The Farm Bureau would have us continue the expensive practices of barging and trucking fish when there is resounding evidence that it is not working. For the 21 years that fish have been barged around the lower Snake dams, return rates have not been adequate to sustain populations. So, if a thousand fish go out, we get 3 or 4 back. Barging is not working. Barging is a recipe for extinction.
Hatcheries are another tool used by the agencies to help keep depleted salmon stocks up.
These fish, while important, are genetically inferior to wild stocks. It takes nine hatchery fish to reproduce as well as one wild fish. We need wild fish. We need harmony. Finally, when we discuss bypassing the four lower Snake River dams as a way to save wild salmon and steelhead, we should remember why those dams were built in the first place.