Open Collections

Description

Pacific salmon have a strong economic, social and biological importance to many within British Columbia (BC). Over time, urbanization and natural resource extraction have resulted in habitat degradation and physical barriers like dams that restrict salmon extent and connectivity. Conserved and protected areas in BC are designed to conserve biodiversity and have resulted in increased abundance. To investigate how current and potential salmon habitats fall into these areas and what type of natural resource activities they are protected from, bcfishpass was used to model spawning and rearing streams for all Pacific salmon species. They were then intersected with conserved and protected areas and analysis was done on the stream lengths for species, life stage, type of conserved and protected area and at the regional and watershed level. For these intersecting streams, forest harvesting has overall higher restrictions than mining and oil and gas. Sockeye stream length has notable differences in restriction level distributions compared to the other species. Provincial parks and conservancies as well as ungulate winter range areas and mineral reserves are among the types of conserved and protected areas with the highest stream length. Moreover, a noteworthy watershed that has the highest stream length for many species and life stages is the North Coast Islands, which is in the Central Coast region. These findings provide insight into the allowed levels of natural resource extractions that salmon may encounter throughout their freshwater life cycle. Understanding the protections of current and potential habitats is an important step in salmon conservation as Pacific salmon are exposed to a variety of habitat and physiological disruptors.