The BC Pacific Salmon Forum wants broad changes to how wild and farmed salmon are managed in the province.
The final recommendations by the group created by Premier Gordon Campbell in 2004 include adopting a new, integrated ecosystem approach that manages entire watersheds instead of specific salmon sensitive watersheds.
The change would require the creation of a new provincial water and land agency responsible for all watershed and land decisions. The forum said it would require federal, provincial, First Nations and municipal governments to collaborate on watershed governance and eliminate the "variety of individual ministries and agencies [that] operate in separate 'silos', making unco-ordinated decisions that can impact a single watershed, without considering the cumulative impacts of multiple decision on a watershed or marine system."
Other report recommendations include:
creating an independent regulatory oversight authority to audit the provincial process to ensure decisions meet ecological outcomes;
establishing a science secretariat responsible for commissioning independent, peer-reviewed reports over the impacts of salmon farming on wild salmon;
creating an independent technical committee to create a test pilot project on closed containment salmon farming
using the Broughton Archipelago as a pilot region for the new ecosystem-based management approach to salmon farming
Many of the recommendations could be implemented over the next nine months. Establishing a unified water and land agency would take until 2012.