One point that needs to be made about big runs....hatcheries worked just fine. But the "conservation biology" idiots (a spinoff of Earth First ideology, I have the paper trail) wormed themselves into agencies with the idea that only natural fish doing natural things were acceptable in the grand scheme of things. Hatchery fish were somehow inferior and evil.
Okay, maybe a hatchery fish isn't optimal, isn't as cool as a grumpy old hog fish. But, it's a fish. And when it comes to inferior, I think that ANY salmon that makes it to saltwater and then claws its way back upriver has earned its right to reproduce.
And by the way, I've never seen any research on the topic, but hatchery salmon imprint on the smell of home and literally will swim up the pipe if given the chance, they do swim into holding pens for recovery. So here's my question for you geniuses.
What if salmon could be started in a hatchery, meaning fertilized and viable and then planted in a streambed, which might, if necessary, be prepared to have the right conditions? Bull trout imprint on their home redd. But can you imagine a targeted program of capture, milk, fertilize and release to wild redds, or is that the real problem here? Nobody in "biology" has tried it, I've never heard of it. But given the success of hatcheries before they became politically incorrect, this could work really well at a reasonable cost.
No, don't gripe to me about habitat quite yet.
