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Science 26 March 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5666, p. 1980
DOI: 10.1126/science.1095410
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Policy Forum

ECOLOGY:
Hatcheries and Endangered Salmon

Ransom A. Myers,1 Simon A. Levin,2 Russell Lande,3 Frances C. James,4 William W. Murdoch,5 Robert T. Paine6

Conservation hatcheries are unproven in restoring threatened and endangered populations of salmon to sustainable levels, and may cause more harm than good. Nonetheless, a recent court decision found that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must include hatchery salmon in Endangered Species Act listings, where NMFS has included those fish as components of the core "evolutionarily significant units (ESUs)." This undercuts efforts for restoration of wild salmon. The authors of this Policy Forum, therefore, urge that NMFS use a more legally defensible definition of an ESU; artificially propagated individuals should not be included in ESUs, even if they are indistinguishable at indicator genetic loci. Hatcheries generally reduce current fitness and inhibit future adaptation of natural populations. Hence, the legal definition of an ESU must be unambiguous and must exclude hatchery fish.

1Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4J1; ransom.myers{at}dal.ca. 2Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; slevin{at}princeton.edu. 3Department of Biology, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; rlande{at}ucsd.edu/. 4Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA; james{at}bio.fsu.edu/. 5Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA murdoch{at}lifesci.ucsb.edu/. 6Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; painert{at}u.washington.edu/

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