The hatchery scheduled for closure is Erwin National Hatchery, here:
http://www.fws.gov/erwin/
The state hatchery is a separate operation aimed at raising fingerlings for stocking, here:
http://erwinstatehatchery.homestead.com/hatchops.html
The national hatchery is a "broodstock" hatchery which produces about 10 million eggs for other hatcheries, plus eggs to research centers, whereas the state hatchery raises about 100,000 trout per year from fingerlings supplied by another hatchery. The federal hatcheries at Dale Hollow and Wolf Creek are also on the closure list.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1977
Calm down guys, TWRA has their own hatcheries.
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The problem is that if the national hatcheries at Erwin and Dale Hollow close, the hatcheries in Tennessee won't even remotely be able to produce eggs or raise the number of trout needed for current trout stocking. It won't be even close. The state hatcheries are smaller, they don't have the capacity, and a few need upgrades which TWRA already can't afford.
So no, unfortunately, it's not a good time to "calm down," because we are looking at paying a whole lot more for our trout stamps and fishing licenses if TWRA has to take over the much larger hatchery operations from the feds. I don't think TWRA would be able to manage the type of license increase we'd be talking about, so the likely result would be drastically reduced trout stocking - and at higher cost to TWRA, since the State would have to get our fingerlings and eggs from somewhere other than Erwin and Dale Hollow.
bd