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CORVALLIS, Ore. - One of the world's premier fish biologists and ecologists has been lured to Oregon to head the new Hatchery Research Center, a collaborative research enterprise between the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon State University's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

Located in the Alsea River basin, the $8 million center will open this fall and become a focal point for scientists and fisheries managers in learning more about differences between hatchery and wild fish.

David L.G. Noakes will join the center on Oct. 15 as its senior scientist. He has spent 40 years studying the behavior, ecology and evolution of fishes in a far-ranging career that has taken him to Iceland, Scotland, Great Britain, and Japan, as well as throughout North America. He has been on the faculty of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, since 1972.

"Our ambition and goal at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is to turn the Hatchery Research Center into an international destination for fishery research scientists, and Dr. David Noakes brings the credibility and fishery research experience necessary to accomplish that goal," said ODFW Director Lindsay Ball.

"He will be an effective leader putting Oregon back on the front line of fishery science and research," Ball added.

Charlie Corrarino, ODFW's Conservation and Recovery Program manager, called it a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to hire someone of Noakes' stature.

"Dr. Noakes will help us better understand one of the most challenging and complex fishery science issues," Corrarino said. "And he's not only a great scientist, but a great mentor. He has supervised numerous graduate students who have gone on to distinguished careers of their own."

Noakes will have an appointment as a professor in OSU's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. W. Daniel Edge, who heads that department, said Noakes' hiring will energize teaching and research initiatives in the study of wild and hatchery salmonids.

"There has been a huge debate nationally and in Oregon over the impact of hatcheries on the recovery of native fish," said Edge, who also is a member of the seven-person Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission. "Oregon has policies that basically say we must manage the resource to recover wild fish, but that hatcheries also are essential to recreational and commercial fishing, and economics.

"So understanding the similarities and differences between wild fish and hatchery fish, and the impact they may have on each other, is critical," Edge said. "The Hatchery Research Center, and David Noakes, will provide a major boost to our knowledge base and ability to make sound decisions."

Noakes is the editor of a prominent research monograph series, Fish and Fisheries, and editor-in-chief of the international journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. "He may be the most-read fish scientist in the world," Edge said.

He has been a member of numerous scientific advisory panels in Canada and the U.S., and has had collaborative research projects with scientists all over the world. Noakes has been a visiting professor at Oxford University, Kyoto University, Hokkaido University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Iceland, the University of Montreal, Nagasaki University and Holar University College in Iceland.

Noakes' research has focused on animal behavior and has integrated development, evolution, ecology and genetics. He has conducted research on fish species from the Arctic to the tropics, in freshwater and marine systems, and in laboratories as well as the field.

At the Hatchery Research Center, he will provide the scientific leadership at a facility that will include four artificial stream channels - each 25 feet wide and 200 feet long - a tank farm of 88 tanks with four different diameters, a series of wet and dry laboratories, and other resources.