WDFW and WFC are engaged in “daily communications” about the Duvall organization’s federal lawsuit last week over production of early winter hatchery steelhead in Puget Sound, according to a high-ranking state official.
Jim Scott, the agency’s Fish Program manager, says that he had anticipated WFC would file a request that a judge halt the planned midspring release of 900,000 clipped smolts, but that didn’t happen this week.
Pointing to WDFW’s announcement on April 1 that it wouldn’t let the fish go until the legal issues are resolved, he says, ”We told them we didn’t see the necessity of an injunction.”
But Scott still expects that court move to happen next week.
The lawsuit has been making the news here and there in the region, and recently it was reported on by the Skagit Valley Herald. Unless an out-of-court agreement is reached, the paper’s namesake river would see the 230,000 smolts growing at Marblemount Hatchery put into local lakes instead.
Which lakes is a good question. A quick glance at the agency’s SalmonScape mapping program shows very few standing waters here unconnected to saltwater — these are steelhead, after all, not homebodies like bass — though Pass Lake on the southern end of Fidalgo Island, doesn’t appear to be. Still, putting them there would penalize flyrodders.
I’m also told it would be cost-prohibitive to airlift the smolts into mountain tarns, and there are disease-transmission issues to weigh as well. Fish in some basins are immune to IHN while others aren’t.
Scott says his staff continues to work on “contingency” plans for the smolts at Marblemount as well as Kendall Creek on the North Nooksack, Whitehorse Ponds on the North Stilly, Reiter on the Skykomish, Tokul Creek on the Snoqualmie, and others.
Oddly enough, in Kimberly Cauvel’s Skagit Valley Herald article, WFC’s Kurt Beardslee appears to say the fish aren’t so bad, stating they have a “very low survival rate in the wild and a very low reproduction rate.”
Indeed, isn’t it actually a GOOD thing that production fish need, er, a helping hand to that end? Doesn’t that — not to mention the early-returning nature of Chambers Creek stock and the end of releases on rivers without fishtraps — help limit introgression into wild stocks?
His essentially bang-for-buck economic argument is being countered by sport anglers and tribal fishermen who are pointing to the value of the clipped-steelhead fishery, the link it preserves to wider interest in recovery work for wild steelhead and salmon, and fulfillment of treaty rights. In essence, the lawsuit has united two groups that otherwise have a long history of acrimony over fish.
Beardslee also continues to take shots at hatchery steelhead, calling them “highly domesticated” — again, isn’t it a good thing when they return like cows to the barn, aka, the rearing facility they were raised at? — and essentially terms them “poodles” to wild “wolves.”
Yes, it would be best to use in-basin broodstock, no question about that, but frankly it’s sad that WFC is resorting to these sorts of ad hominem attacks on the fish when it’s so clear to everyone else that the true problems are poor ocean conditions; Puget Sound pinnipeds picking off outmigrating smolts and other factors in the inland sea; and very seriously degraded habitat.
Hatcheries are a tool to counter the effects of all we’ve done to this landscape, and they’re at the center of this lawsuit. WDFW lacks a federal permit to operate its Pugetropolis steelhead-rearing facilities in this era of ESA-listed Chinook and steelhead. It’s not for lack of trying to get the paperwork. The agency began submitting HGMPs, or hatchery genetic management plans, to the feds back in 2005. In November 2012, NMFS said many looked pretty good, but admitted to falling down on the reviews. That resulted in some pretty low-hanging fruit for the litigious.
“There are a lot of ambulance chasers out there looking for the weakest link and use the Endangered Species Act to pad their own pocket,” said Randy Kinley, a policy analyst for the Nooksack Tribe, on one of the two outdoor radio shows he was interviewed on last Saturday morning.
He and the hosts of the programs worried about what hatchery program would next in WFC’s targets.
Meanwhile, Scott says that WDFW has now filed updated HGMPs for six of the seven early winter steelhead facilities in Puget Sound. The only one still out is Marblemount.
“I’ve been very pleased with tribal support on a policy level and on a technical level,” Scott notes.
As for what we steelheaders can do to help, some are already reaching out to Governor Inslee and it never hurts to contact your congressional representatives, like Liz Hamilton of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association said her organization would be doing, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
As ever, keep messages tactful, describe your stake in the fish and fishery, and talk to the importance of funding regulatory programs and getting the HGMPs processed.