Drawing
the Short Bat: George Nandor and His Fish
Hatchery Whackers
The story of the Fall Creek Hatchery fish-clubbing video
is the stuff of legend: a small-town hero, government
intrigue, a media cover-up and enough blood and guts to
keep Bruce Willis happy.
Two years ago, Philomath banker Ronald Yechout and a
buddy were elk hunting in the dripping woods of Western
Oregon and came upon a scene that horrified them. At the
Fall Creek Fish Hatchery, at least four men, armed with
baseball bats, were clubbing hundreds of adult coho salmon
to death.
Poachers? No, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
workers.
Yechout tried to stop them and was told that these are
surplus fish that have to be destroyed. How could that
be? The coho is listed as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act in the Alsea River Basin. Yeah, but these
are junk fish, the workers say. Hatchery fish. No better
than government surplus cheese that has to be gotten rid
of. Even worse to Yechout's ears, they said it would continue
to happen until all the fish were dead.
The next week, he brought a video camera.
Now, Yechout is a folk hero--sort of an Erin Brockovich
without the cleavage. The video has been copied more often
than a bootleg Grateful Dead tape, and the incident has
the state public-relations folks scrambling.
Yechout insists he's not looking for controversy. "I
would just wrap this film up in a box and you'd never
see me again if the government would just tell the truth
about what's going on," he says.
To Yechout, and a lot of others, the truth is that the
government has gone crazy: While the feds are declaring
salmon endangered, the state is bopping them on the heads
like so many field mice.
The state of Oregon kills tens of thousands of hatchery
fish a year at the 34 state hatcheries. Yet while the
gruesome footage is good for getting a crowd riled, Yechout
isn't fighting for salmon rights; the fish have completed
their journey and are about to die anyway. He's fuming
because they are killed before spawning. The government
is deliberately keeping an endangered species from reproducing.
It's madness, he says.
The state says it isn't so simple. The Fall Creek Hatchery
cohos were spawned using old-style hatchery techniques
that took stock from anywhere in the state, creating a
Heinz-57 mix of a fishery. Today we know that dilutes
the wild fish stock, so the entire Fall Creek run is being
destroyed to protect the 100 or so wild coho remaining.
According to Steve Smith, hatchery specialist at the
National Marine Fishery, allowing a mixed marriage of
hatchery and wild fish just won't do. While the state
does supplement some wild runs with hatchery fish in other
streams, it's not enough to fend off an endangered-species
listing or the restrictions that would entail. Most hatchery
fish, Smith says, are dumb as stumps. They've been raised
in comfort, can't fend for themselves and are inappropriate
breeding partners for wild fish.
The problem is, unless you accept that there is a difference
between hatchery and native salmon, that logic doesn't
work. Yechout doesn't accept it, and he has been studying
up.
"There is science on both sides of this," he says, "but
they choose to ignore the other science."
Yechout has had some help spreading the word. Bill Wattenburg,
a talk-show host on San Francisco's KGO Radio, learned
about the video after The Wall Street Journal did
a story about it in February. Wattenburg took up the cause
on his talk show; at night the California station comes
in loud and clear in the Willamette Valley. That's where
Henning Bjerre of Tigard heard it, and he was outraged
that news of what was happening in his backyard had to
come from out of state. He wasn't alone. He's just one
of many angry citizens who have e-mailed, telephoned or
stopped by the offices of WW to demand an investigation
into the killing fields of ODFW. "I don't believe it,"
he says. "I can't believe they want to destroy fish to
save them."
In the past few months the spark set off by the video
has erupted into a public flame. The news is spread mostly
through word of mouth, e-mail and action alerts from various
groups opposed to government intervention. Suddenly, it
is the main topic at watershed council meetings, grange
hall gatherings and state political conventions.
For many government critics, Yechout's footage of ODFW
workers in rain slickers beating the salmon, shot in the
fall of 1998, has taken on the significance of the Rodney
King video. Property-owner-rights groups like Citizens
for a Sound Economy, Oregonians in Action and the Association
of Oregon Realtors have copied the tape and taken it on
tour around the state.
Why the sudden uproar over a 2-year-old video?
Timing.
In June, National Marine Fisheries will finally tell
the state what the rules are for the threatened fish runs
in the Northwest. These are the federal 4(d) rules, as
they're called, which will govern land-use rules in the
state for generations to come. Critics say that instead
of trying to fight off the feds, the governor has not
only rolled out the welcome mat but suggested blowing
up four of the Snake River dams to save the fish. In other
words, things have gotten serious.
Add to that Bruce Babbitt's notion to take the Steens
Mountains away from local ranchers and make them a national
monument, new regulations on pesticide reporting and a
potential Superfund listing on the Willamette River, and
these are scary days to be a farmer, rancher, land owner
or business owner. A simple answer to a complex problem
looks mighty seductive.
"When people see the fish video and we talk to them about
the [Endangered Species Act] 4(d) rules, their heads go
around in a circle," says Russ Walker, the executive director
of Citizens for a Sound Economy, a national group with
10,000 members in Oregon. "They want to know what the
heck is going on."
And then there's politics.
It's an election year, and to politicians like Republican
congressional candidate Charles Starr, the fish clubbers
have become a local Willie Horton. Anyone who isn't outraged
by it is painted as a pawn of the state.
The video has created a public-relations nightmare for
ODFW and the governor's office. Just last weekend the
state announced it will be killing some 40,000 more chinook
than last year because there are more than are needed
for breeding, and the PR people are scrambling to put
a good spin on it. To George Nandor, hatchery production
coordinator of the Fall Creek Fish Hatchery, Yechout has
blown the whole thing out of proportion.
"He's used the video to inflame people...as a tool to
get people's attention by graphically showing fish being
bonked on the head," he says. "A lot of people wouldn't
eat hamburger if they saw where it came from."
DRAWING
THE SHORT BAT
We can't imagine that it's a pleasant duty to be sent
out, baseball bat in hand, to kill a defenseless salmon.
Other hatcheries employ electric or mechanical means.
There's even a mechanized guillotine to decapitate the
critters.
Still, George Nandor of the Fall Creek Fish Hatchery
says none of his staffers tries to escape thwacking duty.
"Part of the job description is to handle [Editor's note:
he means kill] adult salmon," Nandor says. "People wouldn't
take the job if they didn't like to be handling animals.
When fish are dispatched [he means killed] at a fish hatchery,
they are bopped on the head with a club. That's a quick
and humane way of killing [he means handling] fish."
--PW
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Willamette Week | originally
published March 22,
2000
