Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Today I will be speaking about the state of salmon in B.C. using my experience with the upper and middle Fraser spring and summer chinook. Unfortunately, I'm here to tell you today that this is not a new problem. The residents of the upper Fraser have been watching salmon populations fade into memory for close to two decades.
Salmon populations that triggered the Cohen commission, COSEWIC assessments and the wild salmon policy have seen continued decline. The department has all but vacated our area leaving us with old science, a lack of data, and a lack of staff and resources. This has resulted in a lack of salmon that many in the department are oblivious to.
Oddly, the Big Bar landslide has become a bittersweet situation. While the slide has put another nail in the coffin of upper Fraser stocks, the upside is there is now a conversation happening. Paired with the closure of chinook fishing in many coastal communities, the rest of the province and the department at large are now noticing what the locals here have been saying for years: Salmon are disappearing.
The department, first nations, the province and community need to work together to move forward on this. No one organization will be able to do it alone. This is a complex issue. There's no silver bullet. Salmon are disappearing due to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation.
Long-term commitments will need to be made with a recovery plan and conservation targets in place or else we will see populations disappear. I will also note that some populations in the upper Fraser have already disappeared. Unfortunately, in some cases these populations were only known to exist by certain people, and they were in very small numbers. Now they're gone. If they were genetically unique, or special in some way, we will never know.
I'd like to touch on what is referred to as the “three Hs”: harvest, habitat and hatcheries. While we know that harvest has been reduced in an effort to help these stocks, many reports state that these endangered and threatened stocks in the upper Fraser show a trend that would continue to decline even in the absence of harvest. Coded wire tag data here is 20-plus years old and is known to be incomplete and not meet the requirements of an indicator stock, yet is still currently used to make decisions. Genetic information on the upper Fraser is also lacking and needs to be refreshed. Lastly on this point, upper Fraser residents have not seen an opportunity to take part in fisheries for well over a decade. Our local first nations folks see little to no harvest many years. Despite that, there is recreational harvest in the marine environment, and first nations harvest taking place on the lower Fraser on these very stocks.
Habitat is a tricky one. While the province runs the land base, the feds manage the fish. Habitat will need collaboration. In the upper Fraser, there are many areas where little to no habitat work is needed. However, these areas are vulnerable to riparian degradation. After an area's timber is harvested, or a forest fire goes through, there is no provincial strategy to grow a healthy, resilient forest that could not only provide a strong economic future but help us meet these conservation targets as well. This conversation needs to happen with everybody at the table. Even agriculture can have a large impact on the health of riparian areas.
Lastly, on hatcheries, the kinds needed for stock rebuilding are not your run of the mill, “pump out a ton of fish” hatcheries. I'm talking about conservation hatcheries that are using strategic enhancement models, including releases at multiple life stages. A knee-jerk reaction to pump out as many fish as possible, like the proposed and cancelled Willow River facility, is no longer the answer.
Building a massive hatchery in the upper Fraser is no longer going to make financial or practical sense. Stocks are so low that I believe we would need multiple small facilities. With DFO investment and advice, community and first nations partners would be able to move the facilities forward and leverage additional funding to increase these programs.
I can provide some recent numbers and a quick example as to why a large facility would no longer work. When the Willow River facility was cancelled, the Holmes River would see returns of over 4,000 chinook. It has only surpassed 2,000 chinook twice since 2003, with returns as low as 200. That was previous to Big Bar. Last year, due to Big Bar, this river has seen fewer than 30 fish return. The Chilako once held over 1,000 chinook, and in recent years has struggled to hit double digits, with a record return of 12 last year. Lastly, the Endako River, which Spruce City Wildlife and Carrier Sekani Tribal Council are partnering on to rebuild, had a habitat assessment that states it could sustain over 1,000 returning spawners, yet has averaged 30 in the last five years. Major facilities cannot operate on these small numbers. It's too late for that action.
Of course, Big Bar has again decimated these already vulnerable stocks. Climate change is altering the flows of our rivers, the water quality, the water quantity and the water temperature. Fires have removed large areas of forests needed to stop sediment and soak up rainwater and snowmelt. Better and more consistent monitoring of these situations is going to be needed or else we will see another Big Bar situation in the future, where again it will go unnoticed and again the stocks will suffer.
Current monitoring of stocks consists of counting the fish in some streams and charting the decline. This is a great model to manage to extinction. I will note that it's not too late to rebuild, to update the science and to make these changes to help these fish thrive, but we need to work with the fish and together, not against them and not against each other. Every year wasted will make this issue more difficult and very much more expensive.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all to present today as well.