Fight for Our Fish!
Now is the critical time to rise to the defence of salmon habitat.
Did election ratify their extinction?
A song of my youth went "the music stopped... but we were still dancing..." The sad message was that you lingered on after the reason to do so had ended, just as some of us feel after seeing our continued involvement in saving fish a questionable strategy after the voters gave Premier Campbell the right to continue destroying our fish as a governmental initiative.
Sadly, the provincial election just passed was, in part, won on the backs of the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans' long-time decision to test and look busy but never to interfere.
We have to face the facts. The wild salmon is on a clear and certain path to extinction and we gave the Campbell government a mandate to continue down the path to this melancholy conclusion. Campbell was greatly assisted by the 50 per cent of us who didn’t vote on May 12.
They are, of course, allied to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who continue to research and test that which doesn't need researching or testing anymore, while never enforcing the law.
The mainstream media gave this matter such low-key coverage that readers were bound to take the saving of salmon as just something only raised by noisy eco-freaks.
For some reason a fisheries story did make the front page of the Vancouver Sun -- a week after election day, on May 19. The article coldly told of the death of millions of pink salmon in the Fraser River because of dredging operations that are unnecessary. Where is the accompanying outrage? A Stephen Hume special, perhaps?
We now know that hundreds of thousands of Fraser River sockeye are being slaughtered by lice from fish cages on their amazing voyage to the high seas from which they return, on time and at the right place with breathtaking accuracy. Again, where is the media outrage? Are we the people supposed to be flaccidly indifferent so that to rouse us would not be appropriate?
Hundreds of thousands of pink salmon are lost to lice from fish farms every year in the Broughton Archipelago and Clayoquot Sound. The media, by their indifference, have tacitly given their approval.
Now we have the so-called "run of rivers" policy of the Campbell government, which will wreak havoc all up and down the coast extending into central B.C. where the rivers start and where the salmon are critical to First Nations.
First Nations do not speak as one
Let me pause here and say that I don't accept, nor should the public accept, that First Nations always know best when it comes to protecting rivers and streams. We get all misty-eyed when a chief (usually not a hereditary chief) prattles on about the sacredness of the land protected by First Nations for uncountable centuries just as he signs a rivers deal bringing a lot of short term money to the local band. I offer no criticism of chiefs of dirt poor, unemployed Nations who need help. I only say that this has nothing to do with the safety of fish in the rivers to be ravaged.
One must also know that Grand Chief Stewart Phillip opposes the government's rivers policy.
Some First Nations support fish farms, yet here is what Chief Robert Joseph, hereditary chief of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation said recently: "The demise of wild salmon is tantamount to genocide because it reflects the demise of our culture, way of life and spirituality. Since the advent of salmon farming in our territories we have seen an apocalyptic decline in the state of our wild salmon stocks in the Broughton Archipelago. And because Norway is the world leader in salmon farming and the Norwegian Government is the leading shareholder in Cermaq we are asking for their moral leadership to bring about best practices and to mitigate environmental degradation." In short, there is scarcely unanimity within the First Nations concerning "run-of-river" power generation projects or fish farming.
They would alter our salmon rivers
We must not forget the Stuart system sockeye which must go through the Nechako, a one might river rendered little more than a creek by the careless indifference of Alcan as it makes its electricity contrary to the original deal with the government. When those salmon are eliminated -- and it's not if but when -- there will be no reason not to dam the river above its confluence with the Thompson at Lytton. In fact, a dam, Moran, has been on the books and in the dreams of those who love to build big things since the mid 1940s.
Much is yet to come. The Bute Inlet rivers project, diverting 17 rivers, has a clear path to existence now that Campbell has been re-elected. This development has a bigger environmental imprint than Site "C" and would have and will provide power, not for B.C. but for export.
That is clear, given that Hydro's reservoirs are full when Bute will generate most of the electricity.
Then there is the marvelous Klinaklini River which rises in the Chilcotin plateau. It has been described thusly: "Take some of British Columbia's highest mountains, largest ice fields, bluest lakes, loveliest meadows, richest wetlands, and most luxurious forests. Squeeze through an impossibly narrow canyon, and release into a long, deep coastal fjord [Knight Inlet]. Mix in mountain goats, big horn sheep, bald eagles, grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, cougars, wolverines, weasels, coyote and lynx. Feed it all with salmon, and the web of life that springs from the Pacific's fundamental fish. At just 195 kilometres in length, with a watershed of 5,780 square kilometres, the Klinaklini River packs a gigantic wallop of biodiversity and ecological variation..."
