politicians, and they have become addicted to failure. If the salmon is to be rescued, it needs a wider public. Survival it can do for itself; it is up to us to see to it that a home is preserved, securing for the salmon the rights to survival. The salmon and trout are an indicator of land health, for everything that we do ends up in the rivers; and sick rivers and a sore land are not good salmon habitat. Aldo Leopold writes, “Conservation is the protection of the land’s ability to renew itself.” The salmon is a renewable resource. It’s just that as the land is developed, the waters which flow from it receive the insult of sedimentation, thermo-pollution and poisons; the physical changes in the streams which follow assure that they will rear fewer fish. But if the salmon and trout are indicators of land health, then they are also a reflection of the land itself, adapted, as it turns out, to local environments, These environments are not static; they change. The salmon has to adjust, yet it has been found that salmon are adapted genetically to local environments and are genetically changed as those environments change. The salmon, wherever it is found, is a reflection of the special circumstances which make up its habitat; it is of the water chemistry, the vegetation, the rocks, the sun. Changes in these circumstances create changes in the fish. Diversity is considered important to the survival of a population of animals. It is the diverse environments that the salmon are found in that give shape to the fish and to its behavior and life history. In Canada it was found that sockeye salmon, which need a lake for the juvenile salmon to rear in, will spawn in the inlet and outlet streams to the lake. Ones that spawn in the outlet must swim upstream to enter the lake, and the ones in the inlet stream move downstream to the lake. Even though the stream system has sockeye salmon in it, there are at least two distinct races of sockeye salmon using it. A single river may have one species of salmon, but also several races of that species, the races being adapted for survival within certain local habitats amidst that single river system. The salmon have colonized this coast, making a home of each part that is accessible to them. The various species coexist in the same rivers, and the races have exploited, through adaptation, certain sections of the rivers. Natural populations of trout and salmon are a remarkable adaptation to local environments. It is reflected in their genetic diversity which shapes the way they move through a stream, where they spawn, their age structure, their size. The following table is an example of the changes that took place in one population of steelhead after a hatchery reshaped the fish to fit its operations: ALSEA RIVER STEELHEAD WILD 1958 5.4 66.4 25.6 2.6 YEARS AT SEA / l * /2 /3 /4 % REPEAT SPAWNERS 11.1% HATCHERY 1978 4.6 / I 89.9 /2 5.5 /3 5.4% * / l means number of growing in the sea. years spent It is this natural diversity in a trout and salmon population which assures us that there will be future generations. One way that this is expressed, as is evident in the enclosed table, is in the age diversity within a single spawning population. In a natural population of steelhead or salmon, there is a variety in the ages of adults returning to spawn, so if disease or some other catastrophic circumstance were to affect the run. the whole population would not be eliminated in the future. If the spawning population were a single generation, this could easily happen. In the Alsea River, the hatchery steelhead population age structure is concentrated; the 3-year fish are reduced. the 4-year fish are absent, and the numbers of repeat spawners are reduced. This represents a reduced genetic diversity in the population, and that makes the population unstable. Now, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), at the Alsea Hatchery, is trying to breed diversity back into the steelhead population so that it resembles more closely their wild ancestry. The ODFW compared the survival of juvenile wild and hatchery steelhead in the natural stream environment at Trout Creek, a tributary to the Deschutes River. In this research, it was found that hatchery steelhead crossbred with hatchery steelhead had the lowest survival in the natural stream environment. The wild wild cross survived the best, while the hybrid hatchery-wild cross fell somewhere between. It was established that smolt production. the production of juvenile steelhead, from the interbreeding of hatchery and wild stocks, is less than what results from wild fish matings. When fewer juveniles are produced, there are also fewer returning adults in the next generation. It is quite possible for hatchery fish to overpower wild fish when hatchery fish are not isolated from wild fish. Interbreeding results in fewer smolts; wild fish have to survive the rigors of the natural environment, so that only 2 percent of the juveniles will result in returning adults, and the hatchery fish, because of their protected environment as juveniles. return in greater numbers. So, to some biologists, if the hatchery fish cannot be isolated from the wild stock, then the wild stock will eventually be lost. This is a serious problem because hatchery fish are normally not isolated from wild fish, so hatchery “enhancement” can and will result in lowered natural production. Research in Canada on pink salmon has shown that taking salmon “ donor” stock from one dtainage and releasing them in another that the donor stock does not return to the adopted stream as well as the native stock. They stray within the stream or into other streams nearby. Straying can be detrimental because, as was shown, interbreeding reduces genetic fitness of the native stock. This problem is compounded when the donor stock is reared in a hatchery as a brood stock, for they are changed genetically to fit the demands of the hatchery operation. When the donor stock is used to “enhance” the natural production in other streams, the effect is to reduce fitness of the wild stock through interbreeding, and the production of fewer wild juveniles. This is a common practice in West Coast states. Hatcheries are vulnerable to disease because the fish are reared in such dense concentrations. It is common to have a whole hatchery production destroyed because the fish cannot be planted out. If they were, they could infect the wild fish population and establish the disease in a river where it had not been present, where the fish are not resistant to it. Even though this is a quick look at hatcheries, it may serve to show that reliance upon them to increase our sagging fish runs is not altogether a sound biological investment. Hatcheries are a biological tool, a very useful tool, but they are not a panacea. But how have hatcheries gained such importance? They have become important to fisheries management because of the decreased abundance of our wild stocks and the inability, even under the best natural production. for wild stocks to meet the demands of an inflated fishery industry. The wildlife biologist realizes that he cannot secure the future of an elk herd unless the necessary habitat is available. The fishery biologist is under the same constraint, but the hatchery has become the quick fix. The late Mr. Roderick Haig-Brown, a naturalist and writer from British Columbia, says of hatcheries, “They are the easy way, the politically successful way, but dependence on hatcheries reduces the will to attack and solve the real problems of natural production and absorbs far too much money." The demand for fish is always able to outstrip the supply, since the hatcheries became increasingly successful in the 1960s through boosters of the commercial and sport fisheries. Today the troll fishery, which practices no limited entry off Oregon waters, is capable of overfishing the salmon stocks before they reach the rivers. A biologist working out of Puget Sound said that the environmental problems and the adverse effects of genetic damage to the stocks by artificial production is academic now because our greatest worry is to get enough fish back through the interception fisheries to reproduce. Along the Oregon Coast the wild coho salmon stocks have been overfished for a number of years, but only recently has the troll fishery come under season, location and size of salmon restrictions. I do not know a biologist who doesn't feel a cold chill whenever a harvest exceeds 50 percent of a population. In Oregon, bending to the interests of the commercial fishermen. the cut-off level was set at 75 percent harvest of wild coho. When it came to closing the season on an emergency basis just before Labor Day. Jack Donaldson, director of the ODFW, said, “The situation is grave." but he and the Commission kept the fishery open through the holiday, because it would cause too much economic dislocation, even though the harvest rate was al 93 percent of the wild coho run. The commercial fishermen become upset when they are closed down and see surplus salmon at the hatcheries. What they do not want to realize. however, is that hatchery coho can be harvested at a 90 percent level, while wild coho can be safely harvested at the 50 percent level. Since hatchery and wild coho and a mixed stock fishery, both are found in the sea at the same time, in the same places, harvesting hatchery coho at a greater rate results in overharvesting wild coho. When the commercial fishermen are closed down, they turn to their legislators, to the governor, and try to force the ODFW into letting them fish. The ODFW is reluctant to cross the legislators because in future legislative sessions, their budget will be cut or, as in this last session, a biologically unsound program gets rammed down their throat. Stocking out coho fry in Oregon coastal streams clearly is unsound, because the fry rear in the stream and compete for food and space with wild coho, steelhead and cutthroat. Direct competition from hatchery stock has been avoided in Oregon for many years. To change that because a powerful legislator wants it done is bad biology, but doing it is good politics. Commercial and sport fishermen are similar in one important respect: they participate in a consumptive activity. Taking fish without thought about where those fish come from or regard for their perpetuation endangers a renewable resource. It ts the nature of mankind, evidently, to distrust and oppose the guy who is after the same goodie as yourself. As the fishermen—the user groups: trollers, sports fishermen, gillnetters, Indian fishermen—fight each other in and out of courts, the BPA. the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of "The Acoustic Shop' Our entire stock of Martins and Guilds 41% off KU SX M These are the lowest known prices in the nation. Free beginning guilar lessons—no obligation to buy. All strings half price. Phone 239-7191 3928 SE Hawthorne Hours: 10:30am to 6pm Mon-Sat SARMA’S SHOPPE 2001 S.W. 6th PORTLAND, OR-97201 (one block south of The Cheerful Tortoise) 5
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