Citing record low return estimates, conservation groups lobby government for steelhead protection
KAMLOOPS — More than a dozen conservation groups are calling on the federal government to protect the endangered Interior Fraser River steelhead under Canada’s Species at Risk Act.
Experts estimate the spring return of steelhead to the Thompson River complex at 68 in 2022. According to Eric Taylor of the University of British Columbia Department of Zoology, that return is down from 2,000-to-3,000 in the mid-1980s.
“Those 68 fish that are estimated to come back this year to spawn in the spring of 2022, that’s spread across four streams,” Taylor told CFJC Today. “That’s less than 20 (each) in the four spawning streams. The numbers have really, really crashed precipitously.”
Taylor was chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) when it listed the steelhead as endangered in 2018.