State salmon management is questionable

The plight of our Puget Sound Orcas is causing concern for thousands, if not millions of Northwesterners. One of the principle factors of their decline is their lack of their primary diet: Chinook salmon. Besides the cutbacks in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s hatchery program, which directly limits the Orca’s availability of food, there are other questionable salmon management practices that cause me concern for the whale’s future.

Among these are WDFW’s decision several years ago to kill off the naturally spawning Chinook runs of the Deschutes River by not allowing a portion of the annual salmon run to be released above the collection facility at Tumwater Falls Park. Last year after a return of more than 30,000 Chinook to that facility, merely one hundred (males only) were released to migrate upstream. Calls to decision makers at the agency revealed a complex situation of mathematics relative to salmon management, but still the leaders could not quantify why the release of a significant number of returning salmon could (again as in years past) be detrimental to wild salmon and not beneficial to the overall health of Puget Sound, not to mention helpful in the long run to the Orcas.