Fisheries Department announces conservation measures to protect chinook in B.C.
Full story in the Times Colonist
via The Canadian Press
April 16, 2019
VANCOUVER — The federal government has announced commercial and recreational fishing restrictions in British Columbia as a way to conserve chinook salmon returning to the Fraser River this season.
The Fisheries Department’s regional director general Rebecca Reid says urgent protection measures include the closure of a commercial fishery involving seven endangered stocks.
Reid says an independent committee of wildlife experts and scientists conducted an assessment last November and determined seven chinook populations on the Fraser River are endangered, four are threatened and one is of special concern.
One area salmon was considered not at risk while three others were not assessed by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
Reid says harvest management measures alone won’t deal with declining numbers of chinook in recent years due to multiple factors including warming waters because of climate change and destruction of habitat that must be rebuilt.