$9 Billion wasted on fish conservation in the Columbia River Basin
Over four decades more than $9 billion in tax dollars were spent on fish conservation in the Columbia River basin.
Research headed by William Jaeger from the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences analyzed 50 years of data to answer the basic question: Is there any evidence of an overall boost in wild fish abundance that can be linked to the totality of the recovery efforts?
The study from Oregon State University shows that all these efforts have not resulted in a notable increase in wild salmon and steelhead populations in the Columbia River Basin. In fact, of all the many different conservation efforts, all the salmon and steelhead population growth can be attributed to one source: hatcheries.
The actual impact of all of these [individual conservation] efforts has always been poorly understood. One of the issues is that most studies evaluating restoration efforts have examined individual projects for specific species, life stages, or geographic areas, which limits the ability to make broad inferences at the basin level.
The role of hatcheries in recovery plans is controversial for many reasons, but results do indicate that hatchery production combined with restoration spending is associated with increases in returning adult fish. However, we found that adult returns attributable to spending and hatchery releases combined do not exceed what we can attribute to hatcheries alone.
It’s another example in Oregon’s sadly long list of feel-good measures and huge tax spending programs that failed to provide the promised results. This is very disappointing not only because of the wasted money, but because a great number of the conservation groups that lobbied for these programs have told us their science showed the expensive efforts would improve fish populations. It turns out they were wrong about both their science and policies.
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