The hatchery game.

Byline: The Register-Guard

In his book "The Good Rain," New York Times reporter Tim Egan describes the Northwest as "any place salmon can get to."

Pacific salmon were here long before Oregon was ever called Oregon. They were here, as noted salmon expert Jim Lichatowich has written, "Before the Endangered Species Act; before shopping centers covered streams with asphalt; before dams and dynamos harnessed the energy of wild rivers; before irrigation sucked rivers dry; before timber harvests robbed rivers of their protective forests; before fishermen's nets swept through the rivers and bays; before humans walked across the Bering Strait and into the Pacific Northwest; before glaciers gouged out Puget Sound; before the Oregon Coast migrated away from Idaho."

To ensure that salmon survive for future generations to wax rhapsodic about, the federal government must protect depleted Northwest wild salmon stocks and ease the multiple pressures that are destroying the habitats of the rivers and streams. Yet the Bush administration is planning a new strategy that would lump artificially created hatchery and wild fish together when determining whether Pacific salmon species merit protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. Despite administration denials, the new policy, if enacted, invariably will diminish the importance of the survival of wild natural salmon runs and protection of the habitats where they live.

NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency charged with restoring Northwest salmon, is responding to U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan's ruling three years ago that said the agency erred by excluding hatchery stocks from federal protections given to wild Oregon coastal coho salmon.

Federal officials insist that ruling gave them no choice but to consider hatchery salmon. But there was nothing preventing the agency from excluding hatchery salmon based on strong scientific evidence that hatchery salmon are inadequate replacements for their wild cousins. Few scientists believe that hatchery-raised fish can make a serious contribution to protecting heartier, stronger wild salmon runs. To the contrary, most agree that hatchery fish have depleted the gene pool, spread disease, and compete with wild fish for food, while proving themselves to be less resilient and able to survive in the wild.

The administration insists that it will continue to protect naturally spawning salmon and their ecosystems. As evidence, it recently informed Congress that all but one of the 26 runs of Pacific salmon listed as threatened or endangered are likely to retain federal protection, despite the planned policy change.

That's encouraging news, but the logic of that decision seems skewed and contradictory. If the government has really concluded that hatchery fish can be counted along with wild ones, then it's reasonable to conclude that many, if not most, of those salmon runs should be delisted if not now, then soon.

If that happens, the wild salmon that have survived so much for so many thousands of years may soon be extinct. While they have staged a comeback in recent years, their numbers remain well below the levels necessary to ensure long-term survival.

As for hatcheries, they play an important role in salmon recovery, helping to replenish depleted fisheries and to ensure the survival of some runs. But more than a century and a half of experience with hatcheries in this country has proven that they cannot compensate for the massive destruction of habitats. The government can dump millions of hatchery fish into streams, but if it allows whole destruction of habitat, then wild salmon eventually will disappear.

While the Bush administration insists it wants to protect salmon, its real agenda is the dismantling of the Endangered Species Act, which is despised by many of Bush's conservative supporters.

By adopting a policy that counts hatchery fish along with wild stocks, the administration believes it can begin easing the habitat protections - the restrictions on farming, logging and development - that its friends in industry have found so inconvenient.

The Bush administration should abandon its new salmon policy and rededicate itself to improving habitat and water quality. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.