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Exploring the Potential Benefits, Impacts, and Uncertainties of Reintroducing Sockeye Salmon to Okanagan Lake
Okanagan Nation Fisheries Commission
ESSA facilitated a multi-stakeholder workshop to review issues and evidence relating to the potential risks and benefits of reintroducing sockeye salmon to Okanagan Lake, British Columbia. These issues and data were summarised in a Technical Issues Paper prepared by ESSA prior to the workshop. The workshop was hosted by the Okanagan First Nation and was attended by representatives of Federal, Provincial, and US fisheries agencies, as well as other First Nations and US Tribal agencies. Participants were led through structured, interactive exercises to review and revise the issues and evidence presented in the pre-workshop report, and guided through discussions of other relevant evidence brought forward during the workshop. After the workshop, ESSA prepared a Draft Action Plan that summarised the views and information presented at the workshop, and identified next steps in developing an ecosystem-based understanding of the problem.
A key component of the Draft Action Plan was a recommendation that sockeye be re-introduced to Skaha Lake as an experimental management strategy to resolve some of the uncertainties identified at the workshop. For the last three years, ESSA has worked closely with the Skaha Lake Working Group to coordinate and conduct a research program that explores the benefits and potential risks of an experimental reintroduction of sockeye salmon to Skaha Lake. As part of this project, ESSA worked with the other participating agencies to develop a life-cycle model of sockeye salmon (OkSockeye), and a framework for developing and implementing an experimental design for the reintroduction that balances learning and conservation objectives. This framework includes sets of objectives, precautionary principles, re-introduction methods and hypotheses, and a draft monitoring plan. We have also used the life-cycle model to evaluate relative benefits and risks associated with alternative reintroduction methods, and have conducted a preliminary set of statistical power analyses of these methods.
Additional Information:
 B.C.'s miracle of the fishes – Globe & Mail article (May 24, 2005)
[PDF - 17kb]
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