The Wild Salmon Policy — A snapshot

• The goal of the Wild Salmon Policy is to restore and maintain healthy and diverse salmon populations and their habitats for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of Canada in perpetuity.
• This policy goal will be advanced by safeguarding the genetic diversity of wild salmon populations, maintaining habitat and ecosystem integrity, and managing fisheries for sustainable benefits.
  Conservation of wild salmon and their habitat is the highest priority for resource management decision-making.
• Resource management processes and decisions will honour Canada’s obligations to First Nations.
  Implementation of this policy will involve an open and inclusive process aimed at making decisions about salmon stewardship that consider social, economic, and biological consequences. People throughout British Columbia and the Yukon will contribute to decisions that reflect society’s values for wild salmon.
• Wild salmon will be maintained by identifying and managing “Conservation Units” (CUs) that reflect their geographic and genetic diversity. A CU is a group of wild salmon sufficiently isolated from other groups that, if lost, is very unlikely to recolonize naturally within an acceptable timeframe (e.g., a human lifetime or a specified number of salmon generations).
• The status of CUs will be monitored, assessed against selected benchmarks, and reported publicly. Where monitoring indicates low levels of abundance, or deterioration in the distribution of the spawning components of a CU, a full range of management actions to reverse declines – including habitat, enhancement, and harvest measures – will be considered and an appropriate response implemented.
• Measures for habitat protection and salmon enhancement will focus on sustaining wild salmon. An integrated approach to habitat management – involving assessment of habitat condition, identification of indicators and benchmarks, and monitoring of status – will be adopted that links fish production with watershed and coastal planning and stewardship initiatives.
• Ecosystem considerations will be incorporated into salmon management. Indicators will be developed to assess the status of freshwater ecosystems. Information from ocean climate studies of marine survival and of the biological condition of salmon will be integrated into the annual assessments of salmon abundance that guide salmon harvest planning.
• The policy aims to maintain CUs but recognizes there will be exceptional circumstances where it is not feasible or reasonable to fully address all risks. Where an assessment concludes that conservation measures will be ineffective or the social or economic costs to rebuild a CU are extreme, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans may decide to limit the range of measures taken. Such a decision will be made openly and transparently.
• This policy will foster a healthy, diverse, and abundant salmon resource for future generations of Canadians. It will support sustainable fisheries to meet the needs of First Nations and contribute to the current and future prosperity of Canadians.