John R. McMillan, Brian Morrison, Nick Chambers, Greg Ruggerone, Louis Bernatchez, Jack Stanford, Helen Neville

A global synthesis of peer‐reviewed research on the effects of hatchery salmonids on wild salmonids

  • Ecology
  • Aquatic Science
Save to CiteDrive Show PDF

AbstractHatcheries have long produced salmonids for fisheries and mitigation, though their widespread use is increasingly controversial because of potential impacts to wild salmonids. We conducted a global literature search of peer‐reviewed publications (1970–2021) evaluating how hatchery salmonids affected wild salmonids, developed a publicly available database, and synthesized results. Two hundred six publications met our search criteria, with 83% reporting adverse/minimally adverse effects on wild salmonids. Adverse genetic effects on diversity were most common, followed by effects on productivity and abundance via ecological and genetic processes. Few publications (3%) reported beneficial hatchery effects on wild salmonids, nearly all from intensive recovery programs used to bolster highly depleted wild populations. Our review suggests hatcheries commonly have adverse impacts on wild salmonids in freshwater and marine environments. Future research on less studied effects—such as epigenetics—could improve knowledge and management of the full extent of hatchery impacts.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

  • Web-based, modern reference management
  • Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
  • Integration with Overleaf
  • Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
  • Save articles and websites directly from your browser
  • Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references
Try out CiteDrive

More from our Archive