Salmon Shell Game

I have a Brittany; my son has a German shorthair; my cousin has a Newfoundland. What's more, there are hundreds of thousands of these domestic canids in households all across the United States. Genetically, they are "no more than moderately divergent" from gray wolves, as the policy wonks at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries-formerly the National Marine Fisheries Service-like to say, whatever that means. In any case, dogs can hybridize with gray wolves and produce fertile offspring. Ergo: gray wolves are no longer endangered.

This is precisely the logic behind a Bush administration policy, released May 28, 2004, proclaiming that Pacific salmon and steelhead trout of hatchery origin can count as wild fish when determining if an ESU (evolutionarily significant unit) needs protection. NOAA Fisheries gets to decide whether the genetics of a hatchery stock are less than or more than moderately divergent from the whole ESU. With no tool for making such a determination and no definition of "moderately" or "divergent," the agency then decrees whether a hatchery stock should be excluded or included. Under the new policy, hatchery fish included in an ESU are counted in assessing population status.

The policy is a return to the thought processes of the early 20th century when huge federal hatcheries were going to provide all the "mitigation" needed for mega-dams built without adequate fish-passage. As a cure for dwindling salmon runs, hatcheries were as effective as leaches for anemia. Hatchery fish, selected for everything wild fish are not, survived badly. Those that returned suppressed wild fish and spread diseases and defective genes. To make sure hatcheries were full, crews harvested eggs and milt from the first fish that returned, thereby eliminating later runs. Even non-fishermen know that, in the Pacific Northwest, hatcheries are the second biggest factor-after the dams that spawned them-in suppressing salmon and steelhead. Can it be that the Bush administration hasn't heard this?

No. The policy was lobbied for by logging, power, livestock, and agribusiness interests who, for years, have tried every possible way to get threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead stocks delisted so they can destroy and pollute habitat with impunity. Nothing, until now, has worked. But this brilliant ruse renders habitat obsolete-just keep mass-producing hatchery fish, and there's no need for unobstructed rivers shaded by forests in which water flows all year.

"Hatchery salmon are just as good as so-called 'wild' salmon," explains the Pacific Legal Foundation-the Seattle-based property-rights outfit representing special interests in lawsuits and petitions for delisting. "Pacific salmon are not at risk. Millions of fish from each of the five Pacific salmon species are flourishing from Alaska to California. The fact that you can buy salmon for $3.99 a pound in your local supermarket should make that pretty clear."

The new federal policy is the brainchild of attorney Mark Rutzick who, before Bush hired him as legal advisor to NOAA Fisheries, had led the timber industry's crusade to get salmon and steelhead delisted by redefining hatchery fish as wild fish. Last March Rutzick met in Washington, DC with Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Russell Brooks, counsel for Rutzick's former industry in a 2001 case in which US District Court judge Michael Hogan ruled that NOAA's exclusion of hatchery fish from the listed Oregon coastal coho ESU was arbitrary and capricious. Since then, the administration has repeatedly stated that this decision forced the new policy.

But the decision did no such thing. All Hogan said was that if you include hatchery fish in a threatened or endangered ESU, you must list the whole ESU. He didn't say anything about having to include hatchery fish. Hogan ruled that, if the Bush administration so chose, it could separate wild and hatchery fish and list only the former. Another option the administration had would have been to appeal. After all, the Endangered Species Act plainly states that threatened and endangered species must be protected in their "natural habitat."

The Hogan decision precipitated a blizzard of petitions from industry to delist the Oregon coastal coho and 14 other stocks. A coalition consisting of 16 organizations, including Trout Unlimited and American Rivers, countered with petitions to list just the wild fish in these 15 stocks, since Hogan had ruled that this was perfectly permissible. The upshot was a lengthy review by NOAA Fisheries. In 2002 the agency did the right thing, what it had always done: It agreed to count only wild fish. But, after intense pressure from special interests, it flip-flopped.

In March 2004, almost a month before the new policy was made public, six of the nation's foremost fisheries scientists exposed the Bush administration's manipulation and suppression of data. These scientists had been hand-picked by NOAA to serve on its independent Recovery Science Review Panel. In the spring of 2003 NOAA asked them to determine research needs on hatchery issues and advise it concerning how those issues affected recovery for 27 threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead stocks. NOAA liked their advice on research needs. However, when the scientists informed it that hatcheries were not a solution but part of the problem, NOAA told them that this part of the answer wasn't acceptable for a government publication.

So, publicly complaining about being censored, the scientists published their findings in the respected, peer-reviewed journal Science. "Hatchery fish usually have poor survival in the wild and altered morphology, migration, and feeding behavior," they wrote. "On release, hatchery fish, which are typically larger, compete with wild fish. Their high local abundance may mask habitat degradation, enhance predator populations, and allow fishery exploitation to increase, with concomitant mortality of wild fish. The absence of imprinting to the natal stream leads to greater straying rates, and that spreads genes not adapted locally. Also, hybrids have poor viability, which may take two generations to be detected... Much evidence exists that hatcheries cannot maintain wild salmon populations indefinitely."