BY ANDY WALGAMOTT, NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN MAGAZINE
A Southwest Washington Congresswoman this week swung by a state hatchery that’s been closed, putting more pressure on WDFW to reverse course and reopen the facility that has produced steelhead and trout for local fisheries.
Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-3) is also encouraging state lawmakers to prioritize keeping Skamania Hatchery open. WDFW had plans to launch a coveted integrated winter steelhead broodstock program at the facility outside Washougal but had to shelve it due to budget cuts last year.
“Lawsuits have significantly increased the cost and perceived risk of running hatcheries. Combined with a constrained state budget, hatcheries are facing closure – but the kind of recreational and subsistence fishing that comes from steelhead cannot become an extinct species,” said Gluesenkamp Perez in a press release.
She along with Clark County officials and fishermen have been urging WDFW Director Kelly Susewind to use a recent boost in federal Mitchell Act funds to keep Skamania open.
In response, Susewind told them that that money – $4 million that increased disbursements for the regionwide Mitchell Act program to $27.5 million this fiscal year – will likely have to go towards covering “costly” new conditions that came out of a December 2024 National Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion that provides ESA coverage for the facilities.
The funding pinch at Skamania traces back to 2025, when WDFW requested $1.9 million from state legislators to operate Skamania and North Toutle Hatcheries to cover federal shortfalls but only received enough for one of them. The agency privileged the latter, which fuels ocean salmon fisheries and satisfies legal obligations, over Skamania, and now it’s hearing about it from more powerful interests than bloggers.
Gluesenkamp Perez said hatchery steelhead cost taxpayers about $4 per fish while providing “high-quality protein at a time when groceries are becoming a real burden.”
“An interest group’s ability to sue until they get a favorable outcome shouldn’t determine who has access to recreational or subsistence fishing,” she added, a reference to a WDFW settlement with the Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler that killed the old segregated steelhead program at Skamania and led the agency to get federal approval for the new integrated one before the hatchery was shut down before even beginning to collect fish.
Fishermen and county officials were on hand for the Congresswoman’s visit.
“CCA Washington appreciates MGP’s work to secure additional Mitchell Act funding for the federal government’s responsibility to mitigate the impact of Columbia River dams on salmon and steelhead through hatchery production,” said Nello Picinich, Coastal Conservation Association of Washington’s executive director. “We also join the Congresswoman’s call for WDFW to utilize a portion of these funds to prevent the closures of the Skamania Hatchery on the Washougal River, consistent with the immense benefits it products to the residents of Southwest Washington and WDFW’s past promises and statements of support.”
Said Brian Nichols, a Skamania County Commission member, “Closing this hatchery will not only impact people for whom fishing is a way of life, it will be harmful for our local businesses who depend on this fishery.”
With Congress in recess, MGP has been visiting her sprawling six-plus-county district, home to rich fishing and hunting opportunities, and burnishing her credentials with sportsmen.
During a tour of the proposed 5,000-acre Upper Grays River Community Forest, she chatted with commissioners from Wahkiakum and Pacific Counties who’ve expressed concerns about the impacts of changing private timberland ownership in recent years that in part has locked out local hunters, an issue covered in local newspapers and the April issue of Northwest Sportsman Magazine.
“There are gates going up to prevent people from being able to access forests that they’ve hunted in for generations. I’m proud of this group that is working to perpetuate these lands,” Gluesenkamp Perez said.
She will face off in an August primary against a member of her own party, as well as Washington State Senator John Braun (R), who introduced a pair of hatchery bills, including one for integrated steelhead broodstock programs, in Olympia last session, and others.
