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Billions spent on Columbia River fail to help salmon and steelhead

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RalphH:
A new study concludes that after 50 years and 9 billion dollars of public money, no significant improvements have been made in salmon and steelhead numbers in the Upper Columbia River basin. In some cases efforts have made matters worse for wild fish.

The study published July 28 in the journal PLOS One, was lead  by William Jaeger, an economist with Oregon State University and Mark Scheuerell, fisheries biologist with the US Geological Survey & The University of Washington and looked at 50 years of salmon and steelhead passage over Bonneville Dam, the last of 14 dams on the Columbia River before it empties into the Pacific Ocean. The two also reviewed decades of spending on habitat restoration and hatcheries programs in the river basin, meant to save the species from extinction.

Overall while returns of fish raised in hatcheries saw a small increase, wild returns of salmon and steelhead did not. They also found hatchery fish in some cases spread disease, competed for food with wild fish and were also observed to prey on smaller wild fish.

https://www.opb.org/article/2023/08/05/columbia-river-salmon-habitat-spending-study/

"There are about 200 salmon hatchery programs in the Columbia River Basin, and 80% of all salmon and steelhead that return to the Columbia River as adults started their lives in hatcheries, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries division.

The cost to taxpayers to maintain these hatcheries during the last 40 years has been about $9 billion when adjusted for inflation, according to Jaeger. This does not include any of the money spent by local governments or nonprofits and nongovernment agencies.

“We found no evidence in the data that the restoration spending is associated with a net increase in wild fish abundance,” Jaeger said."

salmonrook:
I'd be asking questions on what the purpose of the hatchery was.
If it was to preserve the population of salmon in the Columbia river then I'd say that its a useful and worthwhile pursuit .
Of course fisheries enhancement cant be viewed in the same  sense that you'd judge whether a business is successful because this is not the point of the hatchery . The fact that its broken down to a monetary value  based per fish  is not really the point for the enhancement .
Whats not being counted is the millions of fish that either do get consumed by the several fish species, contrbuting to their survival  or the harvest by commercial fishers, or the contribtution to the recreational fishery.
This needs to be considered as a economic benefit , that well could be tabulated as well , if one was looking for some cost recovery .
 Its seems their is a rising tide of opinion on the  usefulness of hatcheries, both from down south and with DFO in Canada .
Some of the latest thoughts being that with no enhancement that the natural wild population would rebound .
I dont believe with all of our encroachments that they would have the slightest chance of survival .
 We started enhancement , it must continue for the survival of the salmon population

Dave:
Good post

RalphH:
... and of course neither of you have any bias in the issue. ;D

The larger point is it appears not to matter how much money is spent on hatcheries (which is not enhancement in my view) or enhancement for wild fish, there is little or no way to mitigate the impact of the dams. That's the real point. Even he hatchery returns are a small fraction of the wild return prior to dam construction.

stsfisher:
on the flip side, it sure has created one hell of a sport fishing, economic benefit. Up and down the Columbia system the fish migrating throughout has allowed sport fishing businesses and small communities to prosper. I would bet the billions spent has put far more dollars back into small businesses, communities, and households that otherwise would not be able to operate or sustain themselves without the influx of fish. We only have to look at small communities up and down the fraser river to see what happens when salmon are not available anymore to those small businesses, communities and households.

Not saying its right, but damns ruined a lot of what used to be, maybe those managing the Columbia know they cant right the wrong but can help both the stocks and communities by dumping money into what should have been. 

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