OLYMPIA -- State and tribal officials have crafted a plan to maintain a sustainable fishery while improving conservation and recovery of wild salmon at Puget Sound chinook hatcheries.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission on Tuesday announced completion of an independent review of the hatcheries.

"It's been much needed and long awaited," said David Troutt, natural resources director with the Nisqually tribe. The state has one of the largest systems of hatcheries, which have been operated for a century without any critical independent scientific review.

The so-called Resource Management Plan marks the first time the state and the tribes have worked together to craft a comprehensive chinook management plan with the goals of conservation and restoration of wild chinook while also maintaining a sustainable fishery, Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tim Waters said.

The two-year review will provide a framework for operation of chinook hatcheries. And it shows operations at the Nisqually hatcheries are on the right track, Troutt said.

"We're moving in the right direction," he said.

The Resource Management Plan is part of a larger, ongoing statewide hatchery reform effort known as the Puget Sound and Coastal Washington Hatchery Reform Project.

The plan announced Tuesday "is one of our pieces of that," Waters said.

The first part of the hatchery reform project by an independent panel of scientists was released in February.

Most hatcheries were built to compensate for declines in wild salmon populations and losses of habitat to dams, logging and urban development. But those hatcheries have contributed to the continued decline of wild salmon, the study said.

The thousands or millions of juvenile fish that are released compete with wild fish for available food and habitat, the study said. Hatchery fish also can introduce disease and weaken wild stocks by interbreeding with stocks from other rivers.

Others have taken issue with operations at some hatcheries.

Environmentalists earlier this year filed a lawsuit against Fish and Wildlife over the state's Tokul Creek hatchery, arguing that the hatchery blocked upstream passage for wild chinook, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The management plan announced Tuesday doesn't cover the Tokul Creek hatchery, Waters said. But it does provide some specific improvements at several hatcheries to reduce the adverse effects of hatchery operations on naturally spawning salmon.

Those changes would reduce the potential for hatchery and wild salmon mixing by ending net-pen operations -- the Percival Cove nets pens in Olympia are freshwater pens not included in that ban. The improvements also would change the production levels and release practices, and improve disease control programs, Waters said.

The plan also calls for commitments to ongoing research and monitoring of effects of hatchery salmon.

"(A) robust, viable science-based hatchery program not only will continue, but is essential in our state's efforts to provide for sustainable recreational and commercial opportunity while restoring cherished chinook populations and their habitats," Fish and Wildlife Director Jeff Koenings said in a prepared statement.

Fish and Wildlife and treaty tribes operate more than 40 chinook hatcheries in Puget Sound.

"Hatchery programs are essential to the recovery of many severely depressed wild chinook runs," said Billy Frank Jr., Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission chairman. "Hatchery production is necessary to provide an opportunity for the tribes to exercise their treaty-reserved fishing rights. Hatcheries will continue to play an important role in salmon management."

Although hatcheries can help, they'll never take the place of natural habitat, said Frank, a member of the Nisqually tribe.

"We need salmon coming back to our river and our creeks," Frank said.

The Nisqually tribe operates the Kalama and Clear Creek fall chinook hatcheries on the Nisqually River, which together produce about 4 million young fish annually and rely on local fish that return to the Nisqually for brood stock.

Though the tribe has had a hard time selling the fish they catch, there's more to raising salmon than selling fish, Troutt said. The Nisqually hatcheries are multipurpose; they support fishing by sport anglers and tribal members, and they help recover naturally spawning wild salmon.

Fishing is critical to Nisqually tribal culture, Troutt said.

"Even if there is no price, these guys are going to fish. That's what they've been doing for thousands of years," Troutt said.

The fish also provide an important food source. Fish they can't sell, they'll smoke, freeze and give to a food banks.

"It's fundamental to the Nisqually, to be on the river catching fish," Troutt said.

N.S. Nokkentved covers the outdoors for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5445 and at nnokkent@olympia.gannett.com.

On the web:

- Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission