Federal committee hears Yukon River salmon are imperiled. Now, it's calling on governments to act

Don't look at Yukon River salmon as just statistics, but as animals that are part of a vast — and complex — ecosystem.

That's the throughline of a new report tabled in the House of Commons by a federal fisheries committee that looked at the sustainability of the population. The report includes 37 recommendations, most aimed at Ottawa.

The recommendations touch on climate change, the trawling and placer mining industries, teeming hatchery salmon in the North Pacific, and how it's perhaps time for a new approach to managing chinook and chum salmon that have for years been in a steady state of decline.

The standing committee on fisheries and oceans — which is made up of MPs like Yukon's Brendan Hanley, who originally pushed the committee to examine the issue — heard testimony this year from witnesses, including chiefs, biologists and fish harvesters. 

"I think there was almost universal agreement that this is an ecosystem in crisis," Hanley told CBC News. "[And] how important it is to look at this as an ecosystem, not just as a question of numbers."

The recommendation where this sentiment is perhaps most evident is the one that suggests renegotiating the Yukon River Salmon Agreement. In place since 2001, the agreement, which is part of the Pacific Salmon Treaty between Canada and the U.S., focuses on the number of fish passing the border between Alaska and the Yukon. The report suggests that agreement is prescriptive, and isn't enough to help species in crisis. 

The report instead recommends "developing a comprehensive binational agreement with a goal of restoring and rebuilding Yukon River salmon and its supporting ecosystem." 

While counting the number of fish has a place, that work needs to be expanded to include other metrics like size, sex and weight, all of which affect spawning success, the report states.

Stephanie Peacock, senior analyst with the Pacific Salmon Foundation who presented during the hearings, said salmon aren't a homogenous group. 

Yukon-origin chinook salmon are diverse, with 12 genetically and ecologically distinct groups in the drainage, Peacock said. For decades, though, she said that diversity has been eroded.

Peacock said that erosion looks like younger and smaller fish swimming back into the Yukon, both of which affects their resiliency to pressures, of which there are many.

"I don't think we're the only group that's calling for quality of escapement — size and age are two components of that, but there's also the genetic diversity within those fish."

The report says you can't look at habitat in the Yukon River alone. You need to also look at the ocean, where understanding the lives of the salmon bound for the river  — and the perils they face  — is a work in progress.

Take "sea ranching," where countries like Russia, Japan and the U.S. release "billions" of hatchery pink and chum salmon into the North Pacific.