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British Columbia – The Union of B.C Indian Chiefs is calling on First Nations to suspend all fishing for Fraser River early Chinook salmon.
This is the third consecutive year the group has called for the complete ban on fishing of the early salmon run to allow for its continued recover.
The UBCIC president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip demanded the federal government halt all non-aboriginal fisheries for the same run as well because of the drastic declines. He went on to say the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) have done a “poor and sloppy” job within the management of the entire Fraser system, allowing deterioration of the river’s salmon stocks.
Acting Area Director of the DFO Les Jantz disagrees with this assertion, stating the DFO has been restricting fisheries for a long time in the Pacific Region because of this.
“The Department (DFO) beginning in the mid to late 1980’s began to implement management actions in a number of fisheries throughout the Pacific Region,” Jantz says.
At the moment, the DFO feels strongly that they have implemented as many actions as possible without totally closing a number of different of commercial and recreational fisheries. The DFO is tracking these depleted stocks in order to watch over the recovery process of these runs. Directing fishing toward these stocks has been restricted by the DFO.
“Currently all of these fisheries do not target these stocks,” Jantz says. “They do not target these stocks. They’re present while they are focusing on other Chinook stocks or Sockeye stocks.”
What the DFO has done is progressively increase the restrictions in place to the point where the exploitation rate of these runs has been reduced from 45% 20 years ago, to 15% over the last couple of years.
Unfortunately, to put further restrictions on the industry in this regard, as the UBCIC would like them to; it would result in having complete closures in both the recreational and commercial sectors from February right through to the middle of July.
Closing the recreational and commercial fisheries there would be a huge economic cost to the province, as well as repercussions to the First nations fishing industry.
The DFO believes that the restrictions and management actions that are currently in place on the early Chinook runs are good enough and showing signs that they are working.
According to the DFO there has been a progressive increase in spawning numbers.
The DFO is not planning on changing anything and will be keeping the same management actions in place that they’ve used over the past 3 years despite what the UBCIC is demanding they do, and believe that the management in place will continue to trend positively.
They also hope that in the future they will be able to relax some of the restrictions in place, but they are not at that point as of yet.
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Topic: Plea For Early Chinook Closure On The Fraser (Read 4100 times)