Federal Salmon Extinction Policy Announced

"The road to salmon extinction is paved with hatcheries," says David Bayles, Executive Director of Pacific Rivers Council.

"We've been trying to save salmon with hatcheries for the past 150 years," Bayles explains. "It never worked before and it won't work now. The Bush Administration is doing the same thing again and expecting different results - that's crazy."

The federal government's newly announced "Hatchery Listing Policy" sets the stage and writes the script for the extinction of wild Pacific salmon. The policy is mandating the inclusion of hatchery fish in ESA listing decisions, even while scientific evidence mounts that hatcheries are ineffective at restoring wild salmon and are a significant detriment to recovery.

"The hatchery policy ignores a large body of science and a century of management experience affirming that wild salmon recovery will depend on how we manage habitat and fishing, not hatchery fish," says Dr. Chris Frissell, salmon research ecologist and Senior Staff Scientist with the Pacific Rivers Council.

"The science tells us clearly that it's habitat conservation and the health of wild salmon bred in streams and rivers that will bring back the salmon," says Frissell. "Counting fish that originated from hatcheries is an ecological delusion - it has always masked what is really happening to wild salmon populations and the rivers they depend on to survive."

"The problem is that hatchery fish are essentially a political commodity," says Frissell. "If the government believes it can buy its way out of real salmon recovery and avoid the hard job of habitat protection with more or 'better' hatchery fish, they will do that. At its core, the new hatchery policy embraces the same scientifically bankrupt management delusions that led to the decimation of salmon runs on both coasts of North America."

"Politically powerful interests would have to change for salmon to actually recover, but the Bush administration is not willing to cross those people," says Bayles. "If they want to recover salmon they should use a technique that has been shown to actually work, and that is restoring habitat. The administration has chosen instead to take the expensive and scientifically unsound route of producing hatchery fish at the cost of wild salmon. The hatchery policy wastes taxpayers dollars and abuses the public trust."