Patagonia's stance

It's just a trailer but pretty clear were they are coming from.I

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I-MMlQ5AIzQ

I won't be purchasing any of their equipment.Or supporting them!

Don't they know that their customers pursue hatchery generated fish and without hatcheries there wouldnt be much to fish for?

Bunch of fern feelers marketing products that people wear when they want an I'm an outdoor person costume.

Great video! Thanks for posting.
All you have to do is look at the current regulations to understand that our ability to fish is tied to wild fish survival. If they continue to decline we won’t be fishing so there will be no need to plant fish.

And the Orcas will die because habitat has been so severely degraded to preclude the recovery of so called wild salmon, and particularly Chinook, to anywhere near their original numbers.

The scariest part of that was in the comments which included a recommendation to have it presented in schools.

It's real easy to support species recovery/restoration until it makes ME actually do something.

Recovery of our anadromous salmonids will take massive expenditures in habitat restoration and will need to include dam removals, levee removals, de-hardening of shorelines, restoration of estuaries, restoration of floodplains. Then, we'll have to restore the marine ecosystem to support them. That includes Larry's favorite of pinniped control but will also include significant reductions in harvests of things that ultimately feed salmon.

And so much more. The salmon, SRKWs, Gray Whales, Humpback Whales, Sea Otters, all the seals, are in direct competition with us for food and space. For that reason, we won't save them.

It is quite true that the use of hatcheries has destroyed many runs of wild fish. Worse, it has allowed us to "mitigate" for other uses of the ecosystem. System can't produce enough wild fish? Plant more. Build a dam, destroy a river? Build a hatchery to mitigate. Without those hatcheries we will have to stop killing as many fish. With them, we can kill lots for a little while longer before the bill is due.

Do folks truly believe in their heart of hearts that the puget sound can or will support healthy runs of wild anadromous fish again? Especially steelhead? With human polulation and development not slowing down for anyone, its hard to imagine. The skagit is not a good indication of the more southern rivers either. I would personally love to believe that they could and did for years but man o man, reality just has a way of slapping us square in the face. Boy, i could use some encouragement but its hard to imagine after seeing exploitation of every resource these poor fish rely on. Alot of so called green companies out their joining the "in style" marketing campaign but what results are we are utlimately used to seeing.

Signed.. an exhausted hopeless anadromous romantic....

Patagonia has always made fantastic stuff, but their brand stigma is getting to a point where it’s hard for me to fly the colors. What I sometimes do is take the signature stitched-on logo off to make some of the jackets generic, it’s been interesting. A new jacket that got compliments all the time gets changed to something that nobody mentions, because it’s had the brand stigma removed and been unconsciously devalued.
It’s VERY trendy right now to posture like you give a [Bleeeeep!] about the environment while doing nothing. Buy [Bleeeeep!] you don’t need, but be sure to recycle the box it came in. Only a monster wouldn’t recycle that box.

Patagonia doesn’t care about the environment. It cares about the people who pretend to care about the environment.

I have mixed feelings about Patagonia, or mainly its leader Yvon. I'm in the camp where it's possible to be pro wild fish without being totally anti-hatchery. I have to be because I want there to be more fish than the extant environment can produce naturally. I recognize and accept that even if we could restore rivers and the oceans to historic productivity, (which we can't) we wouldn't do it because it would interfere with too many other things that are beneficial to society.

I'm miffed that Yvon funds or subsidizes his son-in-laws environmental consulting company because they very actively oppose a trap-and-haul fish passage alternative on CA's Yuba River. They want the dams removed. Well, that's nice, but it's CA, and CA has 38 million people who need a whole lot of water. The human population continues to grow, as does the need for water. The Central Valley's rim dams with large storage reservoirs are not ever coming down. Water will be transferred from ag to M&I, but the reservoirs are there to stay.

So Yvon and his allies are actively choosing to forego recovery of threatened and endangered Chinook and steelhead, because, in their words, "wild salmon don't ride in trucks." Well CA ain't Bristol Bay, AK, and frankly, wild salmon actually don't care how they get to their spawning grounds, except that they only know how to swim. If we aren't allowed to help fish around dams, whether it's trucks, fish ladders, or other artificial means, to get them to the places where suitable habitat still exists, then recovery is off the table. And that bugs me.

And yes, I occasionally buy Patagonia products that fill my needs and I find them on sale.

Too many people, it seems to me, see the world in very black and white. All wild or all hatchery. There is a middle ground. Like Salmo says, if we go to all wild fish there will be little consumptive fishing, and less as human population grows.

EXACTLY!!!!

Yep..

As usual, Steve is the voice of reason!

Miffed?? That seems a bit too gentle.

.

I try to be a gentleman. It ain't always easy, but I try.

Patagonia supporter here... because the greater good they do FAR outweighs the bad.

Please elaborate. Bob R

Takes me back to the old adage that one "oh crap" undoes 100 attaboys.

They breach Shasta Dam yet? Oh please............... I wish I could turn back the clock today too on the Sacramento and San Joaquin too but it's not gonna' happen anytime soon> Sorry! Patagonia and their "causes?" Please............ Deal with what ya' got today folks! Glad this Old Guy got to enjoy a bit of "The Good Old Days" Done!