GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The new $7.8 million Oregon Hatchery Research Center is opening on the site of an old hatchery outside Waldport that became infamous in policy battles over protecting wild fish.

The center officially opens today in ceremonies that include an appearance from Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife hopes the center, to be operated by Oregon State University faculty and students, will restore the state as a leader in fisheries research as well as find new ways to bolster dwindling salmon runs.

"We see the Hatchery Research Center becoming an international destination for leading fisheries scientists," said Lindsey Ball, director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Unhappy over how the center was funded, conservationists said they are willing to give it a chance, but worry it could lead to further problems for wild fish.

"I hope they do some good work and gain insights on how to use hatcheries better to conserve wild fish," said Kaitlin Lovell, salmon-policy coordinator for Trout Unlimited in Portland. "If we're just talking tweaks and not wholesale changes, I'm not sure we'll see the day where hatcheries are no longer harming wild fish."

The center is built from the mothballed remains of the old Fall Creek Fish Hatchery east of Waldport, which closed in 1998 for lack of funding and a change in direction for state salmon policy, Ball said.

In 1998, an elk hunter videotaped technicians clubbing the last of the hatchery coho returning to Fall Creek. As the tape circulated, outrage grew in some circles over the idea of sacrificing hatchery fish to benefit wild runs. A lawsuit was filed by property-rights advocates, but later dropped. Another lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation led to a federal court ruling lumping hatchery and wild fish together under the Endangered Species Act.

That lawsuit in turn led National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries to give hatcheries a greater role in restoring threatened and endangered salmon runs.

Hatchery fish make up about 80 percent of Pacific salmon populations, but for years, scientists have recognized that hatchery practices had hurt wild salmon by moving fish to different watersheds, diluting gene pools, spreading diseases and producing fish that were less able to survive in the wild. However, practices have been slow to change.

Ball said he had watched fisheries research dwindle because of lack of money for the past 30 years, leaving the department without answers to critical questions.

Ball said he did not want to discuss specific areas of research that would be conducted, but general areas would include salmon genetics, how fish decide to pair up with each other to spawn, and what better ways there would be to feed fish in captivity.

To do the research, the center has preserved the hatchery and its concrete raceways, and built some natural-style streams where fish can be observed.

Lovell and Bill Bakke of the Native Fish Society both objected to the way the center was financed from lottery funds and federal grants they felt were intended for habitat-improvement projects, but Ball said it was all vetted by the state attorney general's office and legal advisers to the Legislature.

Lovell noted that wild coho in the Alsea River have rebounded significantly, even through years when ocean conditions were poor, since the Fall Creek Hatchery was shut down, and the state lost a golden opportunity to study what happens when hatchery fish are eliminated from competition with wild fish.

Bakke said the Native Fish Society supports the research effort, but was wary of the new direction hatcheries are moving to put a greater emphasis on using wild fish as brood stock. Research indicates that while hatchery fish from native brood stock survive better in the wild than old hatchery strains, they still aren't as successful as fully wild fish. And the closer hatchery fish become genetically to wild fish, the easier it will be to give up on preserving wild runs and their habitat, he said.

A high percentage of steelhead raised in hatcheries from native brood stock never leave the rivers they are released in, competing with and even feeding on young wild steelhead that migrate to the ocean, Bakke said.

"This needs to be tested and evaluated," he said.