Shifting salmon policy
Photo by Alex Harris.
Ecosystems are complex. They are communities of living organisms connected through interacting processes and features on the land, in water, and between the two. Yet BC’s antiquated environmental policy doesn’t reflect this. Colonial society governs ecosystems by siloing them into distinct ministries and resources instead of reflecting the interconnected nature of habitats that make them function in the living world. This “siloed decision making”is the root cause of many of the ecological challenges we face today.
Our policy goals
1. Manage fisheries for ecosystems
- Set salmon harvest at levels that optimize the benefits of spawning salmon to watersheds and wildlife.
- Shift away from historic management paradigms that minimize the number of spawning salmon reaching rivers and maximize harvest (called Maximum Sustainable Yield). Move towards fisheries management that meets salmon spawning targets that are ecologically based, not harvest-based.
- Shift harvest toward selective terminal fisheries (conducted in or near the rivers of origin) that respect the ‘place-based’ nature of salmon, and optimize the benefits to ecosystems, Indigenous cultures, and local communities.
2. Implement ecological-based governance
- Conservation planning and a commitment to sustainability that looks 7 generations ahead.
- A “whole-of-government” approach that implements shared solutions by Indigenous, federal, provincial, and municipal governments to achieve salmon recovery from inland watersheds and rivers, to the open ocean.
- Governance that honours Aboriginal rights and title, inherent Indigenous jurisdiction and law, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).
- Sustainable funding strategies for watershed-scale restoration and planning.
3. Advance land-use policies that prioritize the health of wild salmon and biodiversity
- Zoning that bolsters functioning watersheds and riparian habitat (i.e.protect natural features, limit impervious surfaces, reduce urban sprawl, adopt nature-based solutions).
- Forestry policy that prioritizes salmon health by restricting clear-cutting in salmon watersheds, and incentivizes a sustainable, second or third-growth forest economy.
- Climate adaptation policy that incentivizes nature-based solutions including natural shorelines, intact riparian areas, unrestricted floodplains, managed retreat, and use of rain-gardens in urban areas.
Our recent reports
Recent articles
Take the lead: On climate action
By Chris Genovali Calgary Herald, Nov 30, 2009 Re: “Climate plan will take 40 years: Prentice,” Nov. 21. Climate scientist James Hansen of NASA states we have already passed the threshold for “maximum permissible concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Grizzly Details: Salmon Collapse Could Be Bad News for Bears
Scientific AmericanBy Anne Casselman Scientists are collecting hairs from live bears to prevent population declines as a result of declines in a principal food source: salmon. For most of May, Chris Darimont, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, poured liters of fermented cattle blood mixed with pureed rotten fish guts on…
The Grizzly Bear Necessities
2008 ranked as one of the worst years for salmon returns on British Columbia’s central coast and the ‘silent fall’ I experienced there last year, while not surprising given the lack of fish, was disturbing nonetheless…
The Bear Necessities: A Fall Harvest of Salmon
Island Tides By Chris Darimont and Misty MacDuffee How do salmon declines affect coastal bears? And how much salmon is required to sustain wildlife? These are questions that many people are asking
Raincoast speaks for salmon
Fall 2009 news coverage, letters and articles voicing our concerns for wild salmon. Times Colonist, October 4, 2009 Letter to Minister, Sept 16, 2009 Notes from the Field: Sept 11, 2009 Times Colonist, Sept 9, 2009 Seaside Times, September 05, 2009 Times Colonist, August 29, 2009 Globe & Mail, August 19, 2009
Fraser Sockeye Collapse: Did sea lice play a role?
There has been much media attention about the factors responsible for the Fraser sockeye collapse, and whether sea lice from fish farms were a contributor. As an organization on the front lines of this issue, our research plays a pivotal role in finding an answer. In the spring of 2007, Raincoast’s field crew searched the waters…