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In December 2024, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) Commissioners voted 4-3 to terminate the 64-year-old hatchery program on the North Umpqua River in an effort to restore wild summer steelhead populations.
This meant that the Rock Creek Hatchery—the last hatchery in the Umpqua Basin, which burned down in the 2020 Archie Creek Fire—would not be rebuilt.
Oregon’s fisheries are a billion-dollar industry. But ODFW has apparently decided to withhold resources and funding in the Umpqua Basin until the condemned and uninsurable Winchester Dam is removed.
ODFW calls Winchester Dam the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any river in Oregon.
ODFW’s January 2022 estimate puts the cost of rebuilding the Rock Creek Hatchery at $26 million—but now they say it may cost more than $50 million.
In opposition to ODFW’s decision, in January 2025, Oregon State Senator David Brock Smith, and southern Oregon Representatives Court Boice and Virgle Osborne sponsored SB 512, directing ODFW to “operate a summer steelhead fish hatchery at the Rock Creek Hatchery; and release the hatchery fish from the Rock Creek Hatchery into the North Umpqua River.”
But SB 512 was so unpopular in the state legislature, it died in the Ways and Means Committee.
Unable to garner the votes necessary to pass SB 512, at the end of June, in the waning moments of the 2025 legislative session, $1.4 million for SB 512 was added to the Omnibus Budget Bill to fund the rebuilding of the Rock Creek Hatchery.
But this backroom deal occurred without any discussion of fiscal impact or a vote.
The $1.4 million is only a fraction of the estimated cost of rebuilding the Rock Creek Hatchery. It is a terrible waste of the taxpayers’ money to spend $50 million to rebuild a fish hatchery where the river water is already too warm to support fish. This constitutes willful and deliberate financial irresponsibility on the part of Brock Smith and Virgle Osborne.
Matt Hill, Executive Director of the Douglas Timber Operators, is the ringleader for all who oppose ODFW’s proposed plan to allow the wild native fish to repopulate the North Umpqua River, unencumbered by competition with hatchery fish. Hill referred to Brock Smith, Virgle Osborne, and county commissioners as his “legislative partners.”
The Douglas Timber Operators, founded the controversial Umpqua Fishery Enhancement Derby (UFED) – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation as well as the fish ladder video camera at Winchester Dam, which is the main attraction at UFED’s website.
The operative word in Umpqua Fishery Enhancement Derby is “enhancement.” While l Douglas Timber Operators clearcuts our watersheds, the UFED fish ladder video camera at Winchester Dam gaslights naïve people into believing there are still plenty of fish left in the North Umpqua River. (Scroll down to see chart of declining fish populations at Winchester Dam).
Senator David Brock Smith, and southern Oregon Representatives Court Boice and Virgle Osborne, as well as the three Douglas County Commissioners, are now crowing about their accomplishment “saving the hatchery,” believing this move will make them popular with the voters.
But the working people of Douglas County aren’t going to fall for yet another $50 million con job at the hands of the very same men who advocated for free dump privileges for millionaires like Bruce Hanna, resulting in a $6 million toxic landfill scandal.
Jeff Dose, a fisheries biologist with more than 30 years’ experience in the Umpqua Basin called this “willful ignorance.”
According to Dose, these politicians are deliberately ignoring the preponderance of evidence that Rock Creek is demonstrably the worst location for a fishery in Oregon.
It is well-documented that the Rock Creek Hatchery is the poorest performing hatchery in the state fishery system. This is one of the reasons ODFW removed reconstruction of the Rock Creek Hatchery from its biennium funding request.
ODFW Deputy Director Shaun Clements admitted that climate change is now the tail that wags the dog in ODFW’s hatchery resiliency plan. Global warming has changed ODFW’s paradigm for water quality—it’s all about water temperature now.
Although Washington State puts $60 million a year into hatchery maintenance and infrastructure, ODFW is burdened with deferred maintenance from twenty years of spending too little to maintain Oregon’s fish hatcheries.
ODFW is believed to have received a $17 million insurance payment after the Archie Creek Fire destroyed the Rock Creek Hatchery but they intend to spend that money on more productive fishery locations than Rock Creek.
At a December 5, 2024, meeting, opponents of ODFW’s closure of the Rock Creek Hatchery met at the Activity Center in the Winchester Bay Marina, south of Reedsport.
At this meeting, ODFW Deputy Director Shaun Clements told them, “When we lose a hatchery, it can take years to rebuild. We’re rearing cold-water fish, and when we have [river] temperatures that are 70 to 80 degrees [Fahrenheit] during the summer, that’s really not great for rearing salmon, steelhead, and trout.”
According to Clements, based on ODFW’s projections, peak river temperatures at the Rock Creek Hatchery on the North Umpqua will be as high as 80-85 degrees—significantly higher than river temperatures at other Oregon fisheries, especially after so much forest canopy at Rock Creek was lost in the 2020 Archie Creek Fire.
Senator David Brock Smith, and southern Oregon Representatives Court Boice and Virgle Osborne, as well as the three Douglas County Commissioners don’t want voters to know that money spent on rebuilding the Rock Creek Hatchery will be wasted.
These politicians want Oregonians to remain blissfully unaware that $1.4 million barely scratches the surface for rebuilding the hatchery and that the taxpayers are now on the hook for the $50+ million.
