The stated purpose of the Wild Fish Conservancy, The Conservation Angler, Wild Steelhead Coalition, and Native Fish Society is to eliminate hatchery plants of steelhead by establishing wild steelhead gene banks, and turn these rivers into catch and release fisheries.

They persuade us with attractive vocabulary, like  diverse, extinct, wild fish recovery. They disingenuously conflate the terms “wild” and “native” and neglect to inform us that all release of hatchery steelhead in Puget Sound Rivers is suspended through 2015.

What they do not cite is any direct, dispositive and credible scientific foundation to support the claim that eliminating hatchery fish will help the “wild” steelhead rebound.

For almost 100 years some hatchery steelhead have been spawning with native steelhead rather than returning to the hatchery. During the same period, hybrid surviving smolts along with the “native” smolts, if any now remain, swim to the ocean and return to spawn, identified by their adipose fin as “wild” fish. But wild does not mean native. Wild could be anything from 100 percent native steelhead genes, to 100 percent hatchery genes.

Rather than threaten WDFW and NOAA with lawsuits, my opinion is to simply allow the professional adults in those agencies to manage steelhead.

Robert R. Rohrberg

Everett