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StuartEllis's comments:
on Fishing for Answers
This really is about the wild fish. Without wild fish we are all diminished as people in the Northwest.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Regarding the Imnaha. Much of the habitat in the Upper Imnaha is in pretty good shape. Most of the river is in the Hells Canyon Recreation area, only some is in Wilderness. Some of it (Little sheep creek and the area just downstream is privately owned ranch land.)
There are water withdrawls, there is old mining and timber harvest damage. There are roads (some in good shape and some not). It is a very nice place, but not pristine. The Imnaha also sits upstream from 8 very large dams filled with warm water and predators.
The supplementation program has not by itself "restored" the wild fish up there and wont. What it has done is maintained the abundance of natural origin fish to stable levels and provided extra fish that support both mainstem and tributary fisheries. People living in Enterpise and Joseph can travel just down the road a peice and go catch a spring chinook if they want.
The average natural origin return to the Imnaha in the 1990's was 243 fish. In the 2000's it was 717. The returns have not been as high as Oregon and the tribes have hoped but they have not been terrible either. The program has evolved over time. The management agencies take adaptive management quite seriously and have made changes to the program over time and continue to learn more and make improvements to the program.
The key thing is that this program continues to support the abundance of natural origin fish to help minimize the risk of extinction while we continue to work on the real productivity issues which are in areas like the hydrosystem. As we gradually make improvements to juvenile survival through the hydrosystem and address things like excessive bird predation in the estuary, we expect that the supplementation program will give these fish the kick start they need to get well on their way to recovery.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Carson Hatchery is located on the Wind River, just a few miles upstream of Bonneville Dam. These fish are not known to stray at excessive rates. Carson Hatchery is one of the oldest spring chinook hatcheries. It was started by collecting a rather random selection of upriver spring chinook that were passing Bonneville Dam. That kind of broodstock would never be done today, but nobody knew any better then. Carson hatchery fish were used to establish many hatchery programs all over the basin. The reason the wild fish in the upper Columbia are genetically nearly identical to Carson hatchery fish is Carson hatchery fish had upper Columbia genes when the program was started and Carson hatchery fish were used to re-establish spring chinook in many parts of the upper Columbia. The current "prefered" stock of fish used in the Upper Columbia has Carson ancestry. The wild fish up there have had Carson genes for ages. It has just gone back and forth.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
While some may think that having only 15% of this year's upriver spring chinook run as wild fish may not be enough, you also have to consider the overall size of the run. We could easily be looking at a Spring Chinook run of around 340,000 this year. In that case we may have over 50,000 wild spring chinook in the run. This would make it somewhere around the 4th highest return of wild fish in the past 40 years. That would not be too bad in my opinion.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Well we certainly picked out some species to be loosers by building Grand Coolie Dam, the Hells Canyon Dams, Dworshak Dam, and many many others with no fish passage.
Salmon restoration programs are just trying to give some populations the Oportunity to be winners again.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat? :)
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Fixing habitat is incredibly expensive. You can't just say spend the money that we spend on hatcheries on fixing habitat and expect the problems with fish to be fixed. We obviously need to spend a lot of money fixing habitat. We do spend tons of money trying to fix habitat, but it isn't going to be able to restore all the habitat to pre-development conditions.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Adult hatchery and wild fish eat the same thing in the ocean. They are going to taste the same. I doubt the chef can really tell the difference.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery uses natural rearing chanels for spring chinook to help fish adapt to natural conditions. Some hatcheries have also been working on underwater feeding systems to teach young fish to feed below the surface instead of looking for food thrown into the pond by people.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
It is an over statement to say that hatchery fish were a major issue with why fish were listed under the ESA.
Fish have been listed under the ESA because we have wrecked or eliminated the habitat for these fish and diminished their productivity.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
That would be a great day. But we are not their yet. We need hatcheries to support the abundance of fish, so we can have enough fish to take advantage of more productive habitat when and if we can fix that habitat.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
The Yakama and Wenatchee hatchery coho reintroduction program that was started with lower river coho has shown that these fish quickly addapt to their environment and now survive at levels just as high as many wild populations.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
Rich's comments are nice, but in the Columbia Basin, we don't have well functioning ecosystems. If we didn't have hatcheries we wouldn't have fish.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
In many cases such as wild Upper Columbia Spring Chinook, they are genetically indistinguishable from Carson hatchery fish.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
More and more hatchery programs incorporate wild fish into their broodstock. Some of the hatcheries that still don't incorporate wild fish into their broodstock release and collect fish in places where there are not any wild fish. These programs are very segregated from wild fish and don't have much effect on wild fish.
The programs in areas where there are lots of wild fish almost all incorporate wild fish into their broodstock.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
The concern about hatchery fish preying on wild fish is over rated. There have been a very small number of hatchery programs where there has been a concern raised about this and changes to the hatchery programs were made to correct the problem. (you can change the size of released fish, the timing of the release or the location of release). I worked on a research project in NE Oregon years ago to address concerns that hatchery steelhead were eating wild spring chinook. We caught and killed well over a thousand juvenile hatchery steelhead and sampled there stomachs and we never found any evidence they were eating any salmonids at all.
posted 3 years ago
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on Fishing for Answers
This year's spring chinook run is about 15% wild fish. So not all runs are 95% hatchery.
posted 3 years ago
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