Take Action: ODFW Looking to Expand Wild Steelhead Harvest

WTF Oregon?

From Osprey Steelhead News comes this very important call to action!!!!!!

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) is in the midst of developing a new management plan for Oregon's coastal rivers. Among the more controversial provisions is ODFW's plan to open wild steelhead retention in several rivers that are among the last best wild steelhead producing watersheds on the coast. Among the rivers that would be opened to harvesting wild steelhead are the Nehalem, Trask, Big Elk Creek in the Yaquina watershed, Lake Creek in the Siuslaw watershed, the Salmon, the Lower and Middle Umpqua River, SF Coos, NF Coquille and EF Coquille. This combined with ODFWs focus on harvest opportunities supported by hatcheries, and their increasing reliance on wild broodstock programs that rob productivity from wild steelhead populations to provide harvest opportunity poses a major threat to the future of wild steelhead on the Oregon Coast.

Please take a few minutes to call or email ODFW's Conservation and Recovery Assistant Program Manager Tom Stahl and voice your opinion against the harvest of wild steelhead in Oregon.

Thomas.Stahl@state.or.us or          

503-947-6219