Wednesday October 22, 2025
CBC —
As Yukon salmon numbers face steep declines, monitoring efforts in the territory are being under-reported, say biologists.
Yukon River chinook and chum salmon numbers are between 50 and 85 per cent lower than their long-term averages, according to the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s most recent State of Salmon report, released earlier this month.
The environmental group’s report also found that the number of spawning chinook, chum, coho, and pink salmon in the Northern Transboundary region – which includes the Yukon’s Alsek river basin – is declining.
The report is a broad look at Pacific salmon species in B.C. and the Yukon, but its findings only tell part of the story of what is happening to salmon in the Yukon. Stephanie Peacock, a senior analyst with the foundation who’s based in the Yukon, says this highlights gaps in data management in the territory.
Lack of reporting, not monitoring
The State of Salmon report includes the results of a study published this fall that found salmon monitoring efforts in B.C. and the Yukon have declined since the 1980s, with the past decade being the worst in more than 70 years.
However, Elizabeth MacDonald, manager of fisheries with the Council of Yukon First Nations, says that doesn’t accurately represent what’s happening in the Yukon when it comes to salmon monitoring.
“The Yukon might be the one exception to that … we’ve probably got more monitoring going on now than we did in the ’80s,” she said.
“It’s not that we don’t have monitoring projects, it’s that they’re not being entered into publicly accessible databases.”
The data used in the study was from a Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) salmon escapement database, known as NuSEDS. However, MacDonald says most of the salmon monitoring data in the Yukon ends up on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s online database and that information is not readily available.
Peacock says this can affect other research on salmon numbers.
“Every time someone wants to assess the status of salmon or understand factors affecting their survival, they have to go through this data compilation exercise that is quite challenging,” she said.
And if that data is missing from studies and reports, it leads to gaps in understanding of salmon abundance and diversity, as well as the factors that could be contributing to local population declines.
The State of Salmon report, for example, used data on how many Yukon River chinook and chum cross the border into the Yukon from Alaska, said Peacock. However, it does not include data on where those salmon end up or how many actually spawn.
Peacock says there are several sonar projects in the territory that collect this data, but it rarely makes it into the public’s hands.
“In the Yukon there’s a real need to improve what I call data stewardship,” she said. “That is ensuring information that is collected is compiled, documented, appropriately stored and shared so that it can be useful in informing management, conservation and recovery planning.”
Ron Chambers is a Champagne and Aishihik First Nations citizen and a member of the Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee. He says there are numerous local factors affecting the number of salmon in the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers and those should help inform conservation strategies and agreements.
“If those salmon aren’t getting to spawn because of change up the river, either, their spawning beds are flushed out because we had some high water a few years ago that changed the river a lot, or the other predators that are in there are affecting it, or the beaver has blocked off a stream, then your negotiations don’t mean a lot because you don’t have the full picture,” he said.
Peacock says local monitoring provides a more complete picture of the diversity of salmon in the Yukon, and that can then help efforts to preserve that diversity.
“We’re facing dramatic changes in salmon habitat from climate change,” said Peacock. “We need that diversity because that’s what’s going to provide the ingredients for salmon to adapt and withstand these changes.”
Need for funding
There is ongoing salmon monitoring in both the Alsek and the Yukon River drainages, says MacDonald, and many of these projects are managed at least in part by Yukon First Nations.
However, she also says that in order for these monitoring projects to get their data into the public’s hands, they need more funding.
“So people can hire staff and have them around to run and develop these projects and the money to do the projects,” she said.
Chambers says First Nations have stepped up their monitoring projects because it’s important to their community members.
And he says getting more funding means ensuring governments and other organizations also understand and appreciate the value of salmon.
“Salmon is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the big issues and concerns of the people,” he said.