NASHUA, N.H. (AP) _ The government is scaling back the annual stocking of Atlantic salmon in the Merrimack River in Massachusetts and New Hampshire because the program may not be working.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, and four other federal and state agencies tentatively have agreed to halve the number of juvenile salmon stocked each spring in the river's New Hampshire headwaters.
The reduced stocking represents a sea change in thinking on salmon. The agencies believe the long-held premise that the more salmon they stock, the more will return may have been counterproductive.
The agencies also plan to stock in fewer places and fewer fish in each place, a shift that reflects growing frustration with the salmon program.
``We're pumping out salmon every year, they're disappearing, and it's really discouraging,'' Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recently told the Boston Globe. He called the program a disappointment.
A century ago, more than a half-million salmon spawned annually in 34 New England rivers. But because of dams, overfishing and pollution, now only 2,500 salmon spawn on 17 rivers. On the Merrimack, the average annual salmon return from 1982 to 1997 was 118, with a low in 1994 of 21.
So far this year, 120 salmon have returned.
The program is run by Larry Stolte for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from his office in Nashua on the river, which empties into the Atlantic at Newburyport, Mass., after coursing 116 miles from Franklin, N.H.
Up to $750,000 has been spent annually by the agencies for the 23-year-old program.
Other agencies involved in the program include the U.S. Forest Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.
The agencies agreed in concept to the shift at an Oct. 15 meeting in New Hampshire.
Critical to the shift was a biological determination that stocking during the last few years had grown so high _ up to 2.8 million fry, or newly hatched salmon, a year _ that the migrating smolts they grow into were becoming smaller by the year.
At the same time, downstream predators such as striped bass were becoming more fierce. So increasingly, smolts weakened by competition were becoming easy prey.
By halving the stock, ``we're hoping that translates into more smolts going out to sea and more adult salmon coming back,'' said Mark Tisa, assistant director of fisheries at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
Some environmentalists say adjusting the stock numbers misses the point because the salmon are facing even greater threats beyond competition and predation, especially dams blocking or impeding migration.
``Until the issue of dams is addressed, the salmon program is doomed to failure,'' said David Carle, executive director of the Conservation Action Project.
While comparisons are hard to make among salmon, shad and herring runs because of many variables, the annual returns show shad and herring are doing better than salmon.
From 1983 to 1998, an average 13,169 shad and 108,495 herring returned each year.