Death by a thousand cuts: salmon falling through the cracks in B.C.’s fragmented policy landscape
New research from Simon Fraser University (SFU) Biological Sciences researchers finds that Pacific salmon are facing escalating threats due to a lack of coordinated conservation policy and oversight.
New research from Simon Fraser University (SFU) Biological Sciences researchers finds that Pacific salmon are facing escalating threats due to a lack of coordinated conservation policy and oversight.
Their study, published this week in FACETS outlines how the existing suite of environmental regulations across multiple jurisdictions in British Columbia is failing to manage the cumulative impacts of industrial development and climate change on salmon and watersheds, and suggests opportunities for reform.
“There’s no single smoking gun for salmon,” says lead author Marta Ulaski, who notes that salmon face pressures from multiple different stressors, including forestry, mining, urban development, aquaculture and climate change. Each of these sectors is regulated separately without coordinated oversight.
“All these different industries have their own laws and regulations that are enabling harms that, even if incremental, are adding up,” adds coauthor and SFU biological sciences professor Jonathan Moore. “There is no single policy tracking the state of salmon watersheds that looks across industries and sets hard thresholds that clearly say enough is enough.”
Policy reform needed
To address gaps in regulation the authors suggest a cumulative effects management cycle that includes collaborative on-the-ground monitoring, regional cumulative effects assessments, enforceable legal thresholds through spatial planning, regional governance, and climate-adapted policy frameworks.
“There are great tools out there that are bringing data together on the status of watersheds,” says Ulaski, “but these frameworks need to be given policy teeth so that they set enforceable thresholds.”
Underutilized tools such as Water Sustainability Plans and Modernized Land-use Planning can also play a role in reform. The authors point to collaboration between the Cowichan Tribes and the Province of B.C. on the Xwulqw’selu (Koksilah) watershed Water Sustainability Plan, and the Skeena Sustainability Assessment Forum as good examples of regional plans that integrate climate science and Indigenous knowledge into watershed management.
New challenges on the horizon
In addition to the situation outlined in their paper, Ulaski and Moore note that this is a critical moment as both the federal and provincial governments move to fast-track major infrastructure and energy projects considered to be in the national or provincial interest.
“Without clear definitions of national or provincial interest and robust protections for ecosystems and Indigenous governance these legislative shifts risk exacerbating the cumulative harms this study warns against,” they say.
“We are asking too much of salmon and their ecosystems,” says Ulaski. “Our current piecemeal approach to industrial development and environmental regulation is not working. There is urgent need to adopt a more holistic approach to environmental regulations in B.C. to protect salmon and the people who rely on them.”
This study was the result of a collaborative project involving 14 experts in science and policy from institutions that included Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, West Coast Environmental Law, Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance and the POLIS Project of Ecological Governance at University of Victoria as part of the Watersheds Futures Initiative.
Journal
FACETS
Article Title
Barriers and opportunities for the effective management of cumulative effects in salmon ecosystems in British Columbia, Canada
Article Publication Date
12-Sep-2025
