Wild Salmon Policy in Tatters, Updated Oct 26, 2017

In BC, the population lost faith in DFO in Ottawa decades ago, and it seems that DFO's only mandate is to manage wild salmon into extinction, just as they did in the 1990s with east coast cod. DFO is not respected in BC (although there are many DFO staff in BC we like and can work with), and the problem is that we cannot wrest policy, action and budget from DFO and do it ourselves.

The four biggest problems with wild salmon in BC are: habitat restoration, DFO, fish farms and climate change, in that order. For all their bull in platitudes, DFO just isn't doing the job. Here is a paper that comes to the same conclusion that the Wild Salmon Policy isn't being administered and introduced properly.

See: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2017-0127.

Here is the abstract:

"Abstract

Canada’s Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon has been heralded as a transformative approach to the management of wild salmon whereby conservation is the highest priority. Given that changes to the Policy are under consideration, it is timely that we understand whether our state of knowledge and the status of wild salmon in Canada have indeed improved after its adoption in 2005. To answer these questions, we used two indices of improvement: (i) monitoring effort and (ii) abundance of spawning adults. Our results, based on data for all species from British Columbia’s north and central coasts, show that monitoring effort has continued to erode, abundance of spawning adults has significantly declined for several species, the status of many salmon Conservation Units are in zones of concern, and 42% of the Conservation Units that we assessed as Red (threatened) would have improved in status had the Canadian fishery been reduced. We conclude with recommendations to help improve our knowledge of the status of salmon and enable a robust and successfully implemented Wild Salmon Policy for the future."

I would add that getting fish farms out of the water and improving freshwater habitat are two key components not mentioned here. The real key is freshwater habitat because if there is nowhere to spawn, there are no salmon. Having said this, it has to be remembered that the Fraser sockeye runs, Boughton Archipelago pink runs and Clayoquot sockeye are crashed and fish farms are the cause. Look at this paper for the comparison of fish farms/salmonid runs and no fish farms/salmonid runs and it is obvious: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235905/.

Everywhere fish farms go in the world, they trash wild salmonids, and ecosystems. Compare this with Alaska that is having its best sockeye and pink years ever as commercial harvests. Alaska does not allow in-ocean fish farms.

It should be the same in BC, but Ottawa is a different country, not Canada, and does not understand, or care about, BC where salmon are as important to us as French is to Quebec - Ottawa pays attention to Quebec, but not BC. See the survey: https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-residents-consider-salmon-a-cultural-touchstone-survey-finds/article594381/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&.

And see my post on the subject that DFO is the Problem With Salmon In BC: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/06/dfo-is-problem-with-salmon-in-bc-dfo.html.

This post has a long list of references for those wanting further background: Hasta La Vista Liberals - Salmon as Important to BC as French to Quebec: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/11/hasta-la-vista-liberals-salmon-as.html.