Should we adapt nature to climate change? Weighing the risks of selective breeding in Pacific salmon

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the case of genomics-assisted selective breeding in Pacific salmon hatcheries to investigate how people weigh the risks of adapting nature to changing climate conditions. Drawing on 105 interviews with people involved in salmon management, this study embeds risk assessments of selective breeding in the context of present interventions into salmon life cycles. While responses to novel technologies are frequently plotted along a support-opposition continuum, the debate over selective breeding Pacific salmon is multivalent, with respondents supporting selective breeding in some contexts while opposing it in others. Nearly half of respondents supported selective breeding to fix the mistakes of past interventions and rewild salmon. Given that past problems have stemmed from technological responses, these findings paradoxically suggest that further interventions may not necessarily be perceived as violating values of naturalness or wildness. Genomic technologies offer new pathways for climate adaptation. In doing so, they expand ethical debates about the role of humans and novel technologies in conserving and managing wildlife.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• adaptation
• risk
• wildlife conservation
• selective breeding
• genomics

Acknowledgements

This work was conducted in Nuu-chah-nulth territory and the territory of the Coast Salish Peoples. The author would like to thank Ralph Matthews, Timothy Hawkins, Jordan Tesluk, and the research participants for their contributions to this study, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics Statement

This research was approved by the University of British Columbia Behavioural Research Ethics Board, covered under the following certificate numbers: H16-00070, H17-00166, H17-03101, H18-02037.

Notes

1. Hatchery programs were introduced by federal and state agencies in Canada and the United States in the 1700s to supplement naturally spawning salmon populations, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that hatcheries became a focus of Canadian salmon management in the Pacific Region. As of 2018, Canadian hatcheries produced over 300 million Pacific salmon annually from 23 facilities in British Columbia (North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC) 2018; Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) 2018). Salmon cultivation practices have a much longer history in Indigenous communities on the Pacific coast (Thornton, Deur, and Kitka 2015) and hatcheries are an ongoing part of salmon stewardship in some Indigenous communities (Colombi 2012).

2. The ability of hatcheries to use only wild salmon in broodstock is undermined by the difficulty of visually distinguishing hatchery-origin salmon from salmon that spawned in the natural environment. The Canadian Wild Salmon Policy defines wild salmon as having ‘spent their entire life cycle in the wild and originated form parents that were also produced by natural spawning and continuously lived in the wild’ (Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) 2005, 1). One method is to remove the adipose fin from juvenile salmon in the hatchery. However, this approach cannot be used to determine the origin of a fish’s parents. Genomic methods can be used to trace parentage but are not standard practice in Canada (Beacham et al. 2019). The difficulty of ensuring wild broodstock has been the basis for critiques of salmon enhancement through hatcheries and sea ranching, as it contributes to the proliferation of traits associated with poorer survival (Naish et al. 2007).

3. Artificially reared salmon that escape captivity have been shown to survive and reproduce, which is a concern of wild salmon advocates (Bissett 2019).

4. This idea of untouched wilderness is also inseparable from the founding of settler colonial nations, where ideas of nature as void of civilization have legitimized settler claims to large swaths of land, dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their traditional territories and control over, and access to, resources such as salmon (Silver et al. 2022; Snow 2005).

5. This terminology is adapted from Siipi’s (2008) distinction between different elements of naturalness.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Genome Canada, Genome Quebec, and Genome BC.

Notes on contributors

Valerie Berseth

Valerie Berseth conducts research in the areas of environmental politics, climate adaptation, and perceptions of risk related to genomic science applications in conservation and natural resource management. Dr. Berseth completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of British Columbia and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University.