Community watershed management in Newfoundland and Labrador: successes, challenges, capacity-building, future directions

• Main Author: Holisko, Stephen
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2017
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/13129/; https://research.library.mun.ca/13129/1/thesis.pdf

Out of the collapse of the commercial groundfish and salmon fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) in 1992 and the resultant economic crisis, the provincial and federal governments implemented a new strategy for developing a highvalue recreational salmon and trout fishing industry in the province. The goals were to create local employment opportunities in rural Newfoundland, devise improved resource management strategies at the community level, and foster an overall improvement in environmental stewardship through enhanced local decision-making. The program that emerged to achieve those goals came to be known provincially as community watershed management (CWM), an approach to resource management that aimed to share significant decision-making authority and management with local/regional nongovernmental watershed groups. This new approach constituted a “rescaling” of governance, a term that describes the move from centralized modes of provincial and federal management policies, towards local and regional empowerment in the management of natural resources. Ultimately, the program did not achieve the intended level of success in the development of a recreational fishery for a number of complex reasons. The proposed changes to resource management became too politically contentious amongst stakeholders, the program failed to win support over a government bureaucracy resistant to structural changes, and the political will required to implement such an ambitious program faltered. While the provincial government’s commitment to rescale environmental resource management and governance to the watershed level ultimately did not hold, there continued, and remains, a lasting grassroots movement across the province at the community level in the form of continuing watershed management organizations. This thesis fulfills two important inquiries: 1) to provide a historical overview of CWM and related recreational fisheries development policies in NL, and 2) to analyze the experiences of the organizations themselves, ...