This past fall, Raincoast’s Wild Salmon team and technicians from the Reynolds Lab at Simon Fraser University conducted fieldwork for a long-term chum and pink salmon spawner monitoring project in Heiltsuk Territory. Started in 2007, the project monitors spawning populations in 27 small streams throughout the territory, and the data is used to inform fisheries…
In partnership with the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, we established a wildlife camera network in a large region of the Territory.
As the year closes, I look back on what Raincoast has achieved in 2017. I envision a 2018 comprised of more accomplishments for nature, people, and the places we love. What a year 2017 was! Our research and informed advocacy…
People in Bella Bella, a Heiltsuk First Nation community of about 2,000 in the Great Bear, have known for a long time that there was a difference between swimming coastal wolves and wolves of the interior. But to wolf biologists outside Bella Bella, this sounded unusual…
Raincoast’s concerns over salmon farms stem from the documented and suspected threats to wild salmon, from sea lice infestations (which concentrate on farms and spread to wild juvenile salmon), and disease transfer from farmed to wild salmon.
Our interest in small streams stems from their importance to genetic diversity, as nutrient corridors for riparian habitats, food and access sources for bears and other predators, evolutionary opportunities, and fresh water rearing habitat for juvenile salmon, especially coho. When combined, small streams can also provide moderate salmon production which can be important for subsistence fisheries.