Is salmon money flowing the right way?

Chinook No. 33 thrashed and skittered across the metal tray, spraying the chilly water of the Cedar River on two Seattle city workers.

The 30-inch fish had already been funneled up concrete steps, corralled in a pen, lifted in the tray and had a chunk of its dorsal fin clipped off. Now it was being steered headfirst into a black rubber pouch. After several minutes of struggle, Chinook 33, as its handlers counted it, finally relented. It slid into the container, then was hefted up and poured into a channel leading back to the river.

All this so the fish could simply make it over Landsburg Dam and spawn.

For thousands of years, Puget Sound salmon have repeated a ritual of sex and death that stirred the human imagination and naturally produced teeming populations of the iconic species. Today on the Cedar River it's a human-engineered process of concrete, stainless steel and manipulation that costs the public $11 million a year.

Now some experts are suggesting that some of that money could be better spent elsewhere to save the region's chinook. They describe an approach much like that of a battlefield medic: Focus on the ones with the best chance of survival.

So instead of pouring most salmon-recovery money into trying to save chinook on the Cedar and other rivers severely scarred by development, they argue, the emphasis should be on bigger, healthier rivers, such as the Skagit, that are more vital to the fish's survival.

Currently, spending on the Cedar represents as much as a sixth of the roughly $60 million spent every year on all Puget Sound chinook, while the Skagit receives roughly $3.5 million a year.

But a major government plan to revive the chinook, expected later this year, will advance the idea that some rivers deserve more attention, and it could set the stage for changes in the region's salmon-recovery efforts, including who gets the most money and where it's spent.

"We are saying we don't want to lose any [fish] population," said Ken Currens, a biologist who was part of a scientific panel that wrote parts of the recovery plan. "But we recognize that some of these are going to be on life support, or above life support, but not quite viable."

Yet such a shift in priorities will be tough in a region where people want to believe wild salmon will crowd urban rivers again, and others resent that rural residents would bear the burden — and restrictions — of recovery.

It also would require a change in spending habits, which have spread state and federal money around the region fairly evenly, while wealthy cities and counties spend far more on their local salmon than their poorer rural neighbors.

So changes may not come soon. While the federal plan will likely say not all rivers have to fully recover to save the species, an early version doesn't single out which rivers get most of the $1.5 billion the plan will suggest be spent over the next 10 years.

"I think it's a political call and a social call that we need the support of the whole region to get the money," said Joe Ryan, president of the Washington Environmental Council and member of a committee studying how to pay for recovery. "There's a feeling that we want to improve all of the runs and so it's going to take funds to improve all of them. There's a political call that we don't want to have sniping in the group."

The Cedar: tough going

To reach its spawning grounds on the Cedar River, a chinook has to swim through former logging yards and ditches, on a course permanently altered by people. When Seattle dug the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the early 20th century, the Cedar was rerouted to flow into Lake Washington. Now Cedar River salmon return through the concrete Ballard Locks, then the shallow Ship Canal, through the lake and up a rocky canal in Renton that serves as the river's mouth.

Since 1990, only about 677 chinook each year have made it all the way to spawn in the rivers and streams that feed into Lake Washington. Once, the Cedar alone might have produced as many as 10,000.

Government agencies have tried to make the trip easier. They installed huge slides on the Ballard Locks to wash young fish out to sea and bought land to let the river take a more natural route. A new fish ladder at Landsburg Dam, which blocks the river's upper reaches to divert drinking water to Seattle, has opened 14 miles of habitat to the chinook.

If $17.3 million a year were to be spent for a decade, plus millions after that, the Cedar River along with others feeding into Lake Washington might eventually produce up to 12,200 wild chinook each year, according to the proposed chinook recovery plan.

But even with all that money and work, government scientists who reviewed the proposal concluded success would be "uncertain" on a river smack in the middle of where King County's future urban growth is predicted. Many major changes are irreversible.

"We're not going to jackhammer Seattle," said Jane Lamensdorf-Bucher, who coordinated creation of the Cedar River portion of the plan.

The Skagit: crown jewel

By contrast, the Skagit River still possesses some of its muscular wildness.

As Steve Hinton piloted a Jeep east on Highway 20 into the North Cascade foothills on a recent autumn day, he passed wide stretches of deep, green water. Dense forests lined much of the river's upper stretches, where thousands of huge chinook were arriving to spawn.

"For the Puget Sound, it's the crown jewel," said Hinton, program manager for the Skagit River System Cooperative, a tribal alliance working on salmon recovery. "We've got to keep this together."

Without the Skagit, recovering wild chinook in the region will be virtually impossible, say a host of scientists. More than a third of all wild Puget Sound chinook come to the Skagit to spawn.

So far, development has not irreversibly transformed the Skagit. The dams are high in the mountains, too far upstream to affect chinook very much. Long stretches of the river are relatively free of concrete and rock walls that straitjacket a river.

Even so, it's far from pristine. Salmon runs are undeniably smaller than they once were. A century and a half of farming has turned the Skagit Valley into a vast quilt of potato, tulip and corn fields, protected by systems of dikes. Ridges of dirt and rock shield lowland cities such as Mount Vernon and Burlington.

