SEHAB Member:

Area: Upper Fraser

Community Advisor:  Wayne Salewski

Date: November 2015

Key Issues:

What top three points can you distill from community input to take to DFO RHQ?

1. Lack of habitat personal and support in the region both provincially and federally. No presence on the landscape leads to no planning and no accountability for resource users. Priorities for salmon survival seem tied to staffing levels…..no staff…no priority

2. lack of downstream water use planning for the Nechako River has lead to added stress on riparian zones, flooded and fertilized fields can be averted, salmon redds are in jeopardy and the river goes from extreme to extreme.

3.Current DFO policy causes mitigation dollars to be spent within the foot print of mining operations on fish habitat that has minimal needs. This can result in millions of dollars over 10’s of years being wasted, rather then moved to larger needs within the watershed. In every case where we have asked the question of “why” the response has been policy. …. But more importantly the companies wanted meaningful projects that would have made a difference and were willing for new partnerships and relationships. 

Stories:

A few examples of successes, failures, challenges.

Successes

We have launched the Nechako Watershed Roundtable, after three years of work that consisits of city fathers, regional districts,first nations,ENGO’s, Fraser Basin Council and UNBC. This organization has created an organization that will moniter the health of the Nechako / Takla watershed and report out on such.

Nechako White Sturgeon Conservation Center is working hard to protect the regional sturgeon and outreach to provide education to students, communities has been successful.

RFCPP has been a success in region to do stream restoration and has helped immensely, planning dollars that include outreach to schools, community and  first nations to provide educational opportunities would help in moving societal changes forward. We are short of planning and outreach dollars and in the agriculture industry this shortfall makes it difficult to create buy in.

Failures

To move RTA forward into planning on the outflow of the Nechako Reservoir in a planned manner that considers the many other values that the Nechako River has to the region. We see no understanding of climate change in the management strategy of this corporation and great stress on the region.

The RFCPP program to move funding into longer term contracts that would better facilitate the short fish windows in northern BC. This would allow for ease of planning, ease of permitting and more projects on the ground.

Issues Specific to SEHAB’s Work Plan: