Efforts to create a made-in-B.C. strategy to assure the future abundance of wild salmon is off to a rocky start — marred by rushed consultations and a process dominated by coastal fishing interests, leaving environmentalists, scientists and interior communities on the outside looking in.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

B.C.’s “wild salmon strategy” was launched in June of 2018, with high hopes to restore “healthy and abundant wild salmon stocks in B.C.”

Premier John Horgan appointed 14 British Columbians to a council to guide policy development — a specialist group tasked with recommending the policies needed to ensure the future of wild salmon and fish-dependent communities.

Aaron Hill, executive director of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, was an early supporter of this process.

“We were so excited by this idea because it could bust through the bureaucratic silos in the provincial government and between the province and the feds that really hamper more effective wild salmon management,” Hill told The Narwhal.

Then he saw the list of appointees.

Of the 14 council members, at least 10 have direct or indirect connections to the commercial and recreational fishing industries. There was not a single representative from environmental advocacy or from scientific academia.

And geographically, at least 11 members of the council represent communities on the coast — this despite the fact that inland freshwater is where B.C. salmon spawn and rear, and where the province has clear jurisdiction to make laws to protect salmon.

“People that don’t have a direct interest in fishing for salmon and whose primary focus is advocacy are not on the council,” said Hill.

“That’s a massive gap.”

Too much focus on commercial fishing industry: advocates

In September 2018, the council released Options for a Made-In-BC Wild Salmon Strategy  — followed by public meetings scheduled only in coastal communities. (A single Kamloops meeting was added amid outcry from the province’s interior.)

The paper presents three “interlocking” goals for the future: wild salmon restoration and enhancement, community stewardship and new economic opportunities for community-based fisheries.

“It’s all about the revitalization of the commercial fishing industry, with lots on building hatcheries and wacking seals,” Hill says. “But if they really want to produce more fish, the first place to start is by restoring and protecting the natural habitats that the province has direct jurisdiction over.”

Deana Machin, the strategic development manager of the First Nations Fisheries Council, which works with B.C. First Nations to protect, reconcile and advance First Nations fishing rights, says her organization was happy to see the council’s intent to work and engage with First Nations, but the engagement following the report release was inadequate.

“The feeling was, it was a very fast process [after the release of the Options paper],” she says. “The engagement and consultation has not be as robust as we would have liked.”

The expansion of hatchery production

A recurring theme in the strategy paper is the imperative to expand the production of B.C. salmon from hatcheries, including Alaska-styled coastal salmon ranching. (In the latter, salmon are raised in pens and released by private interests, which then recoup their investment by getting the first stab at fishing when the fish return.)

In a written response to the council, Simon Fraser University salmon biologist Jon Moore sought to correct the council’s “serious scientific inaccuracies” in the report. This includes the assertion that “research is inadequate” to address the potential impacts of hatcheries, including the interactions of wild and enhanced fish in the ocean.

“The science is clear,” Moore wrote to the council, “hatcheries have repeatedly [been] shown to seriously harm wild populations both at broad and local scales.”

In an interview with The Narwhal, Moore said expanding hatcheries can overstep the carrying capacity of the ocean.

“The science is increasingly strong showing that the ocean is at capacity when it comes to salmon, and that adding more hatchery fish has really negative effects on wild stocks.”

This said, hatcheries have a future role to play in B.C., Moore said — as a last resort to keep endangered runs from going extinct, and in cases where habitat has been devastated, like on the Capilano River in North Vancouver, where hatcheries now provide fish for First Nations and sport in the wake of dam construction.

“Our point is not to shut down all hatcheries, it’s just that caution is needed when thinking about ramping up [production], if the goal is to conserve wild salmon.”

Machin echoes this point. “It’s a very complex interaction between wild and enhanced [salmon] populations, and that’s something that we’d really caution the province about, to take a little bit more time to reflect on that.”

Commercial fishing perspective

Phil Young, vice president of fisheries and corporate affairs for the Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco) — the Jimmy Pattison-owned company that controls a large piece of B.C. wild salmon marine fishing, processing and retail sales, says he found the council recommendations “somewhat simplistic.”

It’s great to say we’re going to create more fish with hatcheries and ranching, he said, but the complexity of implementation is another thing.

“Where would you situate [hatcheries], where would it fit in with the federal wild salmon policy and how would this all be accepted by the Marine Stewardship Council?” 

An international non-profit certification body, the Marine Stewardship Council gives an environmental sustainability stamp to much of the wild salmon Canfisco catches, processes and sells. Concerns have been raised about hatchery impact on wild fish, including the reality that many smaller, weaker wild stocks get scooped up in B.C. commercial marine fisheries targeting stronger hatchery-enhanced runs.

