Vision for Salmon Report Raincoast 2020

Boy that is a recipe for do-little. These guys just don't get it. We need a whole of ecosystem recovery plan that recognizes that in a compromised ecosystem, we need to intervene to address human caused deleterious impacts. The natural productivity of salmon is so compromised in many river systems, that hoping all will recover by stopping fishing and tinkering with some habitat projects is in a word...crazy. What about Thompson Coho....20+ years of fishing restrictions, almost zero habitat and enhancement to help them......no improvement. Winning approach fitting of a Darwin Award.
 
What they really mean is.

We recommend that you give us lots of money, which we will carefully after taking our cut pass on to some select groups.
We will continue to do this for a short while, then say it is not enough money and we need more.

This will not have any effect on Salmon at all!
 
Thanks for posting this WMY. Colourful, anyways. 111 pages that can be summed-up as: "We need to work together to protect habitat and come-up with a plan for the Fraser" - with Raincoast driving the process, apparently.

The problem with the "no net loss" policy that Raincoast mentions is that is has been driven on a square-meter 2D assessment that really doesn't take into account function and success. But it is easier to compute and check the box. Spawning gravel is not always limited everywhere, and not every species has the same freshwater requirements.

Climate change affects everything as well - and the ocean and the migration is where the largest mortality commonly occurs. Wouldn't hurt to reduce the number of problem seals at the choke-points, neither. No mention of this issue that I can find.

Not sure this report will change the World for Fraser salmon.
 
OldBlackDog said:
What they really mean is.

We recommend that you give us lots of money, which we will carefully after taking our cut pass on to some select groups.
We will continue to do this for a short while, then say it is not enough money and we need more.

This will not have any effect on Salmon at all!
Click to expand...
You are so, so correct.....LMAO Or the beatings on stakeholders will continue until the fish dry up because we didn't actually do a thing that made a difference for creating abundance.
 
We are sadly passed the point where anything you can do to habitat will make a difference for lots of run that are sitting at functional extinct levels.

When I pressed DFO biologists about a recovery plan they told me that’s completely out of their hands. It’s a funding decision that needs to be made by Ottawa.

I would expect for tho ha just to be continued to be closed down till ocean survival improves. There are some anomalies on Fraser like. The Chilliwack River. It continues to produce very high ocean survival rates. No one really knows why.
 
I respectfully disagree that we are passed the point of return with anything to do with habitat improvement - there are still much that can be done to improve and restore habitat to improve runs (e.g. reduce pollution, water withdrawals, limit urban and industrial development, actual habitat restoration projects, etc. the list goes on... One thing is for sure - giving up on habitat restoration will make it worse. Putting many eggs on one basket i.e. improved ocean survival is too risky and limited in the long term IMHO. Citizens need to make this a political issue and pressure the politicians to start funding this like they are doing WA state - it needs to be more of a priority if we want to see salmon numbers increase.
 
Last edited:
No doubt we need to protect the habitat we have.

I didn't say we don’t need to Do that.

I just don’t see habitat projects on the upper Fraser making a material difference in returns at this point.
 
I have to agree, any habitat work we could do will take a considerable period of time to pay dividends...people who think otherwise are pretty much out of the loop in terms of how long it takes to see benefits from just doing habitat improvements. Also, bear in mind that much of the fire related destruction has changed the entire hydrology of these Interior Fraser Tribs - no amount of engineering Canada could afford can fix that. Unless we were able to mount political support for at least a $billion there isn't likely to be much habitat work that could make a substantive difference. AND, on top of all that recruitment is a big problem - where do we get the fish to fill up that habitat even if we could fix it.

A simple case study is Interior Thompson Coho....20+ years of just implementing fishing restrictions - how has that worked out Rain Coat?

As for why Chilliwack Chinook are doing well...relates IMO, to they are Ocean-Type small smolt migrants that slip past the predators, and they live primarily in near-shore colder water which avoids the blob. There is evidence that near shore conditions for salmon are improving at faster rate than what the poor stream-type Chinook utilize when they go way out offshore into the Blob.
 
As usual, Searun - always appreciate your thoughtful posts. The hydrology changes are often forgotten to be mentioned in the habitat discussion - as they really aren't "fish habitat" - but instead exasperate the droughts and the floods - both of which affect success of spawning & egg hatch-out.

Death by a thousand cuts for sure - but the way I see prioritizing effort is 1st to look @ the scale of the impacts and try to determine where the "bottlenecks" are - and then prioritize which ones can you do something about. Sometimes that takes a bit more effort to generate the data to do this. Then.. to refocus on the ones that we can logistically and financially deal with (if any)...

Unfortunately, politics often gets in the way of this final step.

