Thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate presenting in person. I apologize for my last opportunity to speak to you, which was via Zoom. I was away at the international treaty discussions on the Yukon River salmon and I couldn't make the call.
I am the chief of Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. It's a northern community in north Yukon. It's on the tributary of the Porcupine River and the Crow River.
We are the farthest-reaching community that the Yukon River salmon travel to. It's probably one of the longest migratory routes of salmon in the world. We are a remote nomadic people. We live solely on our subsistence way of life, although we are very progressive with respect to our interaction with the rest of the world.
As for my history, previous to this I was the minister of environment for the Government of Yukon. I've met numerous times with the federal fisheries minister, and I also have sat on the Yukon River Panel for many years. I sat as the chair of the Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee. I presented recommendations to the federal minister with respect to salmon sustainability. In 2013, the recommendations that came forward to the minister asked to cease and desist fishing on the Yukon River due to the decline and challenges then with seeing 30,000 chinook and not meeting escapement goals. It's critical to my community.
The community that I'm from is very small, with 250 people. We live in harmony with the environment. We are caribou people. You might have heard of the Arctic refuge, the 1002 lands and the protection of the Porcupine caribou. Salmon is no different. We have our obligation to protect the resources. It's fundamental to our very existence. It's defined in our self-government agreements, which Canada signed on to.
With respect to the protection of land and the environment and our due diligence and obligation to meet some of the climate strategies and climate goals, as the minister of environment for the Government of Yukon, I put forward our clean future targets for 2030, emissions targets, to assist Canada in its objectives. However, at the same time, we are talking about a potential species at risk. I will give you some numbers, because it's critical to my community.
Two years ago on the Porcupine River, we saw 349 chinook pass my community. We have in the last 10 years not met border escapement goals—it's more than 10 years, actually, a decade or more—for Fishing Branch River chum, yet we protected every bit of the habitat. Ni'iinlii Njik, which is the headwater, is defined as a life-giving place. We protected it to allow the salmon to return to their critical habitat and spawning grounds.
If you want to look at the pristineness of environment and pristineness of water, you can walk down to the Porcupine River, dip your cup in it and still drink the water. We have done the due diligence on our part to protect the environment. The circle of life continues. It starts with us and it ends with us. We've spoken about the last salmon to reach the spawning grounds. Now every egg counts—not every salmon, but every egg.
We've met internationally to meet border escapement requirements as defined in the Yukon River Salmon Agreement. That has not been very effective because there are no tools or mechanisms in the agreement to allow us to have deliberations around coexistence and co-management, true co-management, of an iconic species that is at risk. My biggest concern is having a discussion in a year or two about a species at risk. How do we then bring the salmon back? Once you lose a wild stock, it's very difficult to bring that wild stock back to the tributary.
The population has declined. Climate change adaptation, overharvesting, what we've seen in the pollock fishing industry and what we've seen with warming trends in the waters of the Bering Sea are affecting the salmon. We've seen ichthyophonus. We've seen the illnesses that the salmon contract, and obviously they don't make it to the spawning grounds.
We've studied this to death. I've been on the Yukon River Panel now for 20-some years. We have a restoration and enhancement trust fund for supporting the communities in looking at scientific analysis. We have a joint technical advisory committee. How good has that been? How effective has it been? I ask myself that often when I sit at an international table with my colleagues.
This is the first time in our history that we actually have an opportunity to speak about true stock sustainability, restoration and maintaining some form of support for the few fish that are swimming by our community.