Cuts Taking Bite Out Of Salmon Runs Budget Slashing Forces Closure Of Six Northwest Hatcheries

The chance to catch salmon or steelhead in the Northwest may drop soon from bad to abysmal.

Congressional budget cuts are about to close six hatcheries in Washington and Oregon.

Thirty-nine million tiny fish, raised at taxpayer expense, will be released prematurely. Many will die.

The cuts come at a time when commercial and sports fishermen, Indian tribes and Canadian anglers are fighting over what’s left of dwindling fish populations.

“It’s scary,” says Spokane fisherman Keith Jackson.

Jackson grew up catching salmon in Western Washington and has watched as efforts to protect dwindling wild salmon have meant fewer and shorter fishing seasons throughout the region. Bad ocean conditions have caused declines in both wild and hatchery fish.

The hatchery cutbacks will mean disappointment for Inland Northwest anglers. With few places left to catch salmon and steelhead closer to home, many people head for the mouth of the Columbia River or to coastal towns for ocean fishing.

“They fish at Ilwaco, Westport, Sekiu, Neah Bay,” said Washington hatchery manager Larry Peck. “Those are the most likely places that they’ll notice it.”

In part to meet treaty obligations to upriver tribes, fishery managers have focused cutbacks on the lower river. So there won’t be a direct effect on the Hanford Reach of the Columbia. That stretch west of the Tri-Cities is the last, best place for Inland Northwest salmon fishermen.

But the “Hanford brights” and other fish populations upstream of Bonneville Dam could be hurt. That’s because Columbia River chinook salmon travel north to Canada’s coastal waters. And because Canadians will have fewer salmon to catch from Lower Columbia hatcheries, Peck said, they will catch more fish from elsewhere.

The hatchery reductions will drive more salmon fishermen north to British Columbia, said Rob Phillips, marketing director for Yakima Bait Co.

That company has survived the last decade by increasing production of freshwater lures, as fishermen have switched to walleye and bass. But Phillips laments the loss of the salmon.

“The salmon is the icon of the Northwest,” he said.

The hatchery cutbacks are caused by a 20 percent, or $2.3 million, drop in federal funding provided under the Mitchell Act. That 1938 law was meant to compensate the region for salmon losses caused by dams built on rivers that the fish travel to reach their spawning grounds.”The government said ‘Don’t worry about the dams, don’t worry about the salmon runs being wiped out, because we will run a hatchery system.”’

Lobbying by the sport-fishing industry and others helped prevent more drastic cutbacks sought by the House of Representatives.

As it is, six of the 20 hatcheries will close by May.

There also will be cutbacks at other state and federal hatcheries. The result: a 36 percent decrease in the production of coho, fall chinook, spring chinook, steelhead and sea-run cutthroat trout at Mitchell Act facilities.

“We’re scheduling our first release of around 8 million fish on Monday,” said Rich Berry, director of Oregon’s propagation program.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map: Fish hatcheries to close

MEMO: Changed in the Spokane edition.