An assessment of the Salmonid Enhancement Program planning process
Creators: name: Brown, Daryl Wayne
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: A Salmonid Enhancement Program (SEP) has been initiated by the Federal and British Columbia governments with a primary objective of rebuilding the Pacific salmonid resource to historic levels of abundance (i.e. double current production). To this end, a diversity of individual enhancement projects have been undertaken, and others are scheduled for the future. The projects range from simple, small-scale and relatively inexpensive activities, such as stream rehabilitation, to the construction and operation of capital intensive and technologically complex hatcheries. This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the SEP planning process as a means of producing socially acceptable salmonid enhancement decisions. In addition to rebuilding the resource, the implementation of SEP projects is viewed by government as a means of contributing to economic, social and environmental objectives. The extent to which each of these objectives is satisfied is sensitive to the type, location, scale, and timing of separate enhancement projects. Different projects confer different kinds of benefits and costs. Since financial resources are scarce, tradeoff among objectives is necessary. Tradeoffs are determined by' the dynamics of the SEP planning process which culminates annually in decisions to allocate scarce resources among competing ends. In making the resource allocation, the SEP planning process must deal with considerable uncertainty. The satisfaction of Program objectives will depend ultimately on a sustained increase in salmonid production. While the technology exists to produce fish artificially in great numbers, it remains unknown whether or not increased production can be sustained. The results will depend in large part on the regulation of harvests and habitat protection. It is postulated that the constituent elements of a "good" planning process should correspond with the precepts of liberal democratic theory. This implies that a "good" planning process ought to produce resource allocation decisions that reflect the desires of society, and in doing so, it should deal with the problem of uncertainty in an acceptable manner. Accordingly, the normative criteria used to assess the SEP planning process are: 1. Interests (government and non-government) who will be affected by SEP decisions should have the opportunity to participate, or more realistically, be represented in all aspects of the planning process; 2. For interest representation to be effective and for policy decisions to be intelligent, relevant evaluative information on alternative enhancement plans should be generated and communicated among interests; 3. Planning should be efficient in the sense that it is not wasteful of time and resources. The SEP planning process was studied in detail and evaluated through application of the foregoing criteria. Recommendations for remedying identified deficiencies were developed through application of theories of political and administrative behavior, derived from a study of the literature on this subject.