| Saving Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy | |
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When Canada’s Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon was announced in 2005, it was hailed as a major step forward for fisheries management in the country.
“It was a blueprint for how to manage, rebuild, and conserve wild salmon populations that puts conservation as the number-one priority,” says Aaron Hill, executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society in Victoria, British Columbia. The most important part of the wild salmon policy, as it’s commonly known, is that it includes strategies and actions to achieve its goals, says Hill. |
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“That’s what makes the policy special,” he says. “It’s not just empty verbiage; it has some actual meat to it.” Or, it’s supposed to.
In the 12 years since the policy was finalized, very little has actually been done. The biggest issue has been a lack of monitoring of salmon populations, says Hill. In recent years, funding for salmon monitoring has been slashed repeatedly. An independent performance review in 2011 and the Cohen Commission’s inquiry into Fraser River sockeye salmon in 2012 both pushed for the policy’s implementation—to no effect. |
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