Baumhardt, Alex. “Billions Spent on Hatcheries, Habitat Fails to Help Native Columbia River Salmon, Study Finds.” Opb, 5 Aug. 2023, https://www.opb.org/article/2023/08/05/columbia-river-salmon-habitat-spending-study/

Professor William Jaeger and Biologist March Scheurell have looked at 50 years of native and hatchery salmon and steelhead return data from the Bonneville Dam in the Columbia River and have concluded local habitat restoration projects have been a failure. After years of overfishing, farm runoff, logging, mining, and damming, Steelhead, Chinook, coho, and sockeye numbers have been declining. The Bonneville Dam is where many salmon and steelhead deposit their eggs after spending years in the ocean, making it a high-priority area for hatchery and habitat restoration initiatives. Hatchery fish that have been released into the river have increased competition for food with native fish and have also spread some diseases to wild fish.

This is a very interesting case study of where our best intentions go wrong. Authorities were trying to restore fish numbers by introducing hatchery fish, but they’ve outcompeted wild fish to the detriment of the ecosystem. It is also amazing to see how much money was poured into restoring this area. It is estimated that the 200 salmon hatcheries in the Columbia River Basin have used $9 billion in taxpayer dollars during the last 40 years. This doesn’t even take into account the money spent by local governments, nonprofits, and NGOs. This is disheartening, and I hope we learn from this. I wonder how we can bring back wild salmon to a level that was seen before human development. It makes me wonder if there are any real differences between hatchery and wild salmon. There must be, but I can’t imagine what they’d be. This article is related to environmental science because it discusses a failed effort to restore