In addition to being home to all five species of Pacific salmon (seven if you count Steelhead and Cutthroat), the Klinaklini is one of the most important Eulachon runs in B.C. Oil-rich Eulachon are of inestimable importance to coastal First Nations and are an important part of the ecology of the Klinaklini estuary.
A look at the developer's brochure tells us [t]he project will have a weir (industry doesn't like the word "dam") and the tunnel will be approximately 17 KMs long with a 10.3m diameter, meaning m3 of rock will be removed during the tunnel boring.
I wouldn't want to leave the impression that fish weren't considered, for the brochure says: "There is a barrier to fish migration located upstream of the confluence [of the Kliniklina with Dorothy Creek (a 5m drop and high velocity chute), downstream of the proposed location of the power tunnel intake." While the company notices this fact, evidently it doesn't bother them!
[Here is an amazing coincidence: the consulting engineers, Triton Engineering, is the same outfit who, during the Kemano II dust-up, advised Alcan how to get past environmental concerns about spawning sockeye in the Nechako after Alcan got finished with it.]
A call to action
I raise the Klinaklini as just one more example of the government's indifference to our fish heritage by government resulting in connivance with companies to pay little more than lip service, if that, to the plight of the Pacific Salmon, the "soul" of our province.
What, then, can we do?
What’' left is to educate and demonstrate. All British Columbians must understand what's at stake here as lovers of the environment, real ones, protest in every non-violent way open to them.
Either we quit... or fight.
I'm for the latter.
Related Tyee stories:
- BC Salmon Future in Hot Water
Climate change + pine beetle = trouble for Fraser sockeye. - More Wild Salmon Wiped Out
How long can officials ignore sea lice connection? - Farmed Salmon Even Enviros Can Swallow
Agrimarine's cutting edge aquaculture may offer the way past B.C.'s 'War in the Waters.'
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
seth
24-05-2009
Freshet Power becomes a Dam
So when it turns out BCHydro is going broke trying to peddle Pirate Power's 12 cent a kwh output into a 2 cent a kwh spot market, don't y'all think the pirates are going to be given fast track environmental approval to dam the river somewhere upstream. That way the almost useless freshet power becomes valuable baseload power.
Pirate commentators have been saying that they already have permission to control upstream lake levels - in effect a dam with the lake as a reservoir.
Once again Mainstream media painted lipstick on a pig (Dubya 2004,Harpo 2008, Gordo 2005) and the irresponsible electorate lead by the "Green" party and environmental sellouts Berman, Da Gucci Suzuki, Weaver, Jaccard, Pembina, and Harcourt gave us the greatest environmental destruction that will ever be committed by a Canadian government. Thanks to all for BC's tar sands!!!.
But after painting lipstick on the pig, it is still after all a pig. We bought it. Now we pay!!!
morechatter
24-05-2009
Read My Lips
The fights on! Now where do we all sign up as its hard not to become discouraged when you know there is a desperate need for change and there is none forthcoming. Just more lip service from local media and of course my 2 cents worth and so many others and thats kinda sad as it becomes more of a war with numbers than with people and their concerns and issues. All dismissed as mere rhetoric from spin doctors who take every opportunity to distort the news. And thats a fact and the last election that was kinda fishy as it was almost a replica of the one before that. And that just doesn't add up not in the least as voters who hadn't voted in their lives got out early to mark their ballot NDP this time around. So lots of things are fishy in BC and its looks like salmon is on the list of things gone horribly wrong.
The Liberals winning economic solution for everyman/women there are at least 3 immigrants who would gladly undercut their jobs if they only had one?
Oh yes how big was that fish again? You know the one that got away.
North of Hope
24-05-2009
BCHydro is not going broke
seth, BCHydro is not going broke. We will pay the rates that they request. I believe that all the BC Liberal supporters should pay for the rate difference. After all they are the ones that supported this gang of thieves.
