Evaluating Evidence-informed Decision-making in the Management and Conservation of British Columbia’s Fish and Wildlife Resources

Abstract

Poorten. Two key informants/expert thought leaders who I now consider friends and mentors were especially crucial to the success of this PhD project -thanks Adrian Clarke of the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC and Dean Joseph of the Yekooche First Nation. Special thanks to Matt Spencer, whose computational and algorithmic support was crucial to the work in Chapter 5. I wholeheartedly thank the 65 interview and 12 fuzzy cognitive mapping workshop participants whose support and collaboration made this research possible. I also graciously thank Elise Urness, Carmen Gudino and Danny Glassman who provided support in transcribing interview data. Thanks to the Young Ecosystem Services Specialists for being an incredibly v supportive early-career, in-person and online researcher community since my membership began in 2014. None of this would have been possible without the support of my loving family, Alexandra, Michael, Christine, Stefanie, and Heidi Kadykalo. The closing stages of this PhD were extremely tough for me, and you were there to hold me together. Lisa Muehlgassner, thank you for many great years of love, friendship, and support. Chelsea Sek, thank you for being my biggest supporter and cheerleader down the home stretch. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people known today as Ottawa and the traditional and treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabeg, known today as the Williams Treaties First Nations and Clarington. I acknowledge their resilience and their longstanding contributions of the First Peoples on the lands on which most of my thesis writing work occurred. I would like to acknowledge funding for this PhD project in which I was supported by Genome British Columbia/Genome Canada [242RTE] and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [PGSD2-534299-2019]. Thank you to Dr. Trish Schulte for her leadership with the Genome Canada grant. vi PrefaceThe research presented in my thesis is part of a larger project supported with funding from Genome Canada titled "Sustaining Freshwater Recreational Fisheries in a Changing Environment". The project aims to develop conservation genomic tools and policy recommendations to help manage and preserve the genetic diversity of rainbow trout to sustain healthy populations and its recreational fishery. Genomics is the study of all genes of an organism (the genome), including interactions of those genes with each other and with the organism's environment. The project investigates questions at the intersection of genomics and society and thus includes both natural science (e.g.,