If all goes to plan, 30,000 Chinook salmon eggs will be fertilized upstream of Dawson City this summer as part of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation’s efforts to increase stocks of the vital fish.

For roughly two decades, fewer Chinook salmon have been swimming into Yukon, spurring the First Nation to develop a plan. Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in has been laying the groundwork to establish a full-fledged egg-rearing facility — featuring the first sonar system wholly owned by a Yukon First Nation — to bolster dwindling numbers of the species along the Klondike River, a tributary of the Yukon River.

“It’s one of our main traditional food staples,” Chief Roberta Joseph told The Narwhal, noting that citizens have been asked to voluntarily refrain from fishing Chinook salmon since 2013.

“Since time immemorial our ancestors have relied on salmon. Not only is it a food staple but fishing them is a time for families to bond and pass on traditional knowledge and stories. It’s a time of healing, of renewing spirituality and connection that our people have with the land.” 

An egg incubation facility is a few years off, though. Gaps in research need to be filled. This is what the community has been trying to do for the last two years: study what works and what doesn’t via an in-stream incubation project. This will help them determine egg-to-fry survival rates, or how successful eggs are at growing into adolescence. They’re also measuring conditions such as water level, temperature and when the fish arrive. From this information they can replicate the ideal conditions for a high survival rate in the incubation facility.

But more time is needed after a poor run of Chinook in previous years has meant numbers for the project aren’t as high as hoped, said Ben Schonewille, a fish and wildlife biologist with Environmental Dynamics Inc., which was contracted by the community to help study the feasibility of the egg incubation program.

They’ve requested an extension to the in-stream incubation project for at least another year. The Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board is evaluating the proposal to extend right now and a public comment period will likely be launched soon, a spokesperson for the board said.

The ins and outs of the in-stream incubator  

Since July 2018, egg-to-fry survival rates have been closely monitored through this project. Eggs are taken from females and are mixed with milt (semen) from males. The fertilized eggs are placed along with sediment into an incubation vector, such as a mesh bag, and then buried in the river. Researchers then dig up the bags and are able to gauge how many eggs inside have survived to the fry stage. This is called a “green egg” process.

Eggs are collected from a Chinook salmon to use as part of the in-stream incubator project aimed at increasing the dwindling population of Chinook in the Klondike River. Photo: Environmental Dynamics Inc.

Broodstock — the group of mature salmon that will be targeted by researchers for egg and milt collection — are located by helicopter at the peak of the salmon run. 

But issues including water clarity and a lack of Chinook have slowed down tracking goals for the project, which follows a separate in-stream incubation effort in Yukon started by Teslin Tlingit Council in 2016.

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’s project has a goal of planting a maximum of 30,000 eggs per year (to put this into perspective, one female contains roughly 5,500 eggs while spawning). Roughly a third of this goal was hit, or about 10,000 eggs planted, in both 2018 and 2019.

“We just could not catch sufficient broodstock, nor were we comfortable taking more eggs due to the poor returns to the Klondike in 2019,” Schonewille said, adding that while 30,000 eggs is the upper limit of the project, planting less than that hardly deems it unproductive.

According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the number of Chinook salmon that make it back over the Alaskan border into the Yukon to breed — known as treaty-obligated escapements — have been less than the number that left the territory for the past 11 years.

Last year, 42,052 Chinook salmon entered Yukon, said Elizabeth MacDonald, executive director of the Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee. This fell below the spawning escapement goal range of 42,500 to 55,000.

It’s difficult to pinpoint any one reason why fewer Chinook salmon are populating Yukon rivers, but low productivity and changes to ecosystems could be playing a role. MacDonald said salmon that come back from the ocean to spawn are yielding fewer offspring compared to a decade ago.

Impacts to marine or river habitats could also be affecting their productivity.

“Definitely climate change is having an effect, and there’s a lot more people, so anthropogenic effects, not so much in our neck of the woods, but along the B.C. coast with forestry and rural development — industry, let’s say,” MacDonald said. “No one knows for sure. But there’s always a cycle to salmon. Sometimes they do well, sometimes they do poorly.”

Incubation facility hinges on sonar

Critical to Tr’ondëk Hwëch’s salmon incubation facility is the introduction of a sonar system that tracks the number of Chinook salmon in the water. “The unit looks across the river channel and records sonar files which are then reviewed by a trained sonar technician to count the number of salmon that swim past the site,” Schonewille explained.

Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in plans to have the sonar up-and-running by July 1 in Dawson City. It will be the first system of its kind wholly owned by a First Nation in Yukon, said Schonewille, noting that citizens are to be trained in how to operate it.

The goal is to ensure there’s a baseline understanding of how many fish enter the Klondike, he said, adding that it will help to determine the capacity of the watershed in the future for hosting Chinook salmon — and that the aquatic ecosystem isn’t thrown out of balance. 

