State officials worry about trout virus

Despite the uncertainty, state authorities confirm that they released 270,000 brown trout this year from hatcheries where fish tested positive for the cutthroat trout virus.

Say what?

LINK (via: Pierce County Herald)

USFWS Names Dworshak ‘Hatchery Of The Year’

Kind of like being voted the ugliest girl in school.

LINK (via: CBB)

Elwha Hatchery Loses Half Its Fish

The danger of putting all your eggs in the hatchery basket.

The failure of a secondary pump at the Elwha fish hatchery has resulted in the loss of 200,000 juvenile coho and 2,000 steelhead. This latest loss comes after a loss of hatchery Chinook earlier this spring due to the mistaken release of smolts coinciding with a brief high sediment load.

According to many experts the hatchery on the Elwha was unnecessary and natural spawning would have been a much more effective and economical strategy to re-colonize the Elwha fish populations. Instead we've all paid for a 16 million dollar hatchery boondoggle that has been one giant fiasco.

LINK (via: Earthfix)

Study: California must improve salmon, steelhead hatcheries

All current research suggests that hatchery salmon and steelhead degrade the runs of their wild counterparts. Now a major 2 year study has determined that California needs to dramatically reform its fish hatcheries in order to maintain healthy salmon and steelhead populations. 

LINK (via: The Miami Herald)

Bonk Hatchery Steelhead Shirts Available Here

Cutthroat trout stage comeback on Hoback

The Hoback River’s cutthroat fishery has bounced back, now that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has stopped stocking it with hatchery-raised fish.

LINK (via: The Jackson Hole News and Guide)

Unfortunatley the Hoback is now threatened by natural gas development and made American River's list of America's Most Endangered Rivers.

The Noble Basin sits in the shadow of the Wyoming Range, most of which was protected from energy development by Congress in 2009.  But previous leases bought by energy companies can still be developed, and that includes one proposal for 136 wells to be drilled by Texas based Plains Exploration and Production (PXP).

One just needs to look at what gas drilling has done to the area surrounding Pinedale to see why the door should not be opened to gas development in the Noble Basin.