The SAFE program was developed in 1993 to provide salmon and steelhead for dwindling in-river fisheries. As wild populations continue to decline across the Pacific coast, production under the Mitchell Act and SAFE program is used as justification by fisheries managers to avoid curtailing unsustainable harvest levels in ocean fisheries from Oregon to Alaska. Today, NMFS, both the funder and the regulatory agency of these programs, recognizes hatcheries and harvest as two of the leading threats to wild salmon and steelhead.
In 2016, Wild Fish Conservancy sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over these same hatchery programs to force them to comply with the ESA when funding and authorizing Mitchell Act hatcheries. As a result of that successful litigation, NMFS developed a Biological Opinion on Mitchell Act hatcheries that set limits and standards to prevent the extinction of already at-risk wild salmon and steelhead.
Our jointly-filed legal complaint details NMFS’s consistent failure to comply with critical terms and conditions of their biological opinions for both the Mitchell Act and SAFE hatchery programs in tributaries throughout the lower Columbia River in Washington and Oregon. Most concerning, these hatchery programs are seriously exceeding federally mandated limits for the number of hatchery fish reaching wild spawning grounds and breeding with wild salmon.
The complaint also challenges the agency’s present approach of utilizing weirs, which have demonstrated ineffectiveness at reducing the proportion of hatchery fish and which obstruct the migration of wild salmon, further undermining recovery. In addition to NMFS, the complaint details that local and state agencies who operate these facilities in Oregon and Washington are also failing to comply with requirements set to protect ESA-listed species under the Mitchell Act and SAFE program Biological Opinions.
“Just like targets set for fighting climate change, the standards of the Endangered Species Act are not just lofty goals, they’re crucial limits that can't be crossed without causing serious damage,” says Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy. “It’s disheartening that our government has consistently failed to meet their own standards and seem content with causing the decline of wild salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin. Despite our best efforts to collaborate to implement known solutions, it is clear that legal action is the only option to hold these agencies responsible for addressing the ongoing harm caused by hatcheries.”
In recent years, Mitchell Act funding has ranged between $15,000,000 and $22,000,000 annually, supporting roughly one-third of all hatchery production in the Columbia River. A 2023 study evaluated the impact of the federal government’s $9 billion investment in the Columbia River's hatchery production and restoration spending over the past forty years. Despite the massive scale of this expense, the study results showed no evidence of increased abundance of wild salmon or steelhead in the Columbia River Basin.