Look,the BCWF is fighting for Steelhead and Salmon.

[OldBlackDog]

Say what you want the BCWF has stepped up and deserves your support.
I have not seen any other group pushing this?

So, remember when you want to help this cause, throw your help behind the BCWF as they are showing they are in the trenches fighting.

This article written by Bob Hooton

Hollow Rights
As we get down to the late stages of another year of planning for another year of fishing plans the levels of frustration over the intransigence of the people in charge of the process continues to rise. Suffice to say I’ve never seen anything remotely close to the circle the wagons behaviour of our Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The central issue here, of course, is the fate of those revered Interior Fraser steelhead (IFS).

Much has been said here previously, including a description of the process around the emergency review of the status of those stocks by our Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), their recommendation for emergency listing under our Species At Risk Act (SARA) and where to from here. Informed opinion (not my own) points to a less than successful outcome for IFS via that route. There is an emerging alternative though. It involves a combined effort by the BC Wildlife Federation and the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre. The Centre, under the leadership of QC Barrister and Solicitor Calvin Sandborn and support from his very skilled and capable student Rebecca Whitmore, has sent a formal request to Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and the Auditor General of Canada to examine Canada’s failure to protect endangered Pacific salmon and anadromous trout species under SARA. It is a sad commentary on DFO and the federal government in general that their performance has forced such action. Nonetheless, all of us who cherish and respect our wild fish heritage owe UVic and the BCWF a huge thank you for this eleventh hour attempt to force the feds to do their job while we hold our breath.

The carefully prepared letter, complete with an impressive list of supporting documentation and references, can be read here:

Steelhead-Submission-SENT-AP29-530-PM.pdf

I’ll try and capture some of the key points for those who just want a bullet or two to take home.

1. The list of species/stocks of concern includes not just Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead but several other sockeye, coho and chinook stocks endemic to the Fraser River system and neighbouring waters. The failure of DFO to take the actions intended under SARA for these stocks has been thoroughly documented. The most obvious examples go all the way back to 2002.
2. It is clear that stocks/species of commercial value do not get listed under SARA. The telling quote from the letter: “The cavalier failure to provide SARA protections to species associated with a commercial fishery is alarming and needs to be addressed”.
3. Integrated Fisheries Management Plans (IFMPs) which DFO would have us believe are the avenue for adjusting fisheries to accommodate conservation requirements and rebuilding of impoverished stocks have been a complete failure. I’ll add here a clip from the draft of the 2018 draft IFMP for the south coast of BC. “This IFMP is not a legally binding instrument that can form the basis of a legal challenge. The IFMP can be modified at any time and does not fetter the Minister’s discretionary powers as set out in the Fisheries Act. The Minister can, for reasons of conservation or for any other valid reasons, modify any provision of the IFMP in accordance with the powers granted pursuant to the Fisheries Act”. For me that begs the question, why would any of us dedicate so much effort toward participating in these planning processes when they are not binding and subject to the in-season whims of a Minister and his minions?
4. Failure to protect salmon and trout species from extirpation is entirely out of sync with numerous policies DFO has trumpeted as fundamental to its management mandate for as long as IFMPs have been marketed to an unaware public as effective tools.

The result that ought to be clear from DFO’s management performance over the past many years (decades) is a growing list of stocks and species being thrown into the COSEWIC/SARA hopper. As each of them fails to make the cut, all the platitudes about bio-diversity, sustainability and conservation ring hollow. The accelerating rate of additions to the list of candidates for endangered species and the complete lack of effective conservation and recovery actions only pushes us toward lopping off another and another and another addition at the bottom of the weak stock list. We can debate how long it will take to “manage” to zero for IFS but not its inevitability in the absence of a successful outcome on the initiative UVic and the BCWF have initiated. How many sockeye, chinook and coho stocks will follow? How many already have? Rights based fisheries are going to be interesting when we’re down to chums and pinks.

 

[Dave]

Interesting in that the same group lobbied to have a steelhead kill fishery on the Skeena system. Glad they have seen the light.

 

[Derby]

All I can say is there is lots of stuff going on in the back ground...

 

[SpringFever552]

All I can say is there is lots of stuff going on in the back ground...

Thank you

 

[Dave H]

It's Hooton, not Hooten.

One might think most people would know that by now, given his length of time involved with fisheries in BC.

Sad.




Take care.