Thompson-Shuswap Salmon Collaborative

Wild Pacific salmon and Interior Fraser steelhead in the Thompson-Shuswap region are in serious jeopardy. Many populations have declined sharply in recent years and are now assessed as endangered or threatened.

Conserving these precious fish is of critical importance for many reasons. For the Secwepemc Nation, salmon and steelhead have been relied upon for cultural, spiritual and livelihood purposes since time immemorial. While numerous restoration initiatives have been undertaken in Thompson-Shuswap watersheds, these have not necessarily been coordinated or reviewed for effectiveness. As well, several restoration or planning processes have operated at a broader scale but without linkage to local actions and plans.

The Thompson-Shuswap Salmon Collaborative (TSSC) is a non-political, technical planning process with the participation of staff from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and the Secwepemc Fisheries Commission. The TSSC is not a consultative table, nor a formal G2G co-management initiative. Rather, it is an ongoing and evolving process to identify and prioritize practical, realistic actions to benefit salmon and steelhead in the Thompson-Shuswap region.

The group has agreed to work cooperatively to integrate policy, planning, programming and field actions undertaken by each of the parties in the initiative.  As well, the TSSC will be seeking to coordinate with other groups undertaking conservation and restoration actions to benefit Wild Pacific salmon and Interior Fraser steelhead.

The TSSC has been focused on two main goals:

• Be responsive to the immediate needs of salmon and steelhead, and
• Be strategic about the longer-term needs of salmon and steelhead.

Here is a map of the Thompson-Shuswap watershed, the geographic focus of TSSC’s work.

The TSSC parties have signed a Terms of Reference (updated May 2024) to clarify their purpose and structure.

They have also prepared an initial Strategic Planning Framework tool. The tool will help identify priority watersheds and key issues to be addressed for Pacific salmon and Interior Fraser Steelhead in their freshwater environment.