From ‘salmon management’ to ‘salmon caretaking’: a collaborative, two-eyed seeing, rights-based approach to salmon conservation

Via a collaborative research project with the Dandzen Development Ltd. Partnership, we seek to improve conservation of ts’emen (sockeye) and jâs (Chinook) salmon along the Fraser and Chilko Rivers. The Gwets’en Nilt’i Pathway Agreement between the T?ilhqot’in Nations, the Government of Canada, and the Government of BC only considers the input from the T?ilhqot’in on salmon management when they are within T?ilhqot’in territory, although salmon spend most of their lives migrating between freshwater spawning grounds and the Pacific Ocean. There is an urgent need for a rights-based approach to salmon management that addresses threats to salmon throughout their life cycles, as well as to understand who benefits from the TNG’s stewardship of salmon rearing in their territories. Beginning in 2022, I will work with Dandzen and Dr. Andrea Reid at UBC to address these problems by (1) tracking who is catching T?ilhqot’in salmon and where; (2) identifying and calculating the cumulative effects of threats facing T?ilhqot’in salmon populations throughout their entire life cycles; and, (3) measuring salmon and ecosystem health in ways that recognizes relationships between people, culture, and salmon, and improves measurements of salmon biodiversity so that they are representative of T?ilhqot’in understandings.

Faculty Supervisor:

Andrea Reid

Student:

Partner:

Dandzen

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Aquaculture and Fishing; Agriculture and Food; Sustainability & the Environment

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: