If the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has
its way, a new steelhead hatchery will be built on the moss-covered
ruins of an abandoned federal hatchery. But the agency’s plan for
the $4 million Grandy Creek steelhead hatchery – the state’s 91st –
faces stiff opposition. Many conservation and fishing groups, as
well as some federal scientists, believe hatchery-bred fish are
partly responsible for the decline of wild
stocks.
The project surfaced publicly in 1991,
when local Skagit River anglers convinced the state legislature to
fund the hatchery at the confluence of Grandy Creek and the Skagit
River. But before it could break ground, the agency had to
backtrack and do an environmental impact
statement.
State wildlife officials say the
hatchery would enhance fishing opportunities and bolster the local
economy. They also maintain the hatchery-raised steelhead would
return earlier than the river’s wild steelhead, minimizing the
chances of weakening the wild stock through
interbreeding.
Opponents say the state has
overestimated the economic benefit and underestimated the effects
on wild steelhead. “Instead of restoring and augmenting the Skagit
River wild steelhead fishery, the Grandy Creek project will end up
destroying it,” says Tryg Sletteland with the Sierra Club Legal
Defense Fund. Sletteland says the environmental impact statement
didn’t adequately deal with issues such as competition between wild
fish and hatchery fish and disease transmission.
The state is in the process of trying to obtain state and federal
permits for the project. For more information, contact the Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund at 206/343-7340 and the hatcheries program
of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at 360/902-2654.
*John
Rosapepe
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Proposed hatchery breeds conflict.
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