UpStream SkeenaWild

Fishers in Southeast Alaska intercept and sell millions of salmon and steelhead migrating to British Columbia, Washington and Oregon in non-selective net fisheries that don't adequately report their bycatch. All while our local fisheries are closed in the hopes of rebuilding dwindling stocks.

Seafood certification organizations like Marine Stewardship Council have turned a blind eye to much of this, maintaining that Alaska has 'sustainable' certification. But are fisheries that profit by harvesting another country’s endangered fish really sustainable?

Consumers want to buy ethically sourced seafood that is right for their families. But, Southeast Alaskan fishers catch more Pacific Northwest Salmon than all the fisheries in BC, Washington, and Oregon combined. That clearly isn't fair, and nowhere near sustainable.

Wild salmon are essential to the culture of the Pacific Northwest. When they are absent, our communities suffer and keystone species like Southern Resident Killer Whales, eagles, and Grizzly bears starve.

Fisheries in Alaska are scooping up Canadian salmon before they reach their home rivers to spawn. Meanwhile, B.C.'s salmon and steelhead have hit record lows. First Nations are not meeting their food needs, commercial fishers are out of work and hard-working B.C. families can no longer catch a salmon to bring home for dinner.

The solution is easy—Alaska needs to move its dirty interception fisheries away from areas where B.C. salmon are returning to spawn, to inside waters where Alaskans can still catch their own fish.

In partnership with Watershed Watch Salmon Society SkeenaWilds Fisheries Biologist Kaitlyn Yahle and Watershed Watch’s Fisheries Campaigner David Mills, have been working tirelessly to dig deep on this issue and expose Alaska’s Dirty Secret.

The Skeena Watershed is a significant and unique environment not only for Canada but the world and at SkeenaWild we want to highlight and celebrate how Indigenous nations, local communities and cutting-edge research are pulling out all the stops to ensure our way of life and salmon have a future in the Skeena and beyond.

Join us on the third season UpStream where we’ll explore the people, Culture, science and of course the salmon from across The Skeena Watershed.

Northwest BC is filled with diverse voices, communities and economies that relay on a healthy watershed. We’ll dive into the work being done every day on the ground to ensure our way of life and salmon have a future and that the Skeena stays Wild.

Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you find podcasts or check out SkeenaWild.org, and don’t forget to tell your friends. Thanks for listening.

In 2021, more than 60 per cent of commercial salmon harvesters in B.C. hung up their nets due to low returns and closures issued by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. While just over the boarder in Southeast Alaska, harvesters were posting record catches, with more than 3,000 boat-days logged and nearly 800,000 sockeye salmon harvested, many of them destine for home streams in B.C. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Since the early 2000s, and now confirmed by researches and fish biologists working with SkeenaWild and Watershed Watch Salmon Society in Victoria, interception fisheries in Southeast Alaska’s District 104 on the outer coast of the panhandle – where local rivers don’t support significant salmon populations – could be contributing to recent declines in B.C. salmon and steelhead returns to the Skeena, Nass and Fraser Rivers. Harvesting tens of thousands of Canadian Chinook and coho, as well as large but unknown numbers of co-migrating Canadian pink, chum, and especially steelhead, caught as by-catch, many of which come from threatened and endangered populations.

Salmon stocks in B.C. have seen some of the lowest returns in history over the past five years, even posting one of the worst steelhead returns in 2023, despite conservation efforts by the DFO and others. Alaskan fisheries are now the biggest harvesters of a growing number of depleted Canadian salmon populations.

Millions of Canadian salmon are now caught in Southeast Alaska every season, as the Canadian fishing fleet dwindles year after year. Many are calling on B.C. and Canada to stand up to these destructive Alaskan fisheries before it’s too late.

Lax Kw’alaams commercial harvesters Donnie Wesley and Ken Bryant have been fishing for nearly their entire lives, the better part of 50 years, however a lot has changed over those decades, it’s now harder than ever to make a living as a commercial harvester, and much of that is due to the Alaskan plunder.

