelhead first. Then we decide if that harm to the wild stocks is worth the fishing opportunity provided. Let's say for sake of argument PS hatchery steelhead releases depress wild steelhead returns by 5%, is it worth losing an entire fishery to improve the wild fish run by 5%?
When words like "harm" and "detrimental" are used without numbers it sparks emotions in people, and science should be devoid of emotion. We shouldn't take drastic steps to "improve" wild steelhead returns, if we don't know how much they will improve by and at what cost. The WFC gets paid to do lots of fish habitat "improvement" projects but if those projects do not produce any additional fish, they are a waste of money. I also did not see any spawner counts before/after their projects were completed, so we have no benchmark to see if they were cost effective or successful.

here in BC we did the same thing on vancouver island a couple of decades ago. Stopped the hatchery plants, closed the rivers and all that has happened is more habitat loss, no young or new anglers, rivers remain partially or completely closed and access loss on those streams that did reopen. Returns are still poor and the only people out there that care about it now are groups called "Streamkeepers".
If you only fish puget sound streams it might be time to sell your gear while it still has some value

Double Haul -
I have spend decades championing wild steelhead and it is issues like this that drives me nuts!

I'm all for science driven management and in the case it is clear that the "science" shows that in the Puget Sound region that much of the potential impacts from hatchery fish on the wild population has been addressed.

Consider the following; In WFC's suit they claim that in recent years Puget Sound wild steelhead numbers have fallen to 3% of what they may have been in 1850. No can argue that the steelhead's habitat in Puget Sound rivers has been trashed. The degree of those impacts has been placed at 50% to 95% of the historic productivity (the ability of a river to produce steelhead smolts). Further the average productivity today across the region is something like 20% of the historical or base level. That means the rivers that produced 10,000 adults in 1850 are now capable of producing 2,000.

In addition it is also clear that the average marine survival of steelhead smolts on reaching the salt is less than 20% of what they once were. This of course means that the 2,000 steelhead the rivers above are now producing are now producing 400 (2,000 times 0.2). Our hypothetical river with its historical steelhead run of 10,000 steelhead is now producing only 400 or 4% of what it once did.

Are those that care about our wild steelhead going to continue to allow the discussion to be focused on hatchery and harvest issue when it is clear that currently 99% of the factors driving our steelhead to only 3% of their historical levels are habitat (including hydro) and marine survival. Suits like this current one and support of those changes not only are dividing the very advocates that the steelhead resource not only needs but requires; it constantly shifts the focus away from the real limiting factors and allows those that benefit from the status quo on those issues to skate.

At some point folks have to say enough! If not steelhead fishing on Puget Sound rivers is done and they will be come museum pieces in a few of the best rivers. And oh by the way the status of steelhead in the rest of the State will some follow.

I had hoped for better.

curt

Habitat destruction has to include the reduction in salmon carcass delivered biomass by 95%. As studies in Canada showed, the number of smolts increased as the nutrient level in the stream went up.

Those studies also showed that fixing habitat increased productivity. But neither one (nutrients and inorganic (structure) habitat) had anywhjere near the benefit that both did when working together.

We seem to be focused on fixing the structural habitat and ignoring the productivity that spawning salmon provided.

And before you tell me that a million pinks in the Skagit and/or Green had no detectable impact, the currency for nutrients is kilogrammes per square metre of stream habitat. In S Prairie Creek, where the up to about half a million pinks has shown a benefit to the wild steelhead. So, do the math. How much bigger is the Green or Skagit? That is the biomass we need to shoot for.

The fact is that if we don't have steelhead fishing, then we don't have steelhead fishermen...and if we don't have steelhead fishermen then we will have lost almost all of anyone who cares about steelhead and steelhead streams.

We'll close the rivers, not do anything about the factors that actually really contribute to declining steelhead numbers on those closed rivers, and move on to the next system...first the steelheaders will go there, then the "let's close the rivers" crowd will be hot on their heels, and we'll do it again and again until all we have left is closed rivers with remnants of wild fish in them and no one who cares about the fish to advocate for doing something to bring the fish back.

Not a path I would choose.

Fish on...

Todd

I'm sure most probably understand this already, but the future of fishing for anadromous fish in Puget Sound hinges on the outcome of this suit.

If WFC wins the claim that the ESA is being violated with hatchery production impacts then they will follow with 60-day notices for other programs in Puget Sound, state or tribal; Fall chinook, coho, chum, etc. Unfortunately nothing is safe at this point. It's hard to believe, but all hatcheries programs are at risk right now and it's not going to end with Puget Sound.

If things go this direction we likely won't even have salt water seasons for salmon other than humpies. At least we get 6 weeks for ling cod, and I hear that flounder fishing can be very fun.

Sadly, part of me wishes that WFC gets their ultimate intention fulfilled of closing hatcheries. Then, everyone can sit back and watch the same destruction of habitat and a steady flood of transplants build houses everywhere -- meanwhile the natural populations of fish that were supposed to miraculously rebound stay at the same abundance.

We already know what happens to natural populations with no hatchery population presence when we trash the environment. It happened in Europe and the British Isles, then it happened again in New England. I'd say those examples are pretty good, but the reality is, we're doing the exact same thing to the environment here as happened in those examples.

Is there anywhere in the world that healthy runs of salmon are compatible with human civilization? I don't know of any. Why would the PNW be any different?

Like Todd has said over and over, the WFC suit is not about the appropriateness of hatchery fish. It is that WDFW does not have the required permit. It is a no-brainer; the law requires a permit so get it. If NOAA acts too slowly then take them to Court for their inaction.

The issue of how appropriate hatchery fish are, how to have recovery and still have meaningful fisheries (and attendant public support) are the next battleground.

And no, as Dave Montgomery described in King of Fish, dense populations of fish and people are damn close to mutually exclusive.

I hope so, but my definition of healthy is quite a bit higher than that considering what the runs were before civilization arrived here.