Collapse of Wild Fisheries
Driving Fish Farm Expansion: Wild Fisheries being destroyed by Gevernment Policy
Article by Western Canada Wilderness Committee © 2002.
Wild salmon that have sustained Indigenous Peoples for millennia depend on healthy forests for their survival. For decades, First Nations in BC have seen salmon runs in their traditional territories decimated by industrial clearcut logging.
The tragic effects of logging on salmon habitat are both numerous and well known. Logging increases the likelihood of landslides by up to 15 to 20 times over what would occur naturally. Tree roots help anchor steep slopes and as these roots decompose after logging, landslides are far more likely for up to the next 20 years. Landslides dump debris in fish-bearing rivers down-slope, filling vital spawning beds with boulders, mud and logging debris. As forest companies exhaust ancient forests on valley bottoms, logging on unstable slopes is sadly becoming more and more common.
Salmon also need the shade provided by large trees close to streams to maintain cool water temperatures, while live and dead trees help to stabilize stream channels. Logging often not only removes these trees but also fills stream channel with logging slash. A report authored by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund in 1997 showed that 83% of streams in coastal BC were being clearcut to the banks.
All of this has had predicable effects on salmon runs. At least 142 salmon runs are already extinct and over 600 are threatened, mainly due to habitat destruction. Logging is not the only threat to our precious salmon runs - overfishing, urbanization, and hydroelectric projects and most recently aquaculture, have also taken their toll.
While forests sustain salmon, salmon also play an important role in sustaining the forests. Spawning salmon bring vital nutrients from the ocean to the forest. The nutrients from spawned carcasses sustain not only wildlife such as bears and eagles, but also the massive trees that BC has been blessed with. The bodies of these returning salmon also help the survival of incubating salmon eggs. Salmon, forests and wildlife are all part of a delicate and beautiful balance that is tragically being undone in our generation.
There is a great concern that destruction of wild salmon stocks is being used as an ironic justification for increasing fish farming. Farmed salmon can never replace the vital ecological and cultural role that has been played by wild salmon on the west coast for millennia.
