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A federal-provincial effort to save Interior steelhead populations from extinction is mired in dysfunction as Interior runs dwindle to just a few hundred spawners.

“When we hear that 177 steelhead are returning up the Fraser to the Thompson, that’s an absolute crisis,” Jackie Tegart, Liberal MLA for Fraser-Nicola. “There are so few, you could give them all names.”

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Only 216 Thompson steelhead were estimated to have spawned last spring, while the Chilcotin steelhead numbered just 120, according to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.

Both runs are classified as an “extreme conservation concern.”

Senior provincial bureaucrats have been battling Fisheries and Oceans Canada for nearly a year over the scientific rationale for salmon harvesting on the steelhead migration route, fisheries that result in steelhead by-catch.

Complicating matters is that steelhead are under provincial jurisdiction, while salmon fisheries are a federal concern.