A recent annual report from the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) details which populations are rebounding, but gaps in data obscure why certain stocks are increasing or decreasing. 

The PSF’s 2025 State of Salmon report categorizes salmon population averages by the spawner abundance and the total abundance. The spawner abundance is the number of mature salmon that return to their spawning grounds to reproduce after escaping. The total return abundance is the number of spawned and caught salmon that survive to maturity. 

A wildlife charity is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the identification and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for injuring a young male cougar and not reporting it. 

On the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 12, the RCMP and BC Conservation officers were summoned to an alley near Dunbar Street and 4th Avenue in Port Alberni, where a cougar was spotted in the residential neighborhood.

On Monday the Nuchatlaht are back in court, this time to appeal a ruling from last year in hope of proving historical ownership over the inland areas of its territory.

A mother who recently lost her son in a car accident is calling for systemic changes, after being left in the dark about the deceased’s whereabouts for most of a week.

It took five days for Nancy Antoine to get any information from the BC Coroners Service. Her son Nick was killed in a collision by Cameron Lake on Sept. 27.

“I had to look for my son and look for his car. Stand by and wait,” she said in correspondence with Ha-Shilth-Sa. “It should not be like this for grieving families.”

MacKenzie Beach in Tofino has been officially renamed tinwis (pronounced ti-nu-wis) by the Government of British Columbia following a proposal and years-long consultation led by the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation (TFN).

Certain salmon populations have rebounded at a considerable rate this year, but that isn’t enough to restore their long-term average, according to the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) in its recent annual State of Salmon Report. 

The 2025 report assesses the decline of different Pacific salmon populations in 10 different regions across Western Canada. The six salmon species studied are the chinook, pink, chum, sockeye, coho and steelhead salmon. 

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation Dwayne Martin opened the Truth, Honour & the Way Forward exhibit at the Tourism Tofino Visitor Centre on Oct. 8 with a chant called Winds of Change are Coming. 

The exhibit is available to the public until Oct. 19 and showcases the work of Ucluelet Secondary (USS) students, including poetry, screen printed orange shirts and investigations into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action. It also features the latest exhibit from the Legacy of Hope Foundation called A National Crime.

Alcohol and consent are at the heart of another high-profile sexual assault court case involving an ex-NHL hockey player.

Plaintiff S.D.K., a Tofino resident with an academic background in oceanography, is suing former NHL player William Reid Mitchell and for an incident that allegedly took place in his Tofino home on Sept. 11, 2022. 

From its humble beginnings at the corner of Second Avenue and Angus Street, the Port Alberni Friendship Center has grown in leaps and bounds to over 70 employees at its current home base on 4th Avenue.

PAFC Executive Director Cyndi Stevens started working there in 1986. She said in those earlier days of the PAFC there may have been five staff members delivering three programs. 

“Now we have over 70 staff and probably more than 30 programs,” she told Ha-Shilth-Sa

When you go up the road from the dock to the site of the former Christie Indian Residential School, there is a barely noticeable clearing off the side of the road surrounded by a weathered split rail fence. It is a cemetery with a single stone grave marker and, in another area, a Madonna statue sheltered from the weather by a wooden structure.