Salmon enhancement
Salmon hatcheries play an important role in supporting and restoring vulnerable populations of Pacific salmon stocks. Pacific salmon enhancement activities support conservation, rebuilding, stock assessment, community involvement, sustainable fisheries, genetic conservation, and harvesting objectives.
Under this pillar, we are:
- investing in additional expertise and improved hatchery infrastructure
- focusing attention on hatchery modernization, which includes ensuring enhancement efforts protect genetic diversity and actively support conservation priorities
- supporting collaboration and enhancement partnerships
- investing in enhancement science around genetics, fish health, ecosystems, and operational monitoring
- developing a modern enhancement policy approach that will lead to decision-making that better supports the enhancement vision
We are collaborating and engaging with First Nations and stakeholders while working strategically to meet hatchery modernization objectives.
Through the Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative (PSSI), we are exploring opportunities to increase the use of conservation-based salmon hatchery production to help recover, stabilize, and restore stocks and create selective harvest opportunities for Indigenous, recreational, and commercial fishers that avoid impacts to salmon stocks of concern.
To that end, we are developing a modernized enhancement policy approach, which is being informed through engagement and collaboration with Indigenous partners and stakeholder groups. We are planning major investments in hatcheries to improve capacity, particularly in conservation activities in upper-Fraser River areas of British Columbia. We are also investing in enhancement science to improve the quality of information and decision making. This work goes hand and hand with building our expertise and technical capacity to improve supports for partners.
In order to also support the conservation of at-risk stocks, and to support climate change adaptation, we are updating and retrofitting our hatchery facilities. We do not intend to dramatically increase our broad hatchery production, instead, we are putting in place to tools to increase the number of specific stocks and geographic areas that we support.
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