ABSTRACT
The purpose of salmon propagation by artificial means is to replace natural production (i.e., mitigate) and/or augment levels of natural production (i.e., enhancement). Mitigation programs do not necessarily need to show economic feasibility, because their purpose is for replacing production. However, enhancement programs are primarily undertaken for economic development and their feasibility should be evaluated. In general, the feasibility of a program may be described in terms of (1) revenues received by the harvester and (2) total regional personal income generated in the local economy. While an evaluation of the first may be sufficient to decide whether a program is warranted, both measures must be evaluated to determine whether a more detailed cost–benefit analysis will provide needed information about a project’s feasibility. In this chapter we illustrate, via a case study of the Terminal Fishery Project (TFP) on the Columbia River, an economic evaluation process that utilized both of the above measures. That is, comparisons were made (1) between the production costs of a Columbia River salmon enhancement program and the commercial fishing ex-vessel value (i.e., to the harvester) and (2) between the production costs and the total regional personal income as generated by recreational fishing and the commercial harvesting and processing of salmon. The analysis demonstrated the sensitivity of hatchery costs to a number of factors, including survival-to-fisheries rates and assumptions regarding responsibility for production costs. The analysis further illustrates the need to consider other factors when conducting an economic feasibility analysis, including international and Indian fishing treaties, hatchery mitigation program policies, harvest management regimes, environmental conditions, and regulatory resource protection programs. The TFP was used as an example in this chapter to determine the economic feasibility of salmon propagation for the purpose of enhancement. When all costs (hatchery, transportation, and marking) are included, and at recently experienced TFP survival rate of 2.24%, a coho enhancement program may return only $0.19 to the regional economy for every one dollar spent on hatchery production and acclimation operations. Since the hatchery costs, some transportation costs, and marking costs would have to be incurred anyway under hatchery mitigation agreements for the smolt supplied to the TFP, the return to the regional economy is $8.40 for every dollar spent on acclimation operations alone. If all other requirements of past mitigation agreements are satisfied, consideration could be given to implementing the TFP as a feasible project.
