HI Chris Genovali et al
I have just read your article in the TC, Nov 10, 2019 on
grizzly bears and salmon.
Salmon are now in a crisis situation after 50 years of
mismanagement by DFO. We need to move on from them. Watershed Watch’s current
stats include a 35M catch in 1995, while in 2019 it was 1M. That is how bad it
is. The lice counts in Clayoquot Sound and Nootka Sound are so high, it is
likely that all fry will be killed before leaving their home water.
Here is my approach, to which you might give some thought.
In a nutshell it is: 12 netpens per year in Georgia and Juan de Fuca straits,
each containing 2M triploided chinook fry, using Robertson Creek, Cowichan and
Nitinat stock. These are sterilized so they don’t spawn, and return to the site
of the pen, rather than rivers. It would put chinook numbers into the water
immediately for SRKWs, and should be carried on for at least a decade, while
habitat restoration work is being undertaken. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales.html.
My read is that the most important things to address are:
freshwater habitat restoration, DFO, fish farms and climate change.
I worked through the new habitat restoration program from
DFO, and it has some problems of such size as to be almost useless. See this
link: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/05/dfo-srkws-and-funding-yet-again-yes-yet.html.
My suggestion is opening up the lower end of oxbows and old channels to allow
fry to grow, particularly coho. This approach has wide usefulness and would
work anywhere in the province that rivers have flat sections, and thus old
channels. I put together a list of 18 old channels on the Nitinat River, and
contacted the program.
After talking to them, I had to add an Indigenous component,
apply for permits and licences for the in-river work, get logging company
buy-in, get hatchery buy-in and put together a lengthy workplan, get insurance
and register for workers compensation and so on. This made the project
completely unworkable because it changed it from a simple equipment opening
channels to a multi-year project costing multiple millions. So this very good
idea, that DFO told me was highly desirable, and had cross province
application, I had to give up. Perhaps the Ditidaht might be able to take on
such a huge project. I don’t know.
What is the good news? That BC has instituted the Wild
Salmon Advisory Council. This represents a structure with staff, and thus a
long lived organization arguing on behalf of wild salmon, and with a budget
making it able to do work that British Columbians want, without having to work
with DFO. The PSF is the natural BC choice for partnership because it leverages
money 4 to 7 times.
Another front of the overall problem is fish farms. Here are
my criticisms of DFO’s program for fish farms, with the disappointing acronym
FARM – if you can believe it: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/dfos-public-consultation-on-framework.html.
It comes with 60 references to look into the issues.
On the climate side, I have also begun assembling a
bibliography of links toward my writing a paper on climate change, effects on
salmon and solutions to the problems: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/10/ckunate-change-effects-on-salmon.html.
Do look into Peltier Tiles. You will immediately be able to think up uses for
these fascinating electricity producing items.
DC Reid
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