Official blasts Bush hatchery-salmon plan

LEWISTON — Hatchery-raised salmon and steelhead are no substitute for the wild strains, Idaho Fish and Game Director Steve Huffaker says. The Bush administration’s plan to count hatchery salmon and even some rainbow trout in the same populations as wild fish protected under the Endangered Species Act is nonsense, he said.

He called the policy “politically expedient” and not geared toward recovering the wild runs.

“It just seems to me to be a grab for numbers,” Huffaker told sportsmen last week in Lewiston.

“I think they are out there in La-La Land and eventually they will be brought back.”