OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
If you want to see where fisheries management is going in the British Columbia world of the present, my recent post attempting to demonstrate the hypocrisy so clearly demonstrated by the Gitxsan First Nation is as good an example as you need. Six days, 153,000 reads, 93,000 engagements, 900 comments and 1,100 shares is a pretty fair sample size on which to base some observations.
Anything that touches on First Nations fishing brings out the worst of the worst remarks, especially from FN members themselves. The accusations included among the multitude of comments by those trying to distance FNs from any association with the two pictures I chose to try and illustrate the hypocrisy inherent in the Gitxsan link provided were quite remarkable. They speak volumes about the gap between FNs and non-FNs and the enormous difficulty in achieving consensus around recognition of conservation issues, much less how we can address them quickly enough and effectively enough to forestall extirpations on a scale heretofore unknown.
Check the reviews that precede the actual post to get a sense of all too prevalent attitudes. Alternately, scroll through the comments for an appreciation of mind sets that are out there and ask yourself how we are ever going to change them. Here’s one of the more extreme examples:
“Steelhead voices…watch ur self since ur comment is been hacked tracking u down….steelhead society…..your trouble… that will be dealt with…one of these days….years…? who knows…but once we know..who u are n where u live….you will be facing charges….GITXSAN LAW ITS HARSH…”
Reality:
1. Declines in salmon and steelhead abundance in British Columbia have been evident from not long after the onset of commercial fisheries, now well over a century ago.
2. It was not just the non-indigenous fishers who were responsible for those declines. Indigenous people were and still are major participants in the commercial fishing industry in BC, particularly in the north.
3. The fastest growing segment of the BC population is our indigenous component.
4. The fishing technology commonly employed by both commercial and non-commercial indigenous fishers is gill nets. Gill nets are perceived by many indigenous and non-indigenous people to have pre-dated European contact. In fact gill nets were first introduced to indigenous fishers to harvest salmon in rivers pursuant to “The Barricades Agreement” between what is now known as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Babine indigenous community in the early 1900s.
5. Gill nets are the most notoriously non-selective fish harvesting method employed to capture salmon (and steelhead). Abundant stocks are always the target but weaker stocks of the same and different species are always victimized in mixed stock fisheries. Weak stock overharvest is the trademark of all such fisheries.
6. Regardless of who owns or operates the nets there are only so many fish safely harvestable before conservation becomes the issue. Consider all the COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada) recommendations for listing of early timed Fraser chinook, upper Fraser coho, Interior Fraser Steelhead, Sakinaw and Cultus sockeye, etc. for evidence of how present day approaches are failing miserably.
7. The only reason many Skeena stocks are not in the same crosshairs as the growing list of those from the Fraser is the simple fact no one has performed the requisite analysis yet. Its long been known that wild Skeena sockeye stocks, for example, are all in trouble due to overharvest in the mixed stock net fisheries targeting the one and only strong sockeye stock remaining in the Skeena system, the enhanced fish originating from artificial spawning channels on Babine Lake.
What can be done to reverse the trends? There are no solutions until there is agreement on what the problems are. Start with gill nets. First Nations have to accept at least some of the responsibility for the conservation status of a growing number of salmon and steelhead stocks by continuing to deploy them where and when the outcome is 100% predictable. The blame game whereby everyone else created the current problems doesn’t wash. The Gitxsan ultimatum announcing closure of the recreational fishery in the Skeena while refusing to acknowledge their own contribution to “the fisheries crisis” (their term, not mine) as both commercial fishers and in-river gill netters for more than a century is not going to move the dial in anyone’s favour. Targeting recreational fishers may be an attractive political move but it will only serve to build higher walls than already exist.
Governments have to show leadership, not endless, ill-defined “reconciliation”. There are less fish and more of all of us with better access, better information, ever more efficient harvesting technology and differentially applied monitoring and enforcement of what we do. That is a recipe for acceleration along the path we now find ourselves on. Saying so is not hate mongering, racism, bias, harassment, colonial propaganda, etc. Furthermore, and just to emphasize a point for those still in denial, those pictures were taken right there in the heart of Gitxsan territory in the middle of the Skeena steelhead return period. The nets were deployed by Gitxsan fishers. No fake news, no photo shopping, no importing from other times and places. End of story.
https://www.facebook.com/rshforbcsteelhead/posts/1124281211089190?__tn__=K-R
