The Cordova daily times., 1919-03-26

British Columbia authorities, with all their hatcheries, have not been able to prevent the red salmon pack on the Fraser river, once the greatest red salmon stream in the world, from fall ing around 235,000 cases in 1913 grad ually down to less than 10000 cases this past year of 1918.
 The practice of continually taking something out and putting nothing back is against the law of nature. Even the ocean would finally yield to such treatment and it's deepest canyon bottoms would become dry land if this practice were continued for suf- fcient length of time.
 | The serious problem of replenish- ing the depleted salmon supply con- pels the serious attention of every Alaskan. It is as important to those living in the Interior regions as those on the coast, insofar as the territorial revenues are pooled, and not collected and spent in the district which alone have produced them. Fortunately, however, there is sunbeam of hope for a successful method of replensh- ing the salmon supply in Alaskan ] waters. They are to be found or seen in the results obtained from experi- ments which the Alaska Fish and Game club has been conducting dur ing the past thirty months in the | little hatchery at Juneau and on the | barren streams and lakes around Ju- neau, Skagway, and other parts of the First and Third divisions.
 The Way Pointed Out
 With A. J. Sprague as their source of inspection and guide, first with few dozen, but now with around 500 representative men of the territory as members, every one enthusiastic over the facts they have seen demonstrat- ed, the club has, working almost with out funds, showed that the eyed eggs of salmon and trout, as well as the young fry, may be placed in lakes now barren of fish life and that these fish will make a growth of several times more rapid than those of the same age kept in the hatchery troughs and given as careful attention as it is pos to uiuo thop, +horo
 The features of the clubs plan, which give rosy hopes that the natur- al salmon hatch may be increased ap- preciably is that the young salmon grown in these barren lakes will not only be able to find their own food, but in doing so they will not lose their natural instincts of self preservation which they do lose when hand fed in the hatcheries. This means that when they return to the briny deep they will not become the easy prey to their many enemies, of which the sea gulls and Dolly Warden trout are not the least, as it is we'll known the hatch cry raised fry do.
 Get Good Results
 Furthermore, these barren waters being free from Dolly Warden trout and other enemies of the salmon eggs or fry, the percentage of live young salmon, from the eggs fertilized and planted should be upwards of 75 per cent. The cost of providing feed for salmon in the barren lakes will be nil, whereas it amounts to thousands of dollars for each hatchery conducted under the old method. Since the young salmon can feed themselves and without dollar of expense, it is planned to hold them in these lakes until they are of sufficient size to eat the Dolly Warden trout eggs, and even the smaller trout, instead of the trout eating them, as heretofore.
 Were there only few acres of these lakes along Alaska's 26,O00 miles of coast line, the number of salmon that could be propogated under those fav- orable conditiones might not seem anywhere near adequate to the occa- sion. But there are known to be many thousands of acres of such waters, which are barren only by reason of ob- structions at the mouths. There are, no doubt, many other lakes of this kind of which the club has no knowl- edge.
 Will Settle Mooted Question
 No one is certain whether the vari- ous species of salmon return to the streams in which they were spawned, but when this experiment has been carried on sufficient length of time, that point will be settled beyond all reasonable dispute; for if salmon of the species planted return to that hitherto barren stream the evidence
 n-I~ khnk