Backgrounder: Implement Wild Salmon Policy, protect all habitats, says PFRCC

The Pacific Salmon Resources Council today issued its advisory titled Implementing the Habitat and Ecosystem Components of DFO's Wild Salmon Policy.

In 2005, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) announced its Wild Salmon Policy (WSP), which strategically outlines the priority to be given to the management of wild salmon. The lack of clear implementation schemes, guidelines, measurable objectives, and other planning tools was troubling to some reviewers of the WSP including the Council. Today’s advisory addresses this concern by describing an eight step adaptive framework for assessing threats to habitat, monitoring the status of salmon habitat, invoking management actions to deal with threats to salmon habitat, and monitoring the effectiveness of those actions.

The recommended framework is a new cost-effective approach to implementing the habitat and ecosystem components of the WSP. The Council recommends that strategies for habitat and ecosystem management be implemented together because of their overlap and as a means of saving costs. Council advises the use of broad scale indicators throughout BC's salmon waters and more detailed monitoring where high value habitat is under threat. The Council is stressing that monitoring and management actions be linked, with good management based on good information.

To ensure that DFO has access to extensive land-based data sets, and in recognition of the province's role in natural resource development, the advisory recommends that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the BC Minister of the Environment take advantage of the Pacific Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministers to establish a formal agreement on data access and sharing. To assure success, DFO must also collaborate with First Nations, industry and salmon stewardship groups.

PFRCC notes that the challenge for the Minister in developing an appropriate habitat and ecosystem monitoring strategy for the Wild Salmon Policy is not in identifying the potential long suite of habitat and ecosystem indicators, but in developing a cost-effective, user-accessible, up-to-date monitoring program. This program must focus on the most relevant and important indicators while ensuring that the monitoring program is integrally linked to management actions to achieve the habitat objectives of the WSP.

The advisory discusses the need to give special emphasis to areas where habitat threats are most pressing, however the Council does NOT recommend budget cuts. On the contrary, the advisory stresses the need for more resources for implementation of the WSP and emphasize that habitat and ecosystem monitoring is a new activity which requires adequate resources.