By Cheryl Jahn

Chinook in trouble

Chinook caught in red tape

Aug 2, 2019 | 3:42 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The Spruce City Wildlife Association is sounding the alarm over the fate of the Chinook salmon. That particular species has already been identified as a “stock of concern” federally, but the rock slide at Big Bar has made matters worse.

“We’ve already got almost no fish and now, having a major impact like the [the Big Bar rock slide] where, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans knows that a significant number of fish that were supposed to be up here, didn’t make it. We need to do something with the few that did make it,” explains Dustin Snyder, the Vice President of the Spruce City Wildlife Association.

He has inked an email to a number of MLA, MP’s and Ministers.

It reads, in part:

“The Spring 5-2 Chinook have been recognized by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a ‘Stock of Concern’ for multiple years, mostly due to poor survival and diminishing numbers.”

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“If all of this was not already trying enough on a disappearing stock, the big bar slide may have put the final nail in the coffin of the Spring 5-2 Chinook. The grave reality is that we may only see these salmon now return 4 out of 5 years in their cycle.”

All the Association is asking for is the chance to capture some of the fish which did make it back and rear them in the hatchery in Prince George.

The email goes on to read:

“While it is completely understandable that the department is overwhelmed still with the number of salmon arriving at the slide site, the residents of the Upper Fraser and Middle Fraser (Nechako) are concerned that attention is not being paid to our decimated stocks that may not even be returning this year.”

“Spruce City Wildlife Association owns and operates the only hatchery facility in the upper and middle Fraser. Our volunteer team is ready at a moments notice to assist with this dire situation and do enhancement on a few upper Fraser (Spring 5-2) streams. We understand that the department staff is dealing with an unprecedented situation and all SCWA needs is the thumbs up to offer this assistance.”

But Snyder says the whole thing is mired in bureaucratic red tape.

“At this point now, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has told us, with this incident command situation, everything has to run through the Big Bar Slide Incident Command,” says Snyder. “And as of even today, nobody can tell me, nobody can give me a name of who is in charge of Chinook under the Incident Command. They know who is in charge of sockeye, but they can’t give me a name as to who can actually give us the thumbs up and who can make this call.”

To add to the frustration, an engineer from DFO has inspected the hatchery and it has been given a passing grade to do the work.

And time is of the essence, says Snyder, as the Spring Chinook will be spawning in the next two weeks. After that, it’s too late.