But as Dave (and WMY) pointed-out above wrt habitat - "There is more than enough spawning and rearing areas, what is missing is fish". This is typical for most (but not all) species, stocks & tribs/watersheds.

So how do we get more fish? Open-ended question....

And there are the outliers, as well - both "bad" & "good" examples as you pointed-out. Something to learn there, as well.
 
Last edited:
We all know the only way to get more upper Fraser chinooks, right now, is to stop killing them. Then we have to get them past Big Bar.
When ( if) there are more spawners, habitat improvements or hatchery augmentation could then happen.
But, we also know that ain't going to happen as too many people won't stop fishing them.
 
I say we need to get moving on hatchery augmentation! One solution to this problem is to get more fish in the water, not to fight and argue over what to do with an ever decreasing number of fish each year. Need to make this a political priority to get DFO to do any more hatchery work with modern, improved methods with higher returns and less negative genetic impacts.
 
I understand your frustration WitW but the fact is there is not enough fish left in some systems for broodstock purposes. That is how bad this is.
The writing has been on the wall for a few cycles and now with Big Bar many of these stocks of upper Fraser chinooks are toast.
 
Dave is right. Similar situation w many of the WCVI wild Chinook stocks. Not enough fish left in some systems for broodstock purposes - and extensive long-term stock assistance also has significant negative consequences (introgression & further reductions in ocean survival rates).
 
Dave said:
We all know the only way to get more upper Fraser chinooks, right now, is to stop killing them. Then we have to get them past Big Bar.
When ( if) there are more spawners, habitat improvements or hatchery augmentation could then happen.
But, we also know that ain't going to happen as too many people won't stop fishing them.
Click to expand...
The problem isn't actually that we won't stop fishing them....these stream types migrate far offshore and are not really encountered to any real degree because their migration route only exposes them to fishery interceptions for a brief period. Sure, the highest exploitation rate (ER) is in the Fraser, but again its not really fishing related removals that is the core issue. We have to stop chasing the shiny penny and look closer at what is actually happening with these fish and where possible address the "why" and "where". The ENGO's are all focused on fishery mortalities...that is the Captain Obvious place to look. Ask them how well fishery restrictions have worked to bring back Interior Thompson Coho???? We have some serious problems with habitat, predation, and water quality (hydrology too).

Remember all the finger pointing at fishery impacts to SRKW. Gee, seems that new research is showing that this is more of a competition for food issue....Northern Residents and Alaskan orcas getting the large chinook before they reach their SRKW cousins. Chasing the Captain Obvious shiny penny. Nothing in nature is simple....nature is complex and diverse. So the problems are rarely one thing, they are a series of inter-related things...death by a thousand cuts. That is why its not productive to put all our eggs into the fishing related mortality bucket.
 
I admire your tenacity and enthusiasm searun. The key to these fish recovering, imo, lies in the hands of Fraser River FN fishers, but for them to stop fishing requires, at the very least, no sports fishing in the approach areas.
That's just the way it is and sadly nothing will change in the short time these fish have left.
 
To put things in perspective all the public fishery in areas 18, 19 & 20 makes up less than 10% of mortality of these endangered Fraser River chinook. How much do the FN's take? How much of the FN's fishery accurately monitored for catch levels? How much are taken by illegal in-river net harvesting that DFO does nothing to do to enforce (except remove illegal nets from the river)? How many chinook are sold illegally in the black market?

We basically have no public fishing in the approach areas until Aug. 15 now - how much have the FN's reduced their harvest levels? Is there any accurate data to prove reduced levels of salmon harvest by in-river netting?

These are important questions that need to be answered to help solve this issue. It is not as simple of just closing down the public fishery and things get better.

IMHO I feel most public fishers and the general public would support total closures if ALL sectors stopped or greatly reduced their harvesting for a determined period of time for the sake of the salmon. Hopefully, the FN's would agree to reduce their catch levels significantly to makes this actually work.

Hopefully, we can get past the finger pointing and work together to help bring back these salmon. We will probably need a neutral 3rd party to help negotiate this for it to happen - but it must happen very soon to save these fish!
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Derby
salmon-return-to-surrey-creek-for-first-time-in-70-years
Replies
4
Views
595
SpringVelocity
SpringVelocity
IronNoggin
Barkley Sound, Alberni Inlet Sockeye Forecast for the 2023 Return
Replies
8
Views
2K
cammer
C
IronNoggin
BC Timber Sales Proposal to Spray Glysophate Herbicides around Squamish, Hope and Agassiz Areas
Replies
6
Views
671
IronNoggin
IronNoggin
OldBlackDog
DFO and how it handled observer’s and concerns.
Replies
4
Views
704
onefish
O
Derby
Subject: Fishing for answers: who gets to fish for B.C. salmon in the future?
Replies
9
Views
1K
SpringFever552
SpringFever552
Back
Top