Fish Hatcheries Pose Risk to Wild Salmon, Report Concludes

Vancouver, March 5, 2004 - A consultants' report on the potential impacts of salmon enhancement suggests that wild salmon and steelhead can be negatively affected by large-scale hatchery operations and other activities intended to expand salmon production in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. While there have been obvious positive outcomes from enhancement programs, the risks also need to be considered when assessing the net benefit.

The consultants who authored the report entitled Making Sense of the Debate About Hatchery Impacts concluded that the uncertainty and consequent risk regarding impacts on wild salmon are too high to support the current scale of enhancement. A precautionary approach to hatchery management should be taken in the absence of sufficient knowledge and research on the overall effects.

"It has long been assumed that hatchery-produced fish would simply add to the overall production and compensate for reductions in salmon stocks caused by human and other impacts", said the report's authors Dr. Julia Gardner, David L. Peterson, Allen Wood and Vicki Maloney.

"The effect of hatchery production, however, has been more complex, with both positive and negative results, especially on wild stocks. The essence of the debate over hatcheries revolves around the question: If we are producing more salmon, why aren't there more salmon in the ocean"? the authors asked.

The report was commissioned by the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council to provide an objective summary of current information. The report authors are fisheries and research specialists who were asked to review information on issues related to salmon hatcheries and other salmon enhancement activities. The report was not intended to be an assessment of Canada's Salmonid Enhancement Program but rather a more general consideration of what has been learned in Canada and elsewhere.

In their report, the authors assessed the current enhancement methods in use on the West Coast. These included obstruction removal, improved or restored natural habitat, lake and stream enrichment, spawning channels and hatcheries. Of these activities, the authors found that major hatcheries and spawning channels pose the highest risks to wild salmon. Conversely, other methods such as habitat improvement intervene less in the life cycle of the salmon and have less attendant risk.

The greatest risk involves intensively cultured salmon replacing production from wild stocks, rather than augmenting the production from wild stocks. For instance, in the Strait of Georgia, while the overall abundance of coho salmon has been relatively stable, the proportion of the coho abundance from hatchery production has increased and wild salmon have decreased.

The report's authors determined that several factors affect the degree of risk posed to wild salmon. These include the scale of production, relative production, type of wild salmon species, forms of enhancement strategies and practices, types of fish interactions, and extent of knowledge about enhancement. The risks that are explored in the report include:
1. mixed-stock fishing effects when enhanced and wild salmon mix in a fishing area and fishing is allowed to respond to the total abundance of salmon, as opposed to fishing being limited by the abundance of the wild salmon in that mixture;
2. long-tem genetic effects when the genetic composition of the enhanced fish differ from the local wild stocks and inter-mating occurs; and
3. ecological interactions between enhanced and wild fish, including competition for food and space, predation effects, and disease risk.

In their conclusions, the authors suggest criteria to guide future decisions on salmon enhancement. These include operating hatcheries and enhancement facilities with primary regard for their potential impacts on wild salmon, using a combination of enhancement and management strategies to protect wild salmon, and focusing on the early implementation of less interventionist approaches to enhancement. Also prominent in their conclusions is the need to increase research and monitoring of enhancement programs and to apply what has been learned from Canadian and American experience.

The consultants' report will serve as a reference document for the upcoming public consultations by the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council aimed at examining the role of hatcheries and other enhancement activities. These public consultations are meant to enable British Columbians to express their views on future directions for salmon enhancement. The discussions will help form the basis of a Council advisory statement. The Council's public consultations will take place in Prince Rupert, Nanaimo and Chilliwack with details to be released shortly.

The Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council was established in 1998 to provide advice to the Governments of Canada and British Columbia and the public on matters dealing with the conservation of Pacific fish populations, specifically salmon and steelhead, and their freshwater and ocean habitat.

For more information, contact:
 
Dr. Julia Gardner
Dovetail Consulting
604-737-6868
 
John Paul Fraser
Media Liaison PFRCC
604-775-5789
fraser@fish.bc.ca

Related Reports:

Making Sense of the Debate about Hatchery Impacts: Interactions Between Enhanced and Wild Salmon on Canada's Pacific Coast