The federal government has announced plans to increase funding for the Columbia River Basin’s salmon hatcheries, the often-crumbling facilities that maintain the river’s dwindling salmon populations. But tribes and state agencies say the influx of funds is only a fraction of what is needed.
From their beginnings in the late 19th century, salmon hatcheries have gone from cure to band-aid to crutch. Now, we can’t live without manufactured fish.
The U.S. government promised Native tribes in the Pacific Northwest that they could keep fishing as they’d always done. But instead of preserving wild salmon, it propped up a failing system of hatcheries. Now, that system is falling apart.
