Too early yet to say. Will see how our sale pitch is received. I think it will be a while before we know but pressure will be applied.
Hey hey bkk, just sitting here on 9 months off of work and saw your list. Good points, I've got some thoughts that may help out.
My top 5 would be a bit subjective. Some would benefit fish more while others would benefit the angling experience. Here is what I would do:
1 - Develop a spawning escapement goal for both pinks and chums and implement it.
Be careful what you wish for here. The methods that have traditionally been used to develop biological escapement goals tend to generate targets that are much lower than you would likely expect. In the case of the Squamish where data availability and quality is somewhere between little and none, there are new methods that Carrie Holt in DFO has been developing for generating WSP escapement benchmarks, but I still suspect they would be relatively low. And once there is a spawning escapement target, fishery managers, harvesters etc will all start to try to harvest every last fish above the target. For the level of harvest that comes from a sport fishery, I don't think the Squamish needs this intensive of a management framework. The single digit harvest rates that occur (likely very low single digits) on pink and chum are not biologically relevant unless their productivity falls off a cliff for cycles on end, and if that happens then stopping a few sporties won't make a difference anyways. Main point being, a formal escapement target will = seiners and gillentters licking their lips. Don't go that route, but let the sporties have some limited openings at 1 fish/day.
2 - At present there are several groups as well as government, spending significant amounts of dollars to remove large river obstructions ( boulders ) preventing salmon access to the 40 + kilometers of habitat in the Elaho River. This is the best habitat in the whole watershed especially for chinook, coho and pinks. This habitat has recently been made accessible but with current salmon population sizes it's going to be a while before it's colonized in any significant way. What is needed is a fry stocking program to utilize this habitat until returning salmon can colonize it on there own. Coho stocking would see the most immediate return from this.
I agree 100%. The current plan is far too small to make much of a difference. I've given my thoughts multiple times that putting yearling smolts up there is not a good plan, and that they should be pouring large numbers of fry for a cycle or two (Chinook and coho). 40 km of near vacant habitat is a perfect situation for this approach. Putting 15000 fish up there is simply pissing into the wind. Standard recolonization theory is to choose one or two appropriate donor populations, and hit it hard for a cycle or two then back off.
3 - The water ramping rates on the Cheakamus River downstream of the BC Hydro dam need to be totally changed as the flow changes are currently too rapid.
Local stakeholders did a good job making noise on this, as BCH heard the concerns loud and clear and they are scared of screwing up again.
4 - There needs to be a significant revision of the amount of fishing guides on this watershed. It has gotten a little silly in the last few years with guides coming from as far away as Pemberton and Mission. Combine that with the amount of assistant guides and the pressure gets a little silly. A good example of that was a guiding company who will remain nameless, was bringing up full bus loads of people this summer to target pinks. There has to be some control on this.
Hmmm, I don't think I'll be popular on this one, but this sounds like NIMBYism. If the guides are legal and above board, not sure how this can be dealt with nor why it should be. Manage impact through total harvest (catch limits, open dates, open areas), the rest will sort itself out.
5 - Currently there is a small pink salmon enhancement program on the Cheakamus ( 1. 6 million fry ) that will likely disappear next cycle due to reallocation of priorities by DFO.
There's no reason this should fall off the table due to reallocation. Outside groups should not be putting money towards this, there is way more than enough money in DFO to deal with this. A little creativity needs to be used but in my opinion this is not a hard one to figure out.
And that is what I would do if I had a job in DFO.
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Topic: Squamish River (Read 17424 times)