The proposal: triage

The differences between rivers like the Skagit and Cedar have led many scientists to conclude that it's unrealistic to think wild salmon will come back in large numbers everywhere. So much damage has already been done. Plus, 1.4 million more people are expected to move to Puget Sound by 2020. And there are concerns about climate change, limited money and public resistance to dramatic lifestyle changes.

Under the upcoming federal plan, scientists have divided Puget Sound into five regions, with the idea that at least two chinook runs in each region will achieve large, sustainable populations. The rest would need to improve somewhat.

The 14 major watersheds that feed Puget Sound vary widely in their potential. In addition to the Skagit, the Snohomish and Nisqually rivers are considered good candidates. The suburban Green, Puyallup and White rivers are, along with the Cedar, among the most damaged.

The biggest challenges could be on rivers such as the White near Tacoma. While it's severely deteriorated, it also is home to one of the last runs of spring chinook. So it has been labeled a "must save."

But scientists and policymakers are far from agreeing on what balance to strike between rivers like the Skagit and the Cedar.

Some warn that saving wild chinook requires more dramatic action on some of the most important rivers, including setting aside large stretches as salmon preserves.

At the same time, they would declare other rivers salmon sacrifice zones.

"We're not facing up to that really tough decision," said Hal Michael, a longtime state fisheries biologist. "We need to say not only where we're going to protect fish but ultimately where we're not."

But Terry Williams, a commissioner at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, bristles at downplaying certain rivers, particularly with Indian fishing rights.

"We've got tribes on all these watersheds, and if we take the position that one is more important than the other, we take the position that one tribe is more important than the other so we can write off that tribe," he said.

"And that's just not going to happen."

Others worry that lessening recovery on urban rivers would be the first step to writing off the entire region. They also fear that urbanites won't support salmon recovery if they can't look forward to seeing salmon in their own backyards.

Scientists on the Cedar River point out that the salmon habitat in the watershed above Landsburg Dam is protected from development. And they note that salmon recovery is valued politically here.

"I just think that the glass is definitely half full," said Hans Berge, a King County biologist. "This watershed is not ready to be written off."

The balance: urban vs. rural

State and federal money for salmon-related river restorations has been spread fairly evenly around the region. Since 1999, the Cedar River and others streams feeding Lake Washington have gotten $14.2 million, while the Skagit has gotten $18 million, according to the state Salmon Recovery Funding Board, which doles out state and federal money for salmon-recovery work.

"They made some decisions that were political to spread the love," said Hinton, of the Skagit River System Cooperative. "Everybody got a slice of the pie."

However, when combined with local spending in richer, urban areas, the result is a huge gap in spending between urban and rural rivers.

That should change as the federal recovery plan leads to discussions with scientists about which river systems are most vital, said William Ruckelshaus of Medina, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who has guided creation of the recovery plan.

Eventually, urban residents will likely end up sending money to rural areas, such as the Skagit Valley, possibly in return for loosened regulations in the urban areas.

"Spending all the money in King County is not going to bring the fish back," Ruckelshaus said.

"You do have to put the money where it'll do the most good."

The challenge: people vs. fish

Even so, the politics of recovery on the Skagit River are formidable.

Tribes, the county government and farmers have feuded for years about environmental regulations, many aimed at salmon. Tempers have now cooled somewhat, but relations are still tense.

At the center of the dispute sits Fir Island, a 12,700-acre wedge of land southwest of Mount Vernon that once was a huge estuary surrounded by the north and south forks of the Skagit. Its network of marshes and inlets served as a giant chinook nursery. Now it's a skillet of farm fields surrounded by dikes.

For Hinton, of the Skagit Cooperative, it holds the most promise for chinook.

Already, plans are afoot to flood more than 100 acres of state-owned farmland. But Hinton envisions more ambitious projects that would bisect the island with a third fork of the Skagit River, helping salmon migrate.

One day last month, he drove past a roadside stand offering "Farm Fresh Produce" and salmon. Behind the stand is Browns Slough, a channel eyed as a candidate for restoration.

"You can see the complexities of trying to open something like this up," he said, nodding toward the fruit stand. "There's a lot of infrastructure laid over the top of this."

For farmer Brad Smith, that same infrastructure is a way of life.

His father, Richard Smith, started farming on Fir Island in the 1950s, long after much of it had been diked and drained.

Working this land is a constant battle with water. The farmland lies below sea level, sheltered from Puget Sound by dikes.

So Smith is suspicious of most habitat plans involving Fir Island. He fears they would ruin productive farmland, with dubious benefit to fish.

"I think if they had their way," Smith said of state and tribal officials, "all of this would be underwater."

Shirley Solomon, a Fir Island resident who heads the Skagit Watershed Council, cautions that some rural residents are angry at the thought of suffering for salmon recovery because urban areas already paved their habitat.

That sentiment was summed up by a sign that used to be staked outside a grocery in this valley that draws flocks of city dwellers every year to gawk at tulip fields. It reminded Seattleites that their city, too, is built on massive public-works projects that leveled hills and forever changed the landscape.

The sign read: "Save salmon and steelhead, breach the Ballard Locks and reclaim the Denny Regrade."

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com