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  August 31, 2000
Hatcheries seek home for a million salmon eggs By John Hanron Winthrop National Hatchery workers are facing having to destroy 1.2 million fertilized salmon eggs if they can’t find a place to rear them by the middle of October. "I can’t see anyway around this," said Greg Pratschner, manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery Complex, which includes the Winthrop hatchery. "We’re looking for every possibility for those fish, but I’m telling you, the candle’s getting thin." As part of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s campaign to strengthen the population of what is called the Methow composite stock of spring Chinook salmon—an endangered species—the agency has limited the Winthrop hatcheries this year to just 300,000 eggs from fish identified as coming from the Carson hatchery stock. NMFS considers the Carson stock salmon inferior, and is directing the hatcheries to eliminate it from their spawning programs within three years. But of the 1,200 adult spring Chinook salmon that returned to the hatchery this year, only 200 are of the preferred Methow composite stock. That translates into about 675,000 eggs of the Methow stock and about 2.5 million eggs from the Carson stock. Pratschner said about one million of the Carson eggs will be planted in the Big White Ponds, at the USFWS Spring Creek National Hatchery at Underwood, Wash. Another 100,000 of the fingerlings will be planted next April in Omak Creek, a tributary of the Okanogan River that has been the target of habitat restoration efforts by the Colville Confederated Tribes. Added to the 300,000 eggs allowed at the Winthrop hatcheries, that leaves at least a million eggs with no place to go. Pratschner said agencies can’t just release the fish anywhere. Many creeks have fish listed as endangered or threatened, and many other would need major habitat restoration before they would be suitable for the salmon. The hatcheries can hold on to them until mid October. But if no place is found for the wayward eggs, they will be buried, Pratschner said. Bill Robinson, assistant regional administrator for sustainable fisheries for NMFS, said his agency has not ruled out placing the eggs elsewhere in the state, but will not compromise the health of the listed Methow composite stock. "There may be places we can collectively locate these eggs," he said Tuesday (Aug. 29). "But we may be faced with a decision of destroying the fertilized eggs. I honestly don’t know." Robinson said there just isn’t available space at the hatcheries to raise the fish for two years, the time needed before they can be marked as hatchery fish. But Charles Hudson, a spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said federal agencies need to start focusing more on allowing salmon to propagate rather than trying to control the entire process. "It’s a moving target as to what they’re trying to do biologically there," Hudson said, "but the only thing we know they’re doing is preventing the natural condition from prevailing and that is to let salmon complete their life cycle in the river." The commission spearheaded a protest at the Winthrop hatchery last month where tribal members and others placed a weir across the creek that leads to the hatchery to prevent any more adult salmon from returning once the facility received its quota of adults. As many as 1,100 adults remained in the river system, allowed to spawn naturally. Hudson said the tribes would like NMFS to rethink its approach to salmon recovery. "Ideally, they would let adult salmon reseed the habitat," he said, "and get rid of this mass marking system that has nothing to do with rebuilding populations and everything to do with control." The idea that the Carson stock is inferior to the Methow composite stock is not accepted by everyone. Robinson said that though all of the Methow salmon probably came from hatchery-reared fish—since a dam blocked migration of wild salmon in the early 1900s—the Methow composite is still a better stock. "I guess you have to define your terms," NMFS’ Robinson said. "Probably very few if any of those (totally wild salmon) are left. If you mean fish that have adapted to the wild and are reproducing in the wild, then the Methow stock is a better stock than the Carson. It’s not the pure genetic, historic strain. It’s the strain that has adapted to the wild. They may, in fact, and do have some hatchery ancestry. The Methow stock has had a longer time to adapt in the basin." But state Sen. Bob Morton, R-Orient, said the NMFS policy doesn’t make sense. "It’s time for some common sense here," he said. "For centuries, the process of natural selection has resulted in new species evolving and others disappearing based on their ability to survive in the wild. Clearly, the Carson stock is proving its genetic superiority by thriving in the life cycle and returning in unprecedented numbers. "Is it really the goal of the NMFS policy officials to destroy this thriving stock in the name of saving a run that’s having natural problems surviving? That just doesn’t make much sense to me." The numbers of returning Carson stock is expected to be even larger in the next two years, Pratschner said.
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