ESA-listed hatchery salmon? Is the for real?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-pacific-...-183406725.html

anyone know what's up here?

After all the closures and confusing politics...

I just wanna fish. Hope this means more opportunity.

This is not new, it’s just the latest round of updates identifying hatchery stocks that are part of the listed salmon and steelhead population. It happens with every 5-year status review, the latest of which (2015) came out earlier this year.

It’s been in place since the final “Hatchery listing Policy” in 2005: http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/frn/2005/70fr37204.pdf

So now we're back to believing hatcheries can be used to recover stocks, eh? I'm sure it will work this time, now that we're so much "better" at making hatchery fish.

Not much in that article made any sense to me, so I may have missed a key point, but what I gathered was that hatchery salmon are now eligible for protection unde the ESA. Apparently, they have been for 11 years. Whether this is news or not, anyone thinking this might lead to better or more opportunities for sport fishing might consider two things:
1. This brilliant bit of "science" comes from NMFS, the same folks who brought us the sort of wisdom that prescribes indiscriminate, open ocean fishing on all stocks, with zero awareness of which stocks are being impacted most.
2. Have you ever known the acronym "ESA" to be associated with increasing sport opportunity? It won't be this time, either.

One could hope this would mean restrictions on open ocean fisheries, to protect the precious hatchery stocks, but considering that our opportunity is whatever's left on paper AFTER commercial (tribal and NT) impacts are accounted for, that would be naive at best. Far more likely, they'll use the increased production to justify sustaining ocean harvest, then close sport fisheries where the protected hatchery stocks originate when the returns come up short.

Protected hatchery fish can only mean less opportunity in terminal areas. That's the way I read it.

I think this is just setting the stage for the eventual abandonment of wild salmon recovery efforts. With only hatchery fish, environmental protections will slide by the wayside, clearing the way for more development. Fisheries management (as regards salmon) would get really easy without protected, wild stocks to try and avoid; just let 'em fish to a number. Tribes won't care, as long as there are enough hatchery fish left so they get theirs, too.

Should we expect anything different when our natural resources are managed by the Department of Commerce?

Thanks for the link, JB. Here's the link to the new statement:

http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/mediacenter/81fr72759.pdf

I can see why the article says nobody has commented on it. It's dense as hell.

I don't have the policy chops to know if the language that applies directly to me (Puget Sound) is actually just housekeeping, or if the proposed changes to descriptions are carefully-laid landmines. Probably the latter.