At SkeenaWild we try to make sense of which mines are doing it right, and which ones are too risky for communities and the land. We also try to hold the government regulating these mines – and the companies that abandoned them – to account and ensure dangerous mines are cleaned up after they shutdown operations. But in many cases it’s difficult, largely due to poor regulations and minimal bonds required by the government to clean up the mess left behind.

This is most evident with the Gitxaala Nations’ current league challenge of the Government of B.C.’s Mineral Tenures Act which allows anyone with a computer and a few dollars to claim ministerial rights to any known deposits within the province without having to notify the communities or Indigenous Nations where the claims are being staked.

In April 2023, after more than a year of preparations, the Gitxaala Nation launched their much anticipated legal challenge of B.C.’s mineral tenures act in B.C. Supreme Court, which they say has impacted their territory and salmon populations, as well as other marine sustenance, which their people have relied on for several millennia.

This case has huge potential to change the way minerals are claimed in B.C. and the future of mining as we know it. It could also chart a path forward when it comes to Indigenous land claims and reconciliation in this part of Canada, but there is a long road ahead.

For many years now SkeenaWild has been working with various partners and Indigenous Nations to ensure mines are accountable in all respects. And to pressure governments to strengthen environmental assessment processes that approve mines, and also bonds that would be earmarked for clean up if a mine goes bankrupt, an all too familiar sight in Northwest, B.C.

We also try to hold companies to account during that process. Reviewing proposals for their legitimacy and accuracy, using expert and biologists to analyse and research mine proposals to make sure their on the level, and to call out dangerous mines that plan to discharge toxic water back into the environment. Advocating for changes if a mine is going to impact sensitive habitat, wildlife or salmon and steelhead.

One such mine going through the environmental review process is know as Telkwa Coal, which plans to build a large cola mine just seven kilometres from the small community of Telkwa along the Bulkley River, a major tributary of the Skeena.

For nearly two years now SkeenaWild’s mining researcher, Adrienne Berchtold, has been looking into the Telkwa Coal proposal, raising concerns about the lack of information the company provided to the BC Environmental Assessment Office and the potential risks posed to local drinking water, a dwindling Caribou herd and especially salmon and steelhead.

The Babine is one of the most important tributaries of the Skeena River. It’s not only home to one of the largest sockeye runs on the Skeena, but also an important steelhead run.

As fish swim up the Babine River to Lake Babine to spawn, they have to clear the Babine Fish Weir, a metal fence that spans the river near the mouth of the lake. This fence as been in place for decades and helps correlate the numbers of fish returning to the system next to the data collected at the Tyee Test Fishery near the mouth of the Skeena.

Being able to confirm the number of fish entering the Babine allows fisheries managers to better understand the in-season shifts in populations, which in turn helps direct conservation measures.

However, the Babine Fish Weir, also allows for one of the most sustainable sockeye fisheries to take place, the Talok fishery, run by the Lake Babine Nation and supported by North Delta Seafoods. This fishery only targets Babine sockeye and ensures no bycatch. It also employs dozens of people for local villages like Fort Babine and Tachet, communities that don’t necessarily have a lot of economic opportunities near by.

For the people who work at the fence, it’s a positive experience, one they couldn’t imagine anywhere else.

I had a chance to checkout the Babine Fish Weir in August 2022 during the final stages of the largest sockeye run in decades.

The Skeena Watershed is vast, encompassing dozens of communities and Indigenous nations, and more than 54,000 square kilometres of forests, rivers, lakes, mountains and wetlands. Trying to monitor and understand the ecological, cultural and economic values of this land is a constant struggle. However, Sarah Railton, SkeenaWild's land use planning and forestry lead, makes those struggles a little easier to deal with as she navigates the world of lands use planning, implements better forests practices and helps restore local salmon streams. One focus of SkeenaWilds land use planning and forestry work is restoration, in part through the Healthy Watersheds Initiative.

Willow Creek, just north of Terrace, was historically a salmon stream. But road development, beaver dams and logging chocked out most of the water flow and passage ways for fish years ago. But over the past couple of season Sarah and a crew of field techs have removed obstructions, cleared passage ways and replanted thousands of tress to rehabilitate Willow Creek and hopefully, allow salmon to return.