Federal-provincial steelhead recovery plan mired in dysfunction
Credit to Author: Randy Shore| Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2019 22:06:16 +0000
A federal-provincial effort to save Interior steelhead populations from extinction is mired in dysfunction as Interior runs dwindle to just a few hundred spawners.
“When we hear that 177 steelhead are returning up the Fraser to the Thompson, that’s an absolute crisis,” Jackie Tegart, Liberal MLA for Fraser-Nicola. “There are so few, you could give them all names.”
Only 216 Thompson steelhead were estimated to have spawned last spring, while the Chilcotin steelhead numbered just 120, according to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.
Both runs are classified as an “extreme conservation concern.”
Senior provincial bureaucrats have been battling Fisheries and Oceans Canada for nearly a year over the scientific rationale for salmon harvesting on the steelhead migration route, fisheries that result in steelhead by-catch.
Complicating matters is that steelhead are under provincial jurisdiction, while salmon fisheries are a federal concern.
A steelhead recovered from an illegal fishery in the Fraser River shows significant scoring from nets.
“By-catch is the biggest issue for steelhead,” said Tegart. “Steelhead have to be released if they are caught in nets, but if you are a steelhead and you get caught and released four times in the river you won’t have much left to get to your spawning grounds.”
A research paper on the recovery potential of the Interior steelhead written jointly by three scientists — one each from Fisheries and Oceans and the province, plus an independent — pressed for tighter restrictions on salmon fisheries to stabilize steeply declining steelhead populations.
The research was peer-reviewed by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, but never released publicly. In producing a Scientific Advisory Report to inform government decision-making, Fisheries and Oceans altered key points in order to support “status quo commercial salmon harvesting,” provincial government officials say.
Provincial deputy environment minister Mark Zacharias sent a blistering letter to his federal counterpart earlier this year alleging that the “(Fisheries and Oceans) authored summary is no longer scientifically defensible.”
In 1,600 pages of documents and correspondence obtained by the B.C. Wildlife Federation through freedom of information requests, senior staff at the ministries of environment and forests allege “management influence” at Fisheries and Oceans over the scientific process.
“We have requested (Fisheries and Oceans) return to the wording agreed to by the scientists,” Jennifer Davis, provincial director for fish and aquatic habitat, wrote to assistant deputy minister of agriculture James Mack. “We can all disagree on what management actions to take, but at least we have common science this time. They have said no.”
Downplaying the impact of salmon fishery by-catch on Interior steelhead will increase the threat of extinction, Davis wrote to colleagues in a separate email.
Under the steelhead action plan developed jointly with the provincial government, Fisheries and Oceans planned “rolling closures” of commercial salmon fisheries between Sept. 6 and Nov. 22 along the entire migratory route of the Interior steelhead, from the marine environment up through the Fraser River and its tributaries.
Just weeks into the closure window, Fisheries and Oceans has authorized a two-day First Nations commercial fishery for pink salmon on the lower Fraser and a seven-day recreational fishery for pink and chum salmon between the mouth of the Fraser and the Mission Bridge.
Then a three-day First Nations commercial fishery for pinks opened Thursday for beach seining and fish wheels, also in the Lower Fraser.
In-river closures for recreational and commercial net fisheries are expected to protect more than 90 per cent of the steelhead run from exposure to fishing activity in these areas, according to Fisheries and Oceans.
“The impacts of the short-duration recreational fishery for Fraser sockeye and other non-target salmon species are expected to be negligible due to inclusion of a bait ban,” said Fisheries and Oceans in response to questions from Postmedia News.
The federal government has declined to pursue an emergency listing of the Interior steelhead as endangered under the Species At Risk Act, citing the adverse impact of widespread fishery closures on First Nations, recreational and commercial fisheries. Ottawa has instead collaborated with the province on a steelhead recovery plan focused on watershed and fisheries management.
“Pictures of dead steelhead and fishery data have already surfaced from (Fisheries and Oceans) test fisheries and illegal fisheries and you have to think that represents no more than one per cent of what is really being caught,” said Jesse Zeman, spokesman for the B.C. Wildlife Federation. “Where recent salmon fisheries are concerned, it doesn’t matter who is placing the nets — First Nations or someone else — they are going to catch steelhead.”
“Nets are not selective, so (Fisheries and Oceans) really needs to move to selective fisheries if the steelhead are going to survive,” he said.