“It’s really important because it provides a very accurate count of the number of fish that spawned in the Klondike in any given year,” he continued. “Once restoration work begins on a greater scale, we’ll be able to determine how successful it is.”

Salmon are inseparable from Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in culture

The lynchpin to all of this work is a Chinook salmon restoration plan that was first released in 2017. This living document is the basis for all future work regarding salmon restoration in the area. Underpinning it is Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in’s final agreement with the Yukon and federal governments, a section of which says that the community is responsible for preserving and enhancing the renewable resource economy within its traditional territory. 

Final agreements signal that a First Nation has settled their land claims. Eleven of 14 Yukon First Nations (including Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in) have done so. They can create and enact laws, for example, and have far more jurisdiction than First Nations in southern Canada, most of which fall under the Indian Act. 

The restoration plan’s message is clear: salmon are inseparable from Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in culture.

“Culture camps that bring Elders and youth together are a venue that allows traditional knowledge to be shared and passed on to the next generation,” the plan says. “These camps include activities that focus on all things salmon — harvesting techniques, preserving your catch, setting nets and special or traditionally used camping areas along the river, as well as spiritual practices, stories and songs that teach youth respect for the salmon.”

“Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens are physically, culturally and spiritually connected to the Yukon River salmon fishery.”

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Almost 40 years ago, former federal judge Thomas Berger issued a final report in the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, at the time Canada’s longest, largest and most comprehensive industrial project review.

The massive two-volume report was the product of exhaustive consultations between 1974 and 1977 with Dene, Métis and Inuit peoples, and recommended that the proposed construction of a gas pipeline be delayed for a full decade in the Northwest Territories and permanently barred from the Northern Yukon as it would “entail irreparable environmental losses of national and international importance.”

It turned out to be an incredibly pivotal moment in the history of Indigenous rights and ecological protections in Canada, arguably helping to preserve the largely pristine Northern Yukon, Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea for the decades since.

And on March 22, 2017 — a single day before his 84th birthday — Berger will fight another battle on behalf of the region, this time representing three Yukon First Nations (Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Na-cho Nyak Dun and Vuntut-Gwitchin) and two environmental organizations (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and Yukon Conservation Society) in the Supreme Court of Canada over land-use planning in the Peel Watershed.

Berger told DeSmog Canada he reentered the fight for the Northern Yukon because what for decades had been protected was now facing new threats.

“The future of this very special place was at stake,” Berger says.

The case Berger is taking to the Supreme Court is complex and somewhat unusual, but fundamentally, it will determine how the future scope of industrial development is decided not only in the Peel Watershed — a 68,000 square kilometre region in the territory’s northeast — but across much of the rest of the Yukon and potentially across Canada.

“This will set the precedent for future land-use planning in the Yukon,” says Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in chief Roberta Joseph.

“It’s a generational hearing that’s happening,” adds Chris Rider, executive director of the Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS).

Yukon Government Threw Out Five Years of Study For Pro-Industry Plan

First, a little bit of context about the Peel Watershed.

The Peel is a massive region, draining 14 per cent of the Yukon or an area the size of the entire Republic of Ireland.

Six tributaries flow into the Peel River, which itself later flows into the huge Mackenzie River and empties into the Beaufort. And the watershed serves as home to four First Nations (Na-Cho Nyak Dun, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and the Tetlit Gwich’in Council) as well as for important wildlife including the porcupine caribou, grizzly bears and dolly varden trout.

Bobbi Rose Koe, a 27-year-old Tetlit Gwich’in from Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, emphasizes that her people are who they are because of the Peel River and watershed.

“We go out on the land for ourselves,” she says. “That’s where we feel at home and where we spend our free time. That’s where we get our food from, that’s where we get our fish from, that’s where we get our water from. That’s where my grandparents spent the majority of their time. We have that connection and that’s where we’re rooted to.”

So far, the watershed has been largely untouched by industrial development, despite being described as having “incredible mineral and hydrocarbon potential.” There’s only one major road, located on the far western side of the region.

It’s about as pristine a region as can be found in Canada.

A lone grizzly bear crosses a desolate road in the Northern Yukon. Photo: Peter Mather, all rights reserved.

In 2009, after five years of study and consultation, an independent land-use planning commission concluded that it should largely remain that way; the six-member commission issued a Recommended Plan that would ensure the protection of 80 per cent of the Peel from roads and industry.

That plan was finalized in 2011 after further consultations.

But in January 2014, without any warning and despite having engaged in the aforementioned land-use planning process for many years, the then conservative Yukon Government issued its own plan that only protected 29 per cent of the Peel from new mineral staking or oil and gas exploration.

