The use of hatcheries to supplement struggling wild populations and augment harvest opportunities remains one of the most controversial subjects in the salmon and steelhead world. While production hatcheries often provide harvest opportunities where they wouldn’t otherwise exist, they also present significant risks to wild populations.
A recent review by a team of researchers led by John McMillan, the former Wild Steelheaders Science Director, of over fifty years of peer-reviewed global hatchery research found that 83% of scientific studies indicated that hatcheries had adverse impacts on wild salmonid populations.