A summary of the suite of hatchery impacts on wild fish
✓ Hatcheries harm wild fish populations through genetic, ecological, fishery, and facility impacts.
✓ Hatchery fish spawn with wild fish and decrease the genetic fitness, adaptability, and diversity of wild fish populations.
✓ When hatchery fish spawn with wild fish there is a loss of the wild fish's productive capacity in each spawning interaction.
✓ An influx of hatchery fish overloads the carrying capacity of an ecosystem as hatchery fish compete with wild fish for rearing habitat and food resources.
✓ Hatcheries artificially boost the fish population in certain areas, attracting more predators that eat both hatchery and wild fish.
✓ Hatchery fish are released at larger sizes and eat smaller wild fish.
✓ When hatchery production increases, so does fishing effort and catch by commercial and recreational fishers, leading to increased mortality for both hatchery and wild fish.
✓ Hatchery facilities directly harm wild fish and the surrounding environment by blocking wild fish passage to upstream spawning habitats, and by discharging effluent that has been contaminated with pathogenic fungi, bacteria, parasites, effluent, and medical treatments.
✓ In some hatcheries, at-risk wild fish are intentionally killed for hatchery broodstock.
✓ These harms to wild fish and the environment are cumulative and proportionate to the abundance of hatchery fish relative to the abundance of wild fish (i.e., as wild fish decline and hatchery production increases, hatchery impacts on the remaining wild fish populations increase significantly).
Lower Columbia Rivers at Risk from High Hatchery Releases
Washougal River (WA)
Sandy River (OR)
Willamette River (OR)
Clackamas River (OR)
Lewis River (WA)
Kalama River (WA)
Cowlitz River (WA)
Toutle River (WA)
Coweeman River (WA)
Elochoman River (WA)
Clatskanie River (OR)
Big Creek (OR)
Grays River (WA)
Deep Creek (WA)
Youngs River (OR)
Lower Columbia River ESA-listed Species At-risk:
Columbia River chum salmon
Lower Columbia River Coho Salmon
Lower Columbia River Chinook
Lower Columbia River Steelhead
Upper Willamette Winter Steelhead
Upper Willamette River Chinook Salmon