Then there is the problem of jurisdiction: “A lot of the issues in the paper are federal. There’s no way [B.C.] can do it by themselves, they’ll have to do it in conjunction with the federal government.”

Canfisco fully supports the “habitat portion” of the paper — which calls for the protection of critical habitat from loss or degradation, including the implementation of enhanced, long-term monitoring and enforcement efforts to “ensure active compliance at the highest level.”

The Skeena River. Photo: Sam Beebe / Flickr

Habitat is king

Shannon McPhail, executive director of the Hazelton-based Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, is frustrated that the strategy is focused on coastal marine areas — neglecting the fresh water salmon habitat of the B.C. interior.

This includes the Skeena river watershed, one of B.C.’s most important river systems for wild salmon, worth about $110 million annually. The Skeena’s Babine sub-basin, for example, the source of more than 90 per cent of the Skeena’s sockeye, is threatened by climate change and run-away logging and road building, the latter permitted by the province.  

It’s here that the Lake Babine Nation has been fighting to keep salmon alive, not only from habitat destruction, but climate change impacts as well. Amid high water temperatures and low water levels last year, most of the fish that return to natal streams around Lake Babine didn’t survive their passage to their spawning channels. (Lake Babine Nation’s fisheries director did not return calls by deadline).

“If the salmon don’t have a place to spawn, hatch, grow for the first year of their lives before they migrate out to the ocean, if that habitat is gone or destroyed, there is no fish on the coast,” McPhail says.

McPhail’s advice? B.C. needs a wild salmon strategy, but before we tackle that, the federal government’s wild salmon policy — started more than a decade ago to “restore and maintain healthy and diverse salmon populations and their habitats”  — needs to be fully implemented.

“Why not operationalize the wild salmon policy as a starting point for the B.C. wild salmon strategy? Because that work has already been done — you’ve got everybody in there, First Nations, DFO, biologists, from all sorts of different backgrounds, it’s been hugely consulted, so let’s start there.”

Process(es) galore

Despite criticisms of process and content, many of the people interviewed for this story were also happy the provincial government was taking an interest in the future of wild salmon.

But along with this came a fear of process overload.

There are already so many processes and action items — from the unfinished implementation of the federal wild salmon policy and the Cohen Report recommendations to name two — that it’s possible the need to take immediate action to protect salmon could get lost amid endless processes.

“There is a need for government to move past consultation and process and to action, that’s enormously important,” Moore says. “One must worry that this is another process that isn’t going to be followed through on.”

The question of funding, and how much the province will invest in the strategy, will say a lot about what happens next.

When B.C. tabled its 2019 budget last week, the word salmon didn’t appear. Why were no funds explicitly earmarked in Budget 2019 for wild salmon?  

Government is still figuring that out, according to a spokesperson with the Ministry of Agriculture. (The Narwhal requested an interview with the Premier’s office for this story, but instead received minimal information by e-mail.)

More details will be forthcoming after the follow-up report to the council’s paper is unveiled in the next month.

“Expect government’s response following that.”

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Canada has failed to monitor and gather data on 50 per cent of all managed salmon populations on B.C.’s north and central coasts, according to a study released Monday in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

Researchers from Simon Fraser University found the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is monitoring fewer streams now than before the introduction of a wild salmon policy in 2005 that was designed to assess the health of wild salmon populations and aid those deemed at risk.

“Our knowledge of salmon populations in B.C. is eroding,” study co-author and Simon Fraser University researcher Michael Price told DeSmog Canada. “And it’s really frustrating.”

A number of salmon fisheries, including the Fraser and Skeena River sockeye fisheries, closed due to low salmon runs this summer.

Price and co-researcher John Reynolds found that since the 1980s, annual counts of spawning streams have declined by 70 per cent.

“You can’t manage salmon populations if you don’t know how they’re doing,” Reynolds said.

The study, conducted in partnership with Raincoast Conservation Foundation biologists Misty MacDuffee and Andy Rosenberger, found 42 per cent of salmon populations considered threatened would have improved had commercial fisheries been strategically reduced, study co-author and Simon Fraser University researcher Michael Price told DeSmog Canada.

Budget cuts to DFO, especially during the years of the Harper government, have played a role in poor management, Price said, but added it’s about more than just money.

“They are not taking a strategic approach to salmon management. You can’t just blame budget cuts.”

Price said there was hope after the adoption of the wild salmon policy that things would be different.

