Thank you for the opportunity to present.
I would like to discuss the future of Pacific salmon, using my experience with interior Fraser steelhead, in particular the Thompson and Chilcotin fish.
The history for angling was a catch-and-kill fishery, then a catch and release, and then no fishing at all. The trouble is that these fish comigrate with pink and chum salmon, and in the worst years, steelhead experts estimate that half of these fish were caught in a net as bycatch, and up to half of those died. Populations were considered in severe decline in the mid-1990s, when 3,000 to 4,000 spawners made it. There were an estimated 62 Thompson and 134 Chilcotin fish this year. They're endangered.
In 2017, the alarm bells were going off and we were in crisis mode. Despite this, DFO still opened net fisheries on the Fraser. ENGOs pushed for an emergency assessment under the COSEWIC, which was undertaken. In 2018, COSEWIC announced that two of these populations were at imminent risk of extinction and that the main threats include bycatch of adults by net fisheries targeting Pacific salmon, as well as poor ocean conditions.
That triggered the Species at Risk Act process. As part of this process, there's a science advice document. It was put together by three scientists: one from the province, one independent, and one from DFO. It went through the peer review process by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, and later freedom of information feedback indicates that it was vetted by 42 experts and managers. This document has never been released to the public.
After the RPA, the recovery potential assessment, correspondence was obtained from the province, going to DFO, which says the DFO summary is no longer scientifically defensible. What we've found through FOIs, freedom of information requests, is that the peer-reviewed science document findings had been edited in a science advisory report ostensibly to downplay the effects of nets on steelhead.
In 2019, the federal and provincial governments created a recovery plan. B.C. recommended that protecting 95% of these fish would require a period of 84 days without nets on the Fraser. DFO committed only to a 27-day moving window. In September, DFO killed its first two steelhead in its test fishery. On September 16, the Province of B.C. closed its statistically insignificant trout fishery on the Fraser, likely as a quid pro quo with DFO, only to find the next day that DFO had opened an economic opportunity fishery for pinks using beach seine, allowing chum to be retained. It should be noted that at that time, DFO had calculated a 1% probability of meeting its escapement target of 800,000 chum in the Fraser, and it still allowed fish retention.
DFO again used its own model, which was later and before found to be invalid, to justify opening this fishery. We had to file an ATIP request to find out what had gone on behind the scenes inside of DFO for the entire two-year process, and we were told it would take 822 years to get our ATIP back from the federal government. This was refined down to two and half months, and it will take two years to find out what went on behind closed scenes.
For this year, in 2020, the plan is the same: The steelhead experts say you need 77 days without nets, and DFO's plan is to take the nets off for only 27 days. That means we are pushing these fish into extinction.
At this point, the science advisory report is the only document available. The peer-reviewed science is still not out and we still don't have our ATIP. That is the DFO that people in B.C. know. There are dozens of structural and cultural issues within DFO that have resulted in a failed ministry and agency.
Steelhead are not the only victims. Interior Fraser coho were put on life support in the 1990, and a number of our chinook and sockeye runs are headed for the same place now. DFO's response has been to change the fisheries regulations and manage these fish to zero. This has failed our fish and the people who care about them.
Here are some things that can be done to stop the bleeding.
You can fund habitat restoration. There are only six restoration biologists for the entire province of British Columbia. They have no base budget.
We can move to selective fishing methods. Not only are steelhead a victim of nets on the Fraser; so are salmon, and I'm sure over the next year we'll find that sturgeon are being driven into a decline that is largely attributed to nets. Nets need to go.
On poaching, there are pictures of endangered chinook and steelhead and at-risk coho in illegal nets that surface almost daily. They are reported to DFO, and no one even calls us back. Charges are rarely pursued. Fisheries officers have become experts in cutting gillnets out of the Fraser, as opposed to protecting salmon from poachers.
Fisheries monitoring must be improved for all sectors. There is no illegal harvest accounted for in run reconstruction models, and we are aware that fisheries-related induced mortality of Fraser chinook are not even included in the river. What that means is there are thousands of fish, if not tens of thousands, that are killed in the Fraser every single year, which, according to DFO, never even existed.
We can deal with fish farms, we can deal with pinniped predation, we can deal with fish passage, and internationally we can deal with ocean ranching to reduce the number of hatchery pink and chum fish that are being dumped into the Pacific on an annual basis. These are all things that can be done.
DFO is culturally and structurally broken. It is a fishing management agency. It's not accountable to the public. Getting data from them is almost impossible. We are constantly referred to ATIP because people are worried they will lose their job if they share data with the public that was paid for by the public. Scientists, habitat staff and enforcement staff are rarely listened to. The prescription of the day is fishing, fishing, fishing.
Now, on the broader picture around natural resource management, whether it's water, air or fish, you need three things. You need funding, science and social support.
First, funding has to be dedicated. This facilitates leveraging, line of sight for ratepayers and an ability to plan on annual, five-year and 10-year bases.
Science's role is to set objectives for fish and habitat population to identify threats and barriers and establish the allowable catch. That is not management's function; that is a science function.
Finally, there's social support. The agency needs to be accountable and transparent and to make decisions based on evidence, and those who care about the resource have to see themselves as part of the process. That is what DFO should look like, and currently couldn't be any further from.
Thank you for your time.