Judging from remarks at a day-long seminar in Seattle, NMFS is still pretty much up in the air about the agency's revised policy regarding hatchery and wild salmon that's due in June. The Mar. 29-30 workshop gave geneticists throughout the country a chance to hear each others' ideas and provided a semi-academic setting to debate the issue.

With only the first day open to the public, it was still a chance to witness a frank exchange of views, including several speakers who supported NMFS' proposal to count many hatchery fish in salmon and steelhead ESUs. Several members of an independent panel used by NMFS to examine their overall salmon recovery effort were also present, who went on record last spring with a letter in Science recommending that NMFS keep hatchery fish out of the new proposal, principally because of reduced fitness.

The agency is revising its hatchery policy in response to a 2001 court decision (Alsea Valley Alliance v. Evans) that ruled NMFS had erred by not including the hatchery component of Oregon coastal coho for protection as it did for the wild portion of the run. Judge Michael Hogan ruled that the listing was illegal since the agency had judged the hatchery stock to be part of the distinct population segment. The agency agreed with the decision and promised to produce a new policy that would abide by the law.

However, after the Alsea Valley decision, the agency was flooded with delisting petitions for other salmon and steelhead ESUs. In the case of steelhead, some petitions said the agency must include the resident form of the steelhead, rainbow trout as part of the ESU.

NMFS finally proposed a new policy in June 2004 that would leave ESU and hatchery policies pretty much the same, but would list around 150 hatchery stocks and resident fish populations. However, current hatchery numbers would not be counted toward any ESU's viability, only the offspring of hatchery fish that spawned in the wild.

NMFS geneticist Robin Waples, who played a large role in developing his agency's original ESU definition, led a discussion of other ESU concepts constructed by biologists, but ended up supporting his agency's own version, which he said may be a little more legally oriented. "Maybe ours is a little more vague and allows us more discretion," he told the nearly full auditorium in Seattle.

Bob Jones of the NMFS' salmon recovery division pointed out that hatcheries had served four main goals; compensation for lost habitat; keeping small wild populations alive while restoring habitat; actually supplementing wild populations; and providing fishing opportunities. He said only the second and third points dealt with ESA issues, but over 300 different hatchery programs in the Northwest are now being evaluated for ESA compliance.

Others admitted that biologists know little of the relationship between resident and anadromous forms of steelhead. For stocks with some resident-only populations like in California's Central Valley, the big questions include how much improvement in viability does the resident form add to the ESU and how the agency would address such populations above barriers like dams.

As for the larger questions about hatchery and wild fish, biology professor Joe Travis from the University of Florida, a member of NMFS' Recovery Science Review Panel, was pretty straightforward about the topic. "I don't think we have a clue," he said, but noted that some recent research showed evidence that found overall fitness of a hatchery steelhead spawning in the wild would be reduced by at least 10 percent in one generation.

Russ Lande of UC San Diego, who chairs the RSRP, said hatchery fish are at best an impediment, or in the worst case, can make a population "seriously unfit." He mentioned the controversial letter penned with other panel members last March, published as "policy" comments in Science, that said the new hatchery policy proposed by NMFS was too lax. Their letter said hatcheries generally reduced fitness and inhibited future adaptation of natural populations, and that the legal definition of an ESU must be unambiguous. "Hatchery fish should not be included as part of an ESU," they said. The scientists said they went public after the federal agency resisted their findings and said their conclusions went beyond the science into policy.

But Ernie Brannon from the University of Idaho thought it was appropriate for NMFS to include hatchery fish in ESUs. He said much of the debate over the fitness of hatchery fish was hypothetical, noting that there is no evidence that hatchery fish from a native steam don't contribute to the overall population.

Roger Doyle, emeritus professor of biology from Dalhousie University, said a lot of the difficulties with hatchery fish could simply be "bypassed" to balance out fitness by determining which fish are going to reproduce.

Rich Carmichael of ODFW's NE Fisheries Research and Development Program said a new definition of NMFS' ESU concept would have little practical effect. He said supplementation is already practiced in most projects in his region and a new ESU definition "will not change the way we operate over the next 20 years, whether they [the fish] are listed or not," except by possibly adding more paperwork if more permits will be needed. -B. R.