From a 9 Dec 2020 Wild Fish Conservancy PR –
December 9, 2020 — A publication released today in BioScience suggests that a return to historical Indigenous fishing practices and systems of salmon management may be key to revitalizing struggling Pacific Salmon fisheries across the North Pacific.
The article, titled Indigenous Systems of Management for Culturally and Ecologically Resilient Pacific Salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) Fisheries, is authored by a collection of accomplished Indigenous leaders and fisheries scientists from the United States and Canada. Wild Fish Conservancy is proud to announce its own Adrian Tuohy serves as one of the paper’s co-authors.
In the paper, the authors document how Indigenous communities of the North Pacific sustainably harvested salmon for thousands of years by fishing in or near rivers with low-impact selective fishing tools like fish traps, weirs, wheels, reef nets, and dip nets. After the arrival of European settlers, traditional Indigenous fisheries and governance systems were suppressed, giving way to the mostly unsustainable mixed-stock commercial fishing practices of today that commonly occur in the ocean with non-selective tools such as gill nets.
“As they’re currently built, mixed-stock salmon fisheries are undermining the biodiversity needed for Pacific salmon to thrive,” says Dr. Atlas, lead author of the publication and Scientist with the Portland-based Wild Salmon Center. “Luckily, we have hundreds of examples, going back thousands of years, of better ways to fish. These techniques can deliver better results for all communities…”
