The federal government has announced plans to increase funding for the Columbia River Basin’s salmon hatcheries, the often-crumbling facilities that maintain the river’s dwindling salmon populations. But tribes and state agencies say the influx of funds is only a fraction of what is needed.
The U.S. government promised Native tribes in the Pacific Northwest that they could keep fishing as they’d always done. But instead of preserving wild salmon, it propped up a failing system of hatcheries. Now, that system is falling apart.
