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Methow Valley News September 7, 2000 Endangered Species Eggs have until October to find home By John Hanron The fate of more than a million spring Chinook salmon eggs is still in limbo as fisheries officials scurry to try and find a place to rear them. Wednesday is spawning day at the Winthrop National Fish Hatchery, and last week, more than 100 people showed up to protest the potential wasting of more than a million salmon eggs. The eggs are considered surplus by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is under orders from the National Marine Fisheries Service to limit the amount of non-native salmon stock in the Methow River basin. This year, non-native Carson-stock salmon outnumbered the "preferred" Methow composite stock—an endangered species—five to one. But NMFS is limiting the hatchery to just 300,000 Carson stock eggs. They will have collected about 2.5 million. Of those, a million are bound for the Big White Ponds, on the lower Columbia. Another 100,000 fry are destined for Omak Creek. The rest, if a home is not found by Oct. 15, are headed for premature burial. "We’re still looking for other places where we might be able to put those eggs," said Julie Collins, a supervisory fisheries biologist with the Leavenworth hatchery complex, which includes Leavenworth, Entiat and Winthrop. She said the other hatcheries, which have not yet been directed to phase out the Carson stock, are filled to capacity already. In fact, at Leavenworth this season, 3,370 excess adult salmon were killed and delivered to Native American tribes for food. From the Entiat hatchery, 1,440 surplus salmon went to tribes. At the Winthrop hatchery, tribes led a protest in late July in which they placed a weir across the spring that accesses the hatchery, keeping surplus adults out in the river system, where they could spawn naturally. The salmon that underwent the hatchery spawning process cannot be eaten, since they are injected with an antibiotic to combat bacterial kidney disease that can be passed from the adults to the eggs, Collins said. The spawning process at Winthrop is expected to be completed next week, Collins said. Opinion | Sports |
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