A 'Very Determined Opposition to the Law': Conservation, Angling Leases, and Social Conflict in the Canadian Atlantic Salmon Fishery, 1867–1914

Bill Parenteau

IN THE PAST decade, environmental historians have begun to peel away the layers of contemporary propaganda concerning the development and implementation of "rational" and "efficient" regulations to conserve wildlife resources in the late nineteenth century. What had been a relatively uncomplicated story of achievement by an urban elite has been complicated by the recognition that the reconstruction of fish and game resource use in rural North America after 1850 was not simply a blessing. In most states and provinces the emerging sporting interests played a central role in sponsoring fish and game law reforms after 1870, and were the principal beneficiaries of new regulations such as closed seasons, prohibitions on the sale of game meat, and restrictions on traditional forms of harvesting. Typically, the new regulations were justified on the basis of conservation and the economic benefits that sporting could bring to rural areas. Yet the reaction in rural North America to changes in fish and game regulations was decidedly mixed. While some people benefited from serving the growing sporting fraternity in various ways and/or accepted the conservation rationale, in most places wildlife management reforms encountered resistance of varying intensity and duration from the affected rural communities. The prevailing ideology of wilderness conservation collided with pre-existing visions of agrarian landscape development and alternative moral economies of resource use.1	1
An examination of the Canadian Atlantic salmon fishery can add significantly to an understanding of the ideological, political, and social conflicts that resulted from the introduction of modern wildlife management regimes in North America. Because of its status as the "King of the Game Fish" and near extinction on the eastern seaboard of the United States, the Canadian Atlantic salmon was the subject of one of the first and most intense campaigns undertaken by the sport-fishing fraternity emerging on both sides of the international border after 1850. A comprehensive environmental management program for the Atlantic salmon fishery was at the core of the Canadian federal government's first fishery act, passed in 1868, which came one year after Confederation. The act built on two decades of colonial legislation and featured a hatchery program, anti-pollution measures, efforts to rehabilitate degraded salmon rivers, a regulatory regime that favored recreational over commercial and subsistence harvesting, and a large apparatus for enforcement. Salmon anglers and their organizations were intimately involved in both the formation of regulations and the on-going efforts to control salmon harvesting in the half century after Canadian Confederation.	2
Map 1. The Salmon Rivers of Canda. By 1880, the opportunities for Atlantic salmon fishing in eastern Canada were regularly touted in sporting literature, and competition for prime salmon leases was increasing. Henry P. Wells, The American Salmon Fisherman (London: S. Low, Marston and Rivington, 1886.)   . . . There are about 14617 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.