“It was almost an exact reversal of the original plan,” Rider says. “The impacts would potentially be huge.”

Modern Treaty Process Requires Government to Stick to Planning Rules

Unfortunately for the government, such actions contravened how the land-use planning process must unfold according to provisions in the Umbrella Final Agreement of 1993 (which established a framework for Yukon’s First Nations to sign land claims and self-government agreements).

Chapter 11 of the Umbrella Final Agreement requires that the government “approve, reject or propose modifications” to the Recommended Plan, after which the land-use planning commission reconsiders the plan and submits a Final Recommended Plan to the government.

In 2014, a Yukon Supreme Court judge decided the government failed to follow that process with its last-minute rejection of the Final Recommended Plan; by previously submitting a letter with suggestions for minor modifications to the Recommended Plan — as opposed to an outright rejection of it — the government implicitly agreed to continue with the process.

As a result, the judge set aside the government’s industry-friendly plan of 2014, and ordered the process be rewound to the stage of final consultation so the process could be completed under the rules of the Umbrella Final Agreement.

Berger paraphrases the judge’s argument to the government as: “If you wanted to reject it, that’s what you should have done at the outset and given written reasons, but what you did was propose modifications and in those modifications you never argued about the amount of land protected. If this procedure is to mean anything at all, you have to be obliged to live by what you agreed to.”

Court of Appeals Verdict ‘Really Made A Mess of Things’

This was considered a major win for the plaintiffs: all the hard work that had been completed by the land-use planning commission would be retained, as well as the recommendations of limited industrial development.

But the verdict was appealed. In 2015, a Yukon Court of Appeals judge agreed that the government had behaved inappropriately in replacing the Final Recommended Plan with its own land-use plan after submitting proposed modifications, “failing to honour the letter and spirit of its treaty obligations.”

However, instead of rewinding the process to the point of final consultations, the judge ordered it back to the 2010 stage — prior to the government issuing its approval, rejection or proposed modifications — which would allow the Yukon government to effectively have a do-over. In addition, the judge reiterated the government’s final authority to reject any plan that results from the lengthy process and adopt a plan of their own.

The appellants contend that verdict was a serious mistake and, unless unchallenged, will grant the territorial government far too much power over the land-use planning process. That in turn could erode the purpose of the Final Agreements.

In the words of Christina Macdonald, executive director of the Yukon Conservation Society, “it really made a mess of things.”

Berger says it puts at risk all of the foundational work previously laid: “If you want this process to work and all parties to proceed in good faith, you can’t allow Yukon to pull a completely new plan out of its hip pocket at the end of the day and reject all that has gone before.”

New Government Pledge to Implement Original Plan But Still Want Case Dismissed

The situation is only made more complex by the fact that a new territorial government was elected in November 2016, with the winning Yukon Liberals promising to implement the land-use planning commission’s original Final Recommended Plan.

In other words, the Supreme Court of Canada case is going to be a fight between two parties who ostensibly both want to see 80 per cent of the Peel Watershed protected from industrial development.

However, the new Yukon government maintains the current Supreme Court appeal should be rejected, arguing that the process: 1) be rewound to the first round of consultations; and 2) allow the government to retain the ultimate power to reject any plan that is recommended by a land-use planning commission regardless of whether the process was conducted in good faith or not.

Macdonald explains that if the Supreme Court doesn’t set aside the Court of Appeal ruling it will mean that: “We can go through this process, Yukon government can play along, opt to modify the plan at the early stage of consultations but ultimately just be like ‘we don’t like that plan, here’s our own plan.’

“That’s what happened with the Peel,” she continues. “And our argument is that is not in keeping with what the creators of these Final Agreements intended.”

The Yukon government did not respond to a request for comment.

In its January 2017 factum for the Supreme Court case, the government’s legal counsel contended that setting aside the ability to reject any future Final Recommended Plan “would have the effect of turning the final land use plan approval decision over to the commission, contrary to the scheme of the Final Agreements.”

That’s ultimately the key disagreement.

The appellants contend that the independent land-use planning commission should in fact have a final approval decision of sorts, separate from any political bias or influence.

And in addition, that if First Nations are going to be truly equal partners in the land management and development, that the planning process as articulated in the Umbrella Final Agreement must be honoured.

“If everyone else is engaged in this process in good faith and done what they need to do then it should be essentially a binding process,” Rider says. “This government may be committed to acting in a fair and reasonable way. But there’s no guarantee that a future government would be. It’s important we get that precedent right, now.”

“The Court of Appeals judgment undermines the land-use planning process not only for the Peel but for every region of the Yukon over a period of what may well be decades,” Berger concludes. “It’s important that this matter be determined now.”

The Supreme Court can take six months or more to issue a verdict following a hearing.

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