111076

The objective of the North Coast Cumulative Effects Project is to develop a structured framework for on-going assessment, monitoring, and management of cumulative effects for the North Coast region. A component of the CE Project includes continued field data collection to support the cumulative effects assessment of one of the identified North Coast priority values, "Aquatic Habitats - Estuary", with the Skeena River estuary selected as the current geographic scope. A first field season was completed in August of 2017 that included the indicators of water quality, sediment and mussel tissue contaminants (sampling) and eelgrass communities (surveys). In the 2022 field season data collection will continue with the 2017-18 indicators though adjustments have been made to indicators such as no tissue samples are collected and we have reduced parameters because of Covid restrictions to reduce crew size. The CE Project team work planning with regards to the 2022 field program is supported by Ecofish Research Ltd (Ecofish). Qualified Environmental Professionals (QEPs), from Ecofish, or internally the North Coast Skeena First Nations Stewardship Society (NCSFNSS), will lead field crews composed of Guardian Watchman and/or Resource Technicians from the participating First Nations (Gitga'at, Gitxaala, Kitselas, Kitsumkalum) to conduct the CE Project field work. Each of the sites will be visited once during the lowest tides and our work should be completed in 4-6 hours depending on the amount to be measured some sites have more fish/shellfish than others. Our goal in the program is to build our sites up to 30 sites in total which means of the 10 days we go out there are 8 days we go to sites that have been visited previously, in addition to 2 new ones annually. This means 4 new sites per year but they are spread throughout our network and wont’ mean we will need additional conservancies added to the permit. If they are within conservancies we expect that they will be within the same conservancies. We also make sure to properly inform Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla of where we want to go and when to respect their territory and to ensure that we aren’t interfering with any fieldwork they have planned.