Bring back the blueprint for salmon habitat


By D.C. Reid, Times ColonistFebruary 3, 2010



In the halcyon days of 1997, esteemed political leaders signed into existence a landmark agreement to bring back B.C. salmon and restore them to totemic significance. Honourable Jean

Chretien came all the way from Ottawa and Glen Clark from Victoria to sit side by side and pen their names. What the beaver is to Canada, they thought, the salmon is too, and committed their combined forces to solve the problems.

The title all residents have on the tip of their tongues is: Agreement on the Management of Pacific Salmon Fisheries Issues, because so much progress has been made and today there are no salmon problems in B.C. whatsoever. OK, so I am fibbing, but it is true that shortly thereafter a blue-ribbon group of scientists, DFO, B.C. government staffers and aboriginals, with 200 years of salmon experience got together. Local anglers will recognize Dave Narver and Geoff Chislett as two of the eight wise elders.

In 1998, the group produced the: Living Blueprint for B.C. Salmon Habitat. The document was then and is now an excellent framework for tackling the job and solving the problems. They put it this way: It's now or never: the salmon's lifeline is becoming more frayed every day and, unless immediate and meaningful action is taken, the wild salmon resource could suffer a collapse from which it may never recover. They spoke twelve years before the Fraser sockeye collapse.

The detailed report posited three major objectives. Anyone who has spent anytime thinking about salmon knows the first requirement is freshwater habitat: spawning grounds and rearing channels. Without those two things every

single salmon run becomes extinct in one year. Kapoof, no more.

The report picked four rivers across the province to scan: the Bulkley in north western B.C.; the Horsefly -- a major Fraser sockeye component; the Somass, an 'isolated' Van Isle river; and the urban/agricultural Puntledge near Courtenay. Key is the need for large amounts of money because habitat work is very expensive. Estuaries are high on the list. This three per cent of coastal land receives 80 per cent of animal activity. I asked the province to consider buying them and was told the Liberals had created more new parks than anyone ever before. When I said, wonderful, and asked for a pamphlet, they

couldn't produce one.

The second objective is establishing clear, workable habitat-protection objectives and standards. Important here is a new, joint Salmon Habitat Advisory Board. When you consider a river like the Englishman has 33 stakeholders, the complexity of the agency's work becomes clear. They also need to straighten out the legislation of both government levels.

Here's a statistical comparison that will astonish you: the U.S. spends more than $1 billion on hatcheries on one dammed river: the Columbia. Canada's entire hatchery budget for all the rivers in B.C. is a measly $23 million.

The third objective is to decentralize regulatory powers by delegating to local people. Those who live with salmon have the greatest interest in preserving them. Since we have come to realize DFO is not doing this job in B.C., the authors were clairvoyant.

So, what happened to this prescient report? Nothing. B.C. didn't do anything, no new branch, no restoring river habitat and neither did the feds. Why? It seems an ADM in Ottawa had a conflict with someone on the committee and filed the blueprint in the round file. Pathetic.
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