Less than one in ten jobs from the logging of one million cubic metres per year go to local residents. The vast majority of all trees logged in the Mid Coast region are taken out of the region. The wood harvested from the coast only brings 1.6 jobs per cubic metre, compared to the Canadian average of 2 jobs per cubic metre, the US average of 3.5 jobs per cubic metre, or New Zealand with 5 jobs for the same amount of wood. The Mid Coast region has a significant commercial fishing industry, sports fishery and burgeoning wilderness tourism industry. These activities support a host of jobs, including jobs in First Nations communities.
Sports fishing is also significant.
The government report notes that this valuable fishery owes its existence to the forested valleys from which flow the myriad of small steams, creeks and rivers that the salmon are born in and return to spawn in. Fish stocks on the coast are in decline. According to former DFO employee, now advisor to the Oweekeno band, Rivers Inlet wild salmon returns averaged 1.5 million in 1959 and were down to 65,000 in 1996. According to a fisher and elder of the Bella Bella First Nation, there were 32 sockeye streams readily accessible by small fishing boat. Today none of them are healthy.