Kitwanga Sockeye Salmon Spawning Habitat Improvement Initiative

Since 1999, the Gitanyow Fisheries Authority has been intensively studying the Kitwanga Watershed in an effort to understand the decline of the Kitwanga sockeye stock. Historical information indicates that sockeye returned to the Kitwanga River in the tens of thousands and the Gitanyow and Gitwangak First Nations People harvested these fish annually for sustenance purposes. However, drastic declines in the Kitwanga sockeye stock were observed in the 1960’s. In 2005, the PSC help fund a process to develop a recovery strategy for the Kitwanga sockeye stock. Part of the recovery strategy involved the development of a Kitwanga Sockeye Recovery (KSR) Working Group. The KSR working group concluded that stock recovery priorities for Kitwanga sockeye should include projects that improve spawning habitat in Gitanyow Lake to increase the egg to fry survival thereby increasing the adult sockeye recruitment in future years. This dataset contains reports outlining spawning habitat improvement initiatives in Gitanyow Lake in an attempt to increase sockeye production.