Tag Archives: native salmon

Do humans have it wrong? Treating salmon as commodity may threaten their wild existence

As once-uncountable Northwest salmon stocks have dwindled, humans have tried a number of remedies to bolster or replace the disappearing fish. We’ve caught them at dams and trucked and barged them past obstacles. When the fish return home, we strip them of their eggs, fertilize them in buckets and grow new generations of baby salmon in hatchery raceways. But what if humans have it all wrong? What if those efforts are not just not working, but actually reducing the salmon’s odds of survival? What if hatchery fish do more than just dilute the genetic fitness of the wild, native salmon that evolved to live and spawn in particular conditions in specific stretches of individual streams? click here to read the story 16:00