The World Summit on Salmon held in Vancouver in June 2003 identified a number of concerns regarding the future of Canada’s stock assessment programs for Pacific salmon. These concerns prompted a workshop in November 2003 where stock assessment experts from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada (DFO), universities, the BC government, private sector and non-government organizations (NGO’s) formulated the following recommendations related to defining a core stock assessment program (CSAP) for salmon:

1. Conservation, harvest and long-term monitoring objectives (including scientific objectives) need to be clearly defined and broadly accepted.
2. Stock assessment programs to address those objectives need to be developed by those agencies, First Nations and NGO’s that could be involved in their delivery.
3. The stock assessment programs required to meet the objectives need to be rigorously evaluated and developed within an explicit statistical design.
4. The decision-making framework for selecting stock assessment programs must include an evaluation of the costs, benefits and risks associated with the ability of alternative programs to meet objectives.
5. The development, acceptance and implementation of data management standards for existing stock assessment data must be expedited across agencies.

This report summarizes the work conducted between August 2004 and June 2006 to address the above workshop recommendations. The CSAP outlined in this report is based on advice from individuals with many years of experience with salmon stock assessment and substantial historical data collected through various DFO and First Nations programs.

In 2015, the Pacific Salmon Foundation commissioned Karl English to complete a review of escapement monitoring on the North and Central Coast. This review focused on declines in monitoring since 2006, the estimated cost of annual monitoring of indicator streams across the North and Central Coast, and provides recommendations regarding how to ensure the annual surveys of indicator streams are conducted in a consistent and sustainable manner. The final report can be found here.