Monterey Bay Salmon & Trout Project

Oregon court puts end to the "Wild vs. Hatchery" debate

From: Western Outdoor News, September 15, 2001

Grants Pass, Or   -  What we here at Western Outdoor News have been saying for over a year has been backed up by a federal court decision in Grant's Pass, Oregon this past week:  The National Marine Service had no basis in fact or science to declare a difference between "wild" and "hatchery" salmon.

The federal court ruling has thrown out the NMFS threatened species listing for the Oregon coastal coho salmon, and sent it back to NMFS with a condemnation that the agency was ãarbitrary and capriciousä when it tried to distinguish between salmon spawning in the wild and fish spawned in hatcheries, since they could breed together easily as past of the same group.

While the decision is only applicable to Oregon coastal coho salmon, the same lack of science and fact has been a subject of derision here in California for almost all the listings and claims by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which contends hatchery fish, or even hatchery fish that actually spawn "in the gravel," are a threat to "wild" fish, even though there are no distinguishable differences in the fish.  In other words, this could, and should, impact all such decisions made by NMFS. 

In addition, recent agreements between the California Department of Fish & Game hatchery system and NMFS to cut back in the raising of some hatchery fish should now go back to the drawing board, and all cutbacks in numbers of salmon or steelhead raised in hatcheries should be reconsidered. Generally, fish hatcheries in California were built as mitigation for the damming up of wild rivers and the loss of natural spawning habitat.  The hatcheries were intended to make up for the numbers of lost salmon and steelhead, and are operated to provide mitigation agreed to by the federal government during construction of the dams.  Any change in fulfilling those mitigation obligations would be considered a breach of law by the federal government, and open them up to even more lawsuits. The ruling definitely calls into question all of the Endangered Species Act listings of trout, salmon and steelhead everywhere in the West. 

The lawsuits against NMFS were brought about by the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Alsea Valley Alliance following release of a video taken by an Oregon resident showing state fish and wildlife workers clubbing hatchery fish to death on the Alsea River, supposedly to ease competition between spawning ãwildä fish and ãhatcheryä fish.  There was, in fact, no way to tell if they were clubbing one fish or the other.

Editors note: MBS&TP has been raising these very issues for a number of years now.

Back