“So I was surprised to see now how bad things have gotten particularly in terms of visits to spawning streams and just gathering basic information,” he said.

Without new federal support, historical salmon population data is at risk of becoming irrelevant, Price added.

Amid Closure of BC #Salmon Fisheries, Study Finds Feds Failed to Monitor Stocks https://t.co/OdESMK2vc8 #bcpoli @DFO_MPO #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 21, 2017

Salmon Fisheries Closed Across B.C.

The report comes at a time that several salmon fisheries have been closed due to low returns. Salmon fishing contributes about $500 million and roughly 4000 full-time jobs to the B.C. economy.

In previous years, an estimated 4.5 million sockeye have returned to the Fraser watershed during spawning season. This year only about one-third of that is expected.

Price said some test are performed to gauge the general size of returning salmon populations based on a daily catch plugged into a population formula.

This year those tests were used to hit pause on a few major commercial fisheries, which Price said will provide some relief to populations.

But much more detailed and consistent information is needed on specific “conservation units,” which Price said can be made up of anywhere between one and 200 salmon populations.

“We show that 10 of 24 Conservation Units assessed as Red (Poor) would have improved in status had Canadian fisheries been reduced over the last decade,” Price and Reynolds wrote in their study.

A more cautious approach to fisheries, which targets abundant populations while allowing vulnerable populations to recover, would help maintain commercial fisheries while protecting threatened fish, the study suggests.

“We need to assess the health of populations and act on those considered red, poor or threatened,” Price said.

Price emphasized the answer doesn’t necessarily lie in ending commercial or recreational fishing, but in targeting healthy populations while giving unhealthy populations time to rebound.

Climate Change ‘Greatest Threat’ to Future of Wild Salmon

Climate change is “arguably the greatest threat to the future of wild salmon,” the study states.

Price said warmer temperatures translate into earlier spring melts, longer ice-free periods on lakes, low water flow in rivers, high stream temperatures, disease and plankton blooms can all affect wild salmon health.

A second study, also released Monday by researchers at the University of British Columbia, found warmer, less-oxygenated waters are expected to dramatically shrink the size of fish.

“Fish, as cold-blooded animals, cannot regulate their own body temperatures,” explains William Cheung, co-author of the study and associate professor at the Institute for Ocean and Fisheries and director of science for the Nippon Foundation-UBC Nereus Program.

“There is a point where the gills cannot supply enough oxygen for a larger body, so the fish just stops growing larger.”

Cheung and study lead author Daniel Pauly estimate fish will shrink 20 to 30 per cent if ocean temperatures continue to climb due to climate change.

Price said broad-reaching salmon conservation is the best insurance against climate change and the affects it will have on populations.

“With climate change we don’t know exactly what affects it will have on what populations, so the best insurance is in diversity and abundance. Some of those smaller populations today that we might deem insignificant may hold the genetic key that we’ll rely on in the future.”

Lack of Salmon Data ‘Problematic’ for Major Project Approvals

A lack of adequate baseline data is “problematic” when it comes to assessing the impact of major projects such as pipelines, salmon farms and LNG projects, Price said.

“How are we going to know whether a project is going to impact a given population if we don’t have basic information on how well that population is doing before a project came online?” he said.

Greg Knox, executive director at SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, said the federal government has put a lot of resources into supporting mining and oil and gas projects.

“It’s obvious they’re putting more effort into moving large scale development forward than assessing the impacts of development on wild salmon,” Knox said.

“Maybe it’s just easier not to know. But it does pose the question whether they do have any interest in protecting salmon and salmon habitat over large-scale projects.”

B.C.  saw more progress on wild salmon policy implementation under the Harper government than so far under Trudeau, Knox said. “Under the Trudeau Liberals we’ve see a continuation of cuts for science and stock assessment and no resources towards implementing the wild salmon policy.”

He added much of the work of conservation groups, local communities and First Nations goes ignored by the federal government. “There is a lot of data out there they don’t incorporate and there is a lot of capacity in First Nations communities and citizen science that exists.”

Price said he believes local, place-based conservation and management is at the heart of effective salmon policy.

“It may seem daunting when you think of monitoring the nearly 3,000 spawning populations in B.C. and all of these streams,” he said.

DFO could partner with more with non-profits, local First Nations and academics and engage more in citizen science, Price said. We’ve had this paternal relationship with DFO for a long time now and it’s time for that to switch,” he said. “A more inclusive process would be a more healthy process for all.”

*Article updated August 23, 2017 at 10:37am PST to include mention of Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s partnership in the study.

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