Some people may be asking themselves what this year’s remarkable returns of Snake River sockeye may mean to U.S. District Judge James Redden’s decision on the latest biological opinions for dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Since the returns represent more fish than the last decade combined you would think it would help make the case for the federal government’s salmon plan. But that’s not what the state of Oregon is saying in a brief it filed Tuesday asking the court to reject the plan and to force additional measures to save the fish.

Oregon points out that the plan relies entirely on hatchery operations to maintain the Snake River sockeye population, yet acknowledges that these sockeye are at a high risk of both extinction and hatchery domestication. That means the sockeye may be losing their genetic diversity and ability to survive in the wild even as their numbers are rising.

So the National Marine Fisheries Service calls the absence of a functional natural population the greatest limiting factor to sockeye. But the plan is actually making it harder for sockeye to survive in the wild.

How?

The plan calls for putting as many salmon in barge to transport them through the eight dams to the Pacific and to stop all artificial spills over the dams aimed at improving in-river passage from May 7 to May 20. Federal scientists say this has been proven to help other endangered salmon. But research shows that sockeye, the salmon least able to tolerate handling, don’t benefit from barging. They do benefit from shorter travel times, which come from spilling water over the dams to speed flows.

So why do we have such good returns now?

“Preliminary analyses indicate juvenile sockeye survival and subsequent adult returns improved dramatically during recent outmigration years associated with court-ordered river operations, which increased spill and reduced smolt transportation,” Oregon wrote in its brief.

Now federal scientists have suggested the high sockeye returns are at least partially attributed to ocean conditions even though salmon populations to the south and north are both suffering. If they are right, then the Oregon argument may be wrong.

But even if the federal government is right the Oregon brief demonstrates how difficult the job to protect all of the various endangered salmon within the confines of the federal Endangered Species Act. Oregon isn’t calling for breaching the four lower Snake dams, which even its scientists say is the best and perhaps only way to save the Snake River’s fish.