Engagement
The Department of Wild Salmon will engage teams of First Nations, streamkeepers, universities, research field stations and other local individuals to record environmental data and sample the salmon. It is less expensive and more effective to use local field teams.
Teams will develop precise protocols to ensure data is reliable and all datasets are matched to allow the most powerful analyses. As data from across BC is combined, the patterns will become apparent, revealing how fish respond when changes take place in the salmon’s environment. Currently there is no understanding of why some salmon runs are increasing, while others are collapsing.
Equipped with this knowledge First Nations and civil society will have the information to make decisions on how to reduce impacts on salmon from local industry, resource extraction, urban development and other human activity.
With information in community hands, decisions can be made at the local level to remove barriers to wild salmon health, to restore wild salmon and to improve the economy and ecology. Each year, the effectiveness of those decisions will be measured by reading the immune system of the fish again – making the fish themselves the ultimate authority on whether the right actions have been taken or not.
This means efforts to restore salmon are decentralized and put in the hands of the people who consider salmon important.
Gatherings
Scientific results are only as good as the data used to achieve them. The success of this province-wide initiative will depend on detailed communication between field and lab teams.
Ground crews, fishermen and scientists must get to know one another. Field teams need to be aware of the challenges facing lab teams; lab teams need to understand the difficulties of collecting samples from the wet and messy wilderness. Field teams need to visit the labs and lab teams need to visit the field.
An annual gathering – presentations, workshops and time to relax together – will demystify the science and the wild. This will benefit wild salmon and coastal communities, economies and cultures.