This repo contains code and data to reproduce results and figures for the following paper, which is part of a Special Issue Twenty years of Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy:
Connors*, K., S.J. Peacock*†, E. Hertz, B. Carturan, M. Porter, K. Bryan, R. Drennan, L. Honka, E. Jones, K. Belton. 2026. Democratizing data to support the implementation of Canada's Wild Salmon Policy. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjfas-2025-0250
* Joint first authors.
† Corresponding author: speacock at psf dot ca
Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) highlights the importance of biodiversity conservation for supporting the resilience of Pacific salmon. Two decades after its introduction, the WSP remains largely unimplemented. Monitoring and assessing the status of salmon Conservation Units and their habitats is the WSP’s foundation, enabling timely, evidence-based responses to prevent biodiversity loss. With federal progress on monitoring and assessment lagging, the Pacific Salmon Foundation created a streamlined and transparent approach. We outline our work to democratize salmon data by integrating disparate sources and publicly sharing frequently updated status assessments through the Pacific Salmon Explorer, an online data visualization tool. Further advancing the objectives of the WSP will require the federal government to prioritize sharing rapid biological status assessments, applying the precautionary approach to data-deficient Conservation Units, and integrating habitat assessments into salmon management to support biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. Additionally, efforts to improve data stewardship and accessibility and establish stronger government accountability to ensure transparent, consistent, and effective conservation actions are essential to meaningful and sustained progress.
Contains R scripts that summarize outcomes of biological and habitat status assessments. Code to reproduce biological status assessments is archived separately in population-indicators (version 13 is the release that corresponds to this paper). A full description of methods for status assessments is archived at https://zenodo.org/records/18156561. Code files here include:
population-summary.R: summarises biological status outcomes and produces Figure 3, Figure S1, Table S1, and Table S2.num-CU-barcharts.R: produces barcharts with numbers of Cus by regino for Figure 1habitat-summary.R: summarises habitat status outcomes and produces Figure 5, Figure 6, Table S4, Figure S3, Table S5, and Figure S4.comparing-cosewic-dfo.R: compares biological status outcomes done by PSF, DFO, and COSEWIC; produces Figure S2.
A static snapshot of the data reported on in the paper. See readme in data for further details. Note that habitat status outcomes by watershed (se_habitat_assessments) were too large to be uploaded to GitHub and will be included as a separate file in the Zenodo repository.
Contains figures and the .Rmd for the Online Supplement.
Contains output summary data files included in Online Supplement and/or containing results described in the paper.
For living versions of the data, assessment methodology, and results, visit the following sites:
- Pacific Salmon Explorer
- Salmon Data Library
- Pacific Salmon Explorer Technical Report
- population-indicators
We thank numerous individuals who have help shape our work over the past decade, particularly past and present members of our Population Science Advisory Committee (Randall Peterman, Carrie Holt, Brendan Connors, Dave Peacock, Catherine Michielsens, Sue Grant, Jason Mahoney, Kyle Wilson, Mike Staley, and Diana Dobson) and Habitat Science Advisory Committee (Heather Stalberg, Mike Bradford, Doug Braun, Sean Naman, Lisa Nordin, Lars Reese-Hansen, Peter Tschaplinski, Monica Pearson, Don Morgan, Kristin Gravelle, Bruce Runciman, Zaid Jumean, Patrick Little, Roger Dunlop, Jonathan Moore, and Marta Ulaski). We thank the many local and indigenous experts who provided critical review to our work via Regional Technical Advisory Committees. We also thank Brendan Connors and Darcy Pickard for the foundational work they contributed to initial assessments in the Skeena region. We are also grateful for the contributions from former staff of PSF’s Salmon Watersheds program, including Clare Atkinson, Vesta Mather, Francois-Nicolas Robinne, Charlotte Whitney, Christine Stevenson, Clea Moray, and Jackie Belzile. We Jim Irvine and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive feedback that helped improve this paper. Components of this work were funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, DFO’s Coastal Restoration Fund (Project No. C1-PAC-01-A1 (17-HPAC-01340-A1)), DFO’s Habitat Stewardship Program (Project No. 2017HSP7773), and the BC Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund (Project No. BCSRIF_2020_279).