The State of the Wild Steelhead Coalition: Year 2

I began my association with the WSC during the first year as a Trustee and replaced Duggan Harman as President last spring. I was very impressed with the organization, its Board of Directors, and the accomplishments of the WSC during its founding year. We have also had a great group of Trustees, a very active membership, and regional representatives eager to further the goals of the WSC.

The WSC Board of Directors have been very busy throughout the past year. I believe that the crowning achievement this year was the sponsorship of the First Northwest Steelhead Summit on November 23, 2002 on the University of Washington Campus. The all-day affair was attended by the representatives from nearly 30 angling and conservation groups from California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. We discussed some of the major issues affecting steelhead in the Northwest and began to design plans to implement change. Ad hoc working committees were formed for several issues and their reports are currently being written. Updates have been provided on our website and a second Summit is being planned for May or June of this year.

The WSC has also continued to have top-flight speakers at our general monthly meetings and has had two very successful fundraising raffles. Speakers have included PhD’s, doctoral students, government officials, fisheries enhancement volunteers and wild steelhead spokesmen such as Bill McMillan. We wrote a Guest Editorial for the October/November, 2002 issue of Salmon, Trout and Steelheader, responding to another editorial that argued that there was no difference between wild steelhead and hatchery steelhead. We also wrote and submitted a grant request to Patagonia, updated our website, and have kept involved in several major fisheries issues like the Columbia River tangle net destruction of wild steelhead. We also went on record supporting the Wild Sky Wilderness Bill and permitting anglers to harvest over 30 hatchery steelhead annually.

Our newsletter, The Adipose, continues to improve in the capable hands of Preston Singletary and Bob Young and besides our website, is our link to the membership. We have established a WSC Hatchery Reform Committee under the leadership of Nate Mantua and he and his group of biologists and geneticists will be presenting a document in the next few months. The WSC membership continues to grow

and we had a booth at the Fly Fishing Show in Bellevue, WA where membership materials and a brochure were distributed.

With the consensus statements we hope will evolve from the Second Northwest Steelhead Summit, the information provided by our Hatchery Reform Committee and the data previously assembled in our document titled “Biological and Economic Benefits of Wild Steelhead”, we hope to approach the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife once again to argue for mandatory statewide catch and release of all wild steelhead. There will be a major regulation review cycle in 2004 and the WSC will be prepared.

I think the first two years of the Wild Steelhead Coalition’s existence have been highly successful and I am optimistic that in the future, we will have an impact on how steelhead are managed throughout the Northwest. To do that however, we must continue to be much more than just another “fishing club”.  We must keep being a diverse group, base our positions on the best available science, and make the fish our top priority. We have certainly come a long way with the hard work of a lot of fine people, but challenges still lie ahead.

Sincerely,

Jack Berryman, Ph.D.

2002-2003

WSC Board President

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