Indigenous fisheries conservation in a changing world

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Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and life ways, which include approaches to fishing that are often distinct from dominant society. While many Indigenous fisheries have been sustainably managed for millennia prior to colonization, relatively little is known about their benefits or impacts for fish, people, and the places both inhabit. How these fisheries are faring amidst climate change is an even larger unknown. As head of the Centre for Indigenous Fisheries at UBC, my research program has a long-term goal of providing breakthroughs in fisheries science to understand and thus better manage the intersection of fisheries effects, fish and fisheries' responses to climate change, and conservation strategies for Indigenous fisheries. Our work is focused on Canada's West Coast which boasts fish and associated fisheries of unparalleled cultural significance (Pacific salmon) that are highly sensitive to the rapid climate-driven changes occurring in the region. Over the next five years, my students in the Centre and I will work towards this long-term vision by collecting new data through experimental fisheries studies, synthesizing untapped data by engaging Indigenous partners across the province, and developing future policy options by charting our findings against different climate change scenarios. Our first objective is to measure the impacts of Indigenous fisheries for salmon not kept by fishers as harvest, but those released as bycatch or that escape before being landed. This will involve comparing the fate of released and escaped salmon from different fishing gears (weirs, fish traps, dip nets) across latitudes where climate change is felt differently. Our second objective is to see whether and how Indigenous fishing practices for salmon are changing in light of climate change. Anecdotal evidence suggests that fishers are altering when, where, and how they fish due to changes in salmon availability, but this has not been examined formally or on a province-wide scale. Our third objective is to bring these impacts and activities together to forecast how their interactions will play out along different climate change scenarios. We will use models to identify options and actions available to policymakers and practitioners that favour meaningful conservation outcomes for salmon. As we near the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (2022) and with Canada bringing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into law (2021), we are witnessing a palpable shift in emphasis towards Indigenous fisheries. As Canada announces long-term closures for commercial salmon fisheries (by 60% in 2021), knowledge of Indigenous fisheries' effects, responses, and strategies in the face of climate change have never been more needed. We will answer to this need and break new ground as science that is done with and for Indigenous peoples as well as fish of supreme cultural importance.