One Health Seminar: Fisheries, ‘keystone actors’ and calls for management reform on the West Coast of Canada

Dr. Jennifer Silver, professor and associate chair in the Department of Geography, Environmental and Geomatics at CSAHS, will present "Fisheries, ‘keystone actors’ and calls for management reform on the West Coast of Canada.”

In West Coast fisheries, a small number of companies and non-fishing investors (i.e. ‘keystone actors’) control large and diverse license and quota holdings. Local and small-scale fish harvesters struggle to ascertain licenses and sustain access to fishing opportunities. These dynamics are of growing concern federally, fuel grassroots calls for management reform on the West Coast, and reflect a pattern documented internationally. 

Dr. Jennifer Silver is a Professor in Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Guelph. Her PhD is from Simon Fraser University, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, and she has enjoyed time as visiting faculty at Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand. Silver’s published work spans environmental governance, political ecology and interdisciplinary fisheries science/marine policy, and she is the co-editor of a forthcoming book entitled ‘The Routledge Handbook of Critical Ocean Studies’. In addition to scholarly writing, she is often invited to speak with politicians, policy makers and journalists.