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
Ghost Runs: The Future of Wild Salmon on BC’s North and Central Coasts
Raincoast’s recently published report on BC’s salmon stocks says new ways of managing Pacific salmon must be implemented if wild salmon, and the food web that depends on salmon, are to remain on BC’s central and north coasts. The report brings together conservation and academic interests to examine the issues surrounding the management of wild…
Losing Ground: The decline in fish and wildlife law enforcement capability in BC and Alaska
Authored by Dr. Brian Horejsi, Losing Ground analyzes the respective conservation enforcement capabilities of coastal BC and southeast Alaska. A comparison of the two jurisdictions reveals an enormous gap in enforcement capability between BC and Alaska. In every component compared, fish and wildlife enforcement capability in coastal BC did not measure up to Alaska fish…
Losing Ground: Executive Summary
Authored by Dr. Brian Horejsi, Losing Ground analyzes the respective conservation enforcement capabilities of coastal BC and southeast Alaska. A comparison of the two jurisdictions reveals an enormous gap in enforcement capability between BC and Alaska. View the report in .PDF
Intra-hair stable isotope analysis implies seasonal shift to salmon in gray wolf diet
Darimont, C.T., and T.E. Reimchen. 2002. Intra-hair stable isotope analysis implies seasonal shift to salmon in gray wolf diet. Canadian Journal of Zoology 80: 1638-1642. View the paper in PDF
Wolf Project Journal, August 2002
In our last dispatch we had not yet learned of the locations of the 2002 “home sites”, where wolves give birth and care for their young. Wolves are habitual creatures but our early spring searches had failed to locate the sites in areas they had been the previous year. By mid August, however, we found…
Journal of the Wolf Project – June 2002
After a long winter analyzing last year’s samples and data, our team is happy to be back in the footsteps of rainforest wolves. This spring was good to us – the “wolfiest ” session to date. We saw 17 different wolves from five different packs, and many of them several times. Each day we come…