Wild Salmon are Threatened
Salmon’s unique lifecycle and miraculous round-trip migration takes them through a wide variety of environs and exposes them to significant risks. Cradle to grave, salmon face ever compounding challenges to their survival.
Risks to wild Salmon in BC’s inner central coast include:
- Climate change impacts across their entire migration area;
- Harvest demands from multiple user groups;
- Historical overfishing;
- By-catch of non-targeted and vulnerable stocks during fisheries;
- Impacts of long-term hatchery production that include competition for habitat and loss of biodiversity;
- Declining food supply from overfishing of forage species;
- Changing marine and fresh water conditions;
- Effects on watersheds from past deforestation;
- Large scale forest fires and beetle infestation in upstream portions of some watersheds;
- Proposed road building and development in upper reaches of some watersheds;
- Decline of in-stream stock and habitat monitoring by resource management agencies;
- Potential future developments including transportation of fossil fuels in migration areas, fish farms and mining.
Implementing sustainable solutions to address such complex problems will require collaboration, compassion, creativity and persistence, along with updated knowledge of salmon stocks and habitats.
