Tribal leaders have gathered on the banks of the Bella Coola River to raise awareness on a growing environmental crisis in their region, the collapse of fish-stocks vital to their communities.

Below are extracts from an article written by Mark Hume and published by the Globe and Mail:

When the Nuxalk band gathers on the banks of the Bella Coola River, it is usually to celebrate the blessings of nature. But this spring, instead of singing to welcome back the salmon or casting eagle feathers on the water in thanks, tribes from the central coast of British Columbia gathered to hold a Feast of Shame and discuss a growing crisis.

At the gathering, elders from 10 B.C. bands, including the Nuxalk (pronounced new-hawk), Kitasoo, Oweekeno and Haisla, spoke with anger and sadness about the loss of a small, herring-like fish, known as eulachon, that until recently returned in such numbers they turned the river black.

In 1995, when the last big run came in, there were millions of eulachon, so many they spilled out onto the gravel bars in writhing waves. Since then, the river has been nearly empty of fish.

“Every year we wait. Every year the seals, the sea gulls, the ducks, the swans, the geese, they sit along the river waiting,” said Oweekeno Chief Frank Johnson.

There has been a coastwide collapse of eulachon over the past decade, but in few places has it been as dramatic as in the Bella Coola Valley, where the run disappeared almost overnight.

Rudolph Ryser, chair of the Center For World Indigenous Studies, a U.S.-based, non-profit research and education organization, said the loss of eulachon is culturally devastating for tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest. “It is essential to the people of this part of the world … the eulachon is essential to life.”

At the “crisis gathering,” as it was called in posters tacked up on telephone poles in Bella Coola, 400 kilometres north of Vancouver, elders told stories about the days of plenty and issued a plea for help to government. They want scientists to find out why the eulachon have gone from B.C.'s coast – and they want a fisheries restoration project to bring back the runs of small, silver fish prized for their rich oil.

Native leaders are discussing sending delegations to Victoria, Ottawa and the United Nations to draw attention to their plight. Without eulachon, they feel a culture that has survived 12,000 years is crumbling.

“It is very painful when you lose something that has been the backbone of your people,” said Percy Starr, hereditary chief of the Kitasoo band. “… It's about more than the loss of a resource. It's about the loss of a culture. The loss of eulachon is spiritual … this is the foundation of a people.”

[…]

Anthropologists and native-rights lawyers describe eulachon as a “cultural keystone species” vital to the identity of native people.[…]

Few rivers have had as stunning a drop as the Bella Coola, where a run of several million fish fell to an estimated 1,200. Researchers netted only 50 this year.

Megan Moody, a young Nuxalk woman working on her masters in the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia, said the Bella Coola run collapsed in 1996, the same year the federal government opened a shrimp trawl fishery in Queen Charlotte Sound.

Bella Coola is on the mainland at the head of a deep fjord that leads to Queen Charlotte Sound. The shrimp trawl nets took an estimated 90 tonnes of eulachon on the central coast that year. While the shrimp fishery was later closed in Queen Charlotte Sound, it has continued in Bella Coola and Rivers Inlets.

Ms. Moody said the impact of the trawl fishery, climate change, increased predation and alterations to river hydrology, caused by logging, are all suspects in stock declines.

She said shrimp trawlers off the west coast of Vancouver Island are netting eulachon as bycatch, leading to estimates there are thousands of tonnes of juvenile fish at sea. But that doesn't square with the empty rivers. “Why are they not coming back? What's going on here? Are these estimates incorrect?” she asked.

“It's an enigma,” said Doug Hay, a retired Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientist.

The impact of the shrimp fishery isn't understood because eulachon, which have no commercial value, haven't been studied enough, said Mr. Hay, who was “shocked” to hear trawling is still allowed in inlets around Bella Coola.

Mr. Hay said his best advice for restoring eulachon runs is simple: “Make sure they have good spawning habitat … make sure they have good marine habitat and … stop killing them at sea.”

Asked what an eulachon recovery program might cost, Mr. Hay gave a rough estimate of $650,000 annually to work on B.C.'s 13 eulachon rivers.

Krista Robertson, a Victoria-based lawyer who specializes in native-rights cases, said tribes could have grounds for suing the federal government or seeking a judicial review of the shrimp trawl fishery.

“Legal action is not the answer necessarily … but being ready to litigate can get you action,” she said. “I don't think it would be hard to prove a profound native dependence on eulachon.”

Indeed, the courts may soon hear that argument. Kevin Doyle, a Victoria lawyer, said in a recent e-mail that he has been instructed by the Komoyue band on northern Vancouver Island to pursue legal action against the federal and provincial governments for the loss of eulachon from traditional diets. 

[…]