It is odd that a few months after Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton touted the importance of restoring the Penobscot River – in part to provide habitat to Atlantic salmon – a service she oversees now wants to cut $70,000 out of Maine hatchery budgets, meaning fewer fish can be raised to be released into the river she wants to save. Consistency may not be a hallmark of the federal government, but this decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to be reversed to help the Penobscot and the eight rivers that are home to populations of Atlantic salmon called endangered by the same agency.

According to the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission, if the budget cuts stand the Green Lake Hatchery in Ellsworth will halve the number of fish it raises and stocks in the Penobscot River, not now included in the ESA listing, but headed that way with this move. Putting fewer juvenile fish in the river will drop return rates to only 300 adult fish in 2007, only 80 of which will be female, according to commission biologists. With so few females, all must be caught and taken to the hatchery to spawn future generations of salmon. That means no “extra” females will be left in the river to breed naturally, giving another boost to the river’s small but increasing salmon population.

Programs aimed at protecting the eight rivers that are home to endangered populations will be harmed, but to a lesser extent. The Craig Brook Hatchery in Orland, which houses fish from six of the rivers, would get to keep $20,000 to collect and store genetic samples from these fish. However, the more than $70,000 needed for a federal lab to analyze these samples to determine which lines should be bred with one another to produce the most healthy populations was diverted elsewhere. This begs the question: Why collect the genetic material if it can’t be analyzed?

The Green Lake hatchery would be able to provide no juvenile fish to be stocked in the Union, Saco and St. Croix rivers. These rivers are not part of the endangered species listing, but local volunteers are successfully building up salmon populations there. A streamside incubation program on the Kennebec River would also be discontinued and a popular school program where children hatch salmon eggs in fish tanks would be reduced by two-thirds.

The budget cuts are also confusing given last week’s announcement by the Bush administration that it would start counting salmon held in hatcheries as wild fish to reduce the burden of the Endangered Species Act in the Pacific Northwest. It is unclear if this logic will be applied to Maine, where hatchery fish are used to try to boost wild populations, not to supplement commercial and recreational salmon catches (both of which are illegal here). If the dictum does apply to Maine, it clearly makes no sense to reduce the number of hatchery fish while at the same time trying to get states and industries out from under the requirements of the ESA.

The proposed cuts to the budgets of two fish hatcheries in Maine are shortsighted and may jeopardize Atlantic salmon recovery efforts. The service should heed the request from Maine Sen. Susan Collins to re-instate the seemingly small amount of money so that fish can be raised and released into the Penobscot as part of the river restoration Secretary Norton champions.