These elected officials don’t want voters to know that their back room deal with the legislature will ultimately spend tens of millions on a fishery that has already proven itself unproductive and unsustainable.
On August 4, 2025, ODFW posted a job listing for a Fish and Wildlife Manager for the Rock Creek Hatchery that pays a monthly salary of $4,978-$7,353.
Senator David Brock Smith and his colleague Oregon Representative Virgle Osborne are known around the state capitol as “Ryan Beckley’s errand boys.” Beckley is President of the Board of Directors of the Winchester Water Control District, owners of the derelict 135-year-old Winchester Dam, and owner of TerraFirma Foundation Systems.
“Beijing” Brock Smith ingenuously told a newspaper reporter, “We know there is no genetic difference between hatchery origin and natural origin salmonid(s). It is long past time to set aside the wild extremist narrative.”
Brock Smith is well aware that this statement is patently false and unsupported by any scientific evidence. Umpqua fisheries biologist Jeff Dose calls Brock Smith’s assertion, “Nonsense.”
Although hatchery fish do increase overall fish populations, like cloned saplings at a tree farm, they lack the genetic diversity of wild native fish.
Simply put, hatchery fish are dumber than wild fish.
And when hatchery fish breed with wild fish, they contaminate the gene pool. A February 2024 study indicates hatchery rearing can “inadvertently select for traits that may be disadvantageous in the wild. This could have downstream implications for native stocks, if these fish breed with wild fish when they are released.”
Some argue that there is no scientific proof that hatchery fish impact wild steelhead. But diversity in the gene pool is essential for the survival of any species.
Wild fish are shaped by natural selection, in a wild, natural aquatic habitat, evolving in the same rivers and streams to which their forebears have returned for a millennia.
Hatchery fish are shaped by unnatural selection in artificial, predator-free tanks where they are fed pellets and are artificially spawned. This leaves them ill-equipped to survive or spawn in the wild. And they pass their inferior genes on to their progeny.
Since the 1890s, hatcheries played a significant role in salmon and steelhead management in the Pacific Northwest. At that time, hatchery fish were considered the solution to diminishing fish populations, without taking into consideration overharvesting, loss of habitat, and barriers to migration. This attitude is still widespread.
However, Brock Smith’s assertion that “there is no genetic difference between hatchery origin and natural origin salmonid(s)” is a lie—and he knows it.
Everyone at the state capitol is well aware that Brock Smith and Virgle Osborne are in the pocket of the Winchester Dam owners, which has greatly affected their credibility with other legislators.
Brock Smith has repeatedly and unabashedly expressed his “need to protect my individuals,” referring to the 100 privileged Winchester Water Control District members, who will stop at nothing to retain their illegal and dangerous private water ski lake behind the condemned and uninsurable Winchester Dam—a dam that provides no hydroelectricity, flood control, or irrigation.
Brock Smith is committed to covering up the destructive land and water use practices on spawning and rearing habitat, at the hands of big timber, big agriculture, big industry, and the Winchester Dam owners.
There is a preponderance of evidence from nearly a century and a half of Oregon hatcheries that hatchery fish have ecological and genetic adverse impacts on wild migratory fish populations.
When hatchery fish are introduced into streams, wild fish are adversely affected by increased competition, predation, disease transmission, altered migration patterns, and altered predator behavior and survival.
In a 2023 article in the peer-reviewed journal Fisheries Management and Ecology, the authors conducted a global search of peer-reviewed publications and synthesized the results of 206 publications from the period 1970-2021. They reported that 83% of the publications found adverse impacts to wild salmon and steelhead populations from hatchery fish, while only 3% were determined to be beneficial.
More than three decades ago, ODFW discontinued the North Umpqua winter steelhead hatchery program, resulting in an all-wild winter steelhead run. After two generations, the population began to increase and currently is one of, if not the, strongest population in Oregon.
This relatively quick return by this all-wild winter steelhead run contradicts the urban myth propagated by Ryan Beckley and his puppets, David Brock Smith and Virgle Osborne, that there are no wild populations left.
Natural selection facilitates widespread diversity of genes within the wild winter steelhead population and the re-expression of that diversity in their offspring.
Brock Smith repeats such falsehoods because he is committed to enabling big timer, big agriculture, and big business from
accountability for the environmental degradation caused by agricultural runoff, clearcutting, overfishing, and the abandonment of fisheries best management practices.
Brock Smith can never admit that impassable barriers like the Winchester Dam—the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any Oregon River—is negatively affecting wild fish populations. He has made it his job to lie to the voters.
“Beijing” Brock Smith is desperately trying to divert attention away from the preponderance of evidence that indicate that, since the 1960s, wild migratory native fish counts on Oregon’s rivers have plummeted—especially on the North Umqpua River, where the Winchester Dam impedes fish passage.
To address this ever-shrinking wild fish population, ODFW spends one third of its budget on fish hatchery programs—so each year there are fewer and fewer wild fish and more and more hatchery fish.
Today, more than 70% of the salmon and steelhead caught by anglers on all Oregon Rivers are hatchery fish.
Wild, migratory native fish are the ancient old growth of the aquatic forest. They’ve been here for millions of years. They are, in a word, irreplaceable.
It is indeed ironic that so many of those who oppose ODFW’s closure of the Rock Creek Hatchery also reject the preponderance of evidence that the Winchester Dam is contributing to the dwindling fish populations in the North Umpqua River.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
