Protecting Habitat

Salmon live all over the province, from the shoreline to the shadow of Mount Robson in the Rockies, the headwaters of the Fraser River. In urban areas, they’re like our neighbours. In rural communities, you might literally have salmon in your back yard. You don’t just find them in great rivers like the Fraser, Stikine, Skeena and Nass – some of the smallest backyard creeks can be the most productive salmon streams. To thrive, these fish need clean, cool water and undisturbed streamsides buffering the creeks they use to spawn. They also rely on undisturbed estuaries, areas where they grow to maturity before heading out to prepare for life at sea. If these crucial habitats aren’t protected, salmon have no place to reproduce and grow.

Threats to salmon habitat

Expanding development and resource extraction are the leading causes of fish-habitat destruction. Urban development, agriculture, marine shipping, logging, and other industrial activity have altered estuaries, which provide critical habitat for all salmon. They’re also responsible for damaging or destroying the delicate latticework of habitat that spreads across the province in rivers, streams and creeks. Remaining habitat is being subjected to pollution from sewage and industrial discharges, discarded shipping wastes and pollutants from an ever-expanding aquaculture industry.

The federal and provincial governments have reduced funding for environmental protection over the past few years. For example, Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s budget for habitat protection has declined by at least 55 per cent from 2001 to 2004. To protect habitat and implement effective conservation policy, departments and agencies responsible for habitat protection must receive more resources.

What the David Suzuki Foundation is doing to conserve salmon habitat

Current efforts by the Foundation to improve salmon habitat protection are focused on improving compliance and enforcement of the federal Fisheries Act and implementing effective salmon habitat policy.

Improving compliance and Enforcement

The David Suzuki Foundation has initiated a compliance-and-enforcement oversight program where we send out experienced environmental investigators who track down and investigate instances where habitat is being damaged by land-use activities such as real-estate development, illegal effluent discharges, timber harvesting, gravel mining, and mining operations. Once we find these illegal activities, we carefully document what is happening and bring it to the attention of the federal government. We then track the government’s response and monitor how the situation is being handled. In most cases we also provide solutions to deal with the habitat destruction and to prevent it in the future.

You can find the results of recent investigations in the report High and Dry: An investigation of Salmon-habitat destruction in British Columbia.

Implementing effective salmon habitat policy

The DSF works closely with all levels of government to ensure Canadians have effective and efficient habitat policy. We’re engaged in consultations and provide scientific reviews to improve two federal government policies related to salmon habitat protection:

- Policy for the Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon in Canada (website)
- Environmental Process Modernization Plan (website)

The DSF has reviewed the status of habitat policy in Western Canada and provides solutions for improvement in the report The Will To Protect.

We have also produced a muncipal handbook encouraging local governments to adopt bylaws to protect salmon habitat and to ask other levels of government to do their part: Zoned RS-1 (Residential Salmon).