The Goat Tells the Sheep the Barn is Closing
What happens when salmon and steelhead hatcheries become too expensive? The government closes them. Some fishery agencies play the blame card: The ESA imposes too many restrictions and has increased costs; the environmentalists have attacked hatcheries in court increasing our costs, and federal funding for mitigation hatcheries has declined. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently stopped Atlantic salmon restoration funding on the Connecticut River because the expense exceeded the benefits. Is that the future for the West Coast?
“The Province of British Columbia in the 1980s and 1990s stocked 70 steelhead streams, but that has been reduced to 16. Termination of programs has been due largely to the inability to obtain enough broodstock to meet production targets, concerns for impacts on wild populations, or the lack of observable benefits to the fishery or natural production (Pollard 2013). Research in BC and elsewhere has shown that hatchery supplementation does not rebuild wild stocks, but it can be used to support a fishery at considerable financial cost. Research has also shown that hatchery stocking can reduce the productivity of wild steelhead populations, with the negative impacts increasing as the proportion of the total population is of hatchery origin.” (Draft Provincial Framework for Steelhead in B.C. 2014).
Others say the real reason the Province is reducing hatcheries is it doesn’t have the funding to pay for hatchery operations and maintenance.
In the States, the fishermen complain that they are paying more for less as license fees increase and the fish numbers decline. Fishery agencies have adopted a corporate relationship with the public, producing a
product for the market and getting a fee to participate in the fishery. As one state fishery biologist said, we need hatcheries to produce a product that generates funding for the agency. Fish and wildlife agencies complain that revenues are declining as fewer people fish and hunt. Maybe their business model isn’t working.
Conservation Corner
with Bill Bakke and
the Native Fish Society