Effective March 23 of this year the National Marine Fisheries Service denied Homer T. (Bud) McCrary's petition to redefine the boundary of the Central California Coast coho salmon claiming that the local coho were not native and were hatchery fish.

The investigation proved otherwise, turning up coho salmon specimens from both Waddell and Scott Creeks from 1895 in the California Academy of Science's collection. Hatchery fish introductions began in 1906.

Reluctant to give up, McCrary is now asking that local coho be excluded from the National Marine Fisheries Coho Recovery Plan claiming that restoration is senseless because the fish need hatchery supplementation due to "climate, geology, and ocean conditions south of San Francisco," as stated by the Central Coast Forest Association which insists the problem has nothing to do with habitat degradation.

Fresh water habitat destruction is widely recognized by the scientific community to be the major reason for the collapse of salmon populations.