The federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) decided to conduct an emergency assessment of British Columbia interior steelhead rainbow, which includes the Chilcotin/Thompson populations, with the expectation that they may be listed under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA). This follows the recently-released Committee’s status report on 10 populations of sockeye in the Fraser River watershed categorizing eight of them as Endangered and two of them as Threatened. The COSEWIC Assessment Committee will report out within two months on the status of the Interior steelhead trout.
The BC Wildlife Federation interprets the emergency assessment as a positive response from the ministers and the parliamentary secretaries from the West Coast. The BCWF and sports fishing partners, the BC Federation of Fly Fishers (BCFFF), BC Federation of Drift Fishers (BCFDF) and the Steelhead Society of BC (SSBC), are pleased to see this moving forward.
Read the BCWF news release Here