BETHEL, Vt. – Four states, three federal agencies, utility companies and private groups have spent an estimated $200 million since 1967 trying to bring back native Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River watershed.

Success has been limited at best. Salmon now come back in such low numbers that federal budget crunchers are considering substantial cuts to the program.

Critics seem more numerous than salmon showing up at dams in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

“I used to support the program,” says Sumner Stowe, a 62-year-old angler from Granville who spends many days fishing the Vermont waters of the Connecticut’s watershed and who has fished for Atlantic salmon in Canada. “But, they’ve tried it for many, many years, for many, many millions of dollars, and it’s pretty obvious now that it’s not going to work.”

He and other critics say the money could be better spent trying to restore trout habitat, and that the baby salmon stocked each year might better be used to help restore landlocked salmon fisheries in places such as Lake Champlain.

Supporters contend the project hasn’t failed. It has bridged state and international boundaries, jump-started dozens of scientific research projects, helped clean the river, brought back other species of fish and interested thousands of schoolchildren.

It just hasn’t restored a sea-run strain of Atlantic salmon – a species in trouble throughout most of its historic range.

Last year – when the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program operated on a budget of about $3.7 million – 43 salmon came back to the river to spawn. Forty-four salmon returned the year before. That’s an $85,000-per-fish average.

Atlantic salmon are anadromous: They spend their first two years in fresh water. They mature, then migrate out to the ocean, swimming off the north Atlantic coast to feeding grounds near Greenland.

From there, driven by a homing instinct biologists don’t fully understand, they return to the rivers of their birth to spawn. As breeding grounds and nurseries, freshwater rivers are critical in a salmon’s life.

The Connecticut River system lost its salmon population when dams were built, blocking the fish’s migration. Restoration efforts have included trying to get the salmon around dams with fish ladders and trap-and-truck operations.