This dynamic with high-end lodges and guided sportfishing operations on a river like the Skeena is very reminiscent of what I saw in the commercial seafood sector. You’d see one or more of the big players investing huge amounts of money, sometimes in fisheries where you found yourself wondering what on the earth they were thinking when making that investment decision because the particular fishery they poured their money into had quotas that were under pressure due to overfishing
Then like clockwork, the principals of these companies would show up at fishery regulatory meetings and plead economic duress, and beg the regulatory guys not to cut quotas because it would severly impact local employment and cause them monetary losses
When the managers back away from the quota-cutting table out of respect for these profligate spenders, we all subsidize their crappy investment decision. It’s a publicly owned resource, Our tax dollars pay the fishery managers to properly manage our fish, yet without even a blush, the managers, showing zero allegiance to the sector that pays their salaries, gives our fish away to these ill-informed careless investors
You can imagine the conversation a Smithers banker who is financing one or more of these lodges might have with a fishery manager down the street from him in the Smithers, especially after 2020 when their clients were a no-show due to C19
It was almost a certainty that the lodges would brow-beat Smithers and Victoria into submission when it came time to deciding whether the Tyee Test results warranted shutting down the Skeena steelhead fishery or not, and this is precisely what happened.
I ask again, how will lodge owners and guides ever look FN fish managers or anyone else in the eye and discuss the word “conservation” again with a straight face. They have shown their true colors....Tyee test results, scientific process be damned