North of Hope
24-05-2009
Seth
I, however, do agree with your comments.
danneau
25-05-2009
It isn't just fish...
This came last night from Grging Grannie Wanda B, who, I believe, hangs her hat in Minnesota...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWVRGaNyT9Y
This reminds me of Frank Zappa's comment about how it all looks great until the puppetmaster draws back the curtain so that we see what is actually happening.
Fiat lux
25-05-2009
The fisheries officials know
The fisheries officials know better than to interfere, or come up with facts, if they want to keep their jobs.
What we have here are a couple levels of governments, with a miseducated economist as a PM, totally under the influence of yet another ideological pseudo religion of ideology, permitting, encouraging and licencing the destruction of ecological, economic systems and human rights.
The fishfarms are an important part of an accounting system using fraudulent GDP, Growth and Productivity figures, while destroying everything and everybody to report fraudulent claims of "boom" and
"well being", taught in our universities as a "science".
Until this crime wave is broken at its origins, we can jump up and down and wring our hands, nothing can, or will be done, we'll be going downhill to oblivion.
How about Rafe, or anybody writing on this blog getting up enough courage to research and challenge the crap that's accepted and forced on the world as "economics"?
I've been asking this question for over 20 years and nobody answers.
Ed Deak. Big Lake.
Fiat lux
25-05-2009
PS to my
PS to my previous:
Basically, all the world's problems, climate change and ecological destruction, colonization with the perceived power of imaginary money, the millions starving to death every year, the cancer and diabetes epidemics, wars, terror actions, etc. etc. originate in the economics departments of the world's universities.
Think about it.
Ed Deak.
Iwannajob
25-05-2009
State of our forests
As if the salmon don't have it tough enough already, just think about the dire state of our forests and what effect that has on spawning salmon. I believe the decades of over-logging on the coast has been a major setback to salmon populations and then add in fish farming and IPPs, pollution in Georgia Strait, over-fishing by the commercial seiners etc, etc. There is a LOT of work to be done to save the salmon and we all know our governments will not help us. Its going to take a ground swell of volunteer workers, fish and game clubs and other interested groups to do the work and the media is going to have to get on board to glue it all together. Keep up the good fight Rafe. And everybody else, send links to The Tyee to all of your friends and family, spread the word
blackie
25-05-2009
blackie
Must admit, I get a huge kick out of reading Rafe's pieces on our environmental gotterdammerung, and then seeing the usual gang of suspects chiming in with support. The election results have really brought out the best in you guys.
But has it occurred to you that the main problem here is that most folks don't buy all the BS on fish farms, run of river, Alcan, etc., etc.? Perhaps they are better informed, and immensely more objective, than you are?
And has it occurred to you that these dark conspiracy theories about Can-West and the CBC secretly plotting to subsume all these apocalyptic issues might be, well, just good news judgment on their part? In other words, they have looked at it, and they don't buy all the BS either?
I must admit, the knock against the CBC as a Liberal mouthpiece is the most hilarious of all of them. The average right winger (who likely doesn't peruse the Tyee's threads, although they should) would collapse in hysterics at the suggestion that the CBC's news management is decidedly right wing.
The trouble is, you get so obsessed with the conspiracy theories that you just can't imagine anyone thinking that maybe, just maybe, you're off base by a country mile in most of your attacks on all your pet peeves.
And here's another one: the great lament is that less than 50% of the electorate showed up to vote (and I agree that's not good). But there's an underlying assumption that if all those other folks had voted, they'd miraculously vote NDP. You should be grateful; if the voter turnout had been 100%, it's entirely possible the NDP wouldn't have won a single seat -- then who would you blame?
Oops, forgot -- back to the Can-West conspiracy. Well, keep drinking the kool-aid folks; it's a lot easier than examining all those complicated issues with a sense of objectivity.
dirtmeister
25-05-2009
Facts
Sometimes I am not sure if Rafe is aware of the facts but ignoring them he diminishes his arguments. Triton is an Environmental Firm not an Engineering Firm with many respected scientists (http://www.triton-env.com/). The IPP power rate is variable Rafe just quotes the off season high rate the average cost is much lower. The Horsefly and Chilko Runs are healthy and above Lytton many salmon runs are improving and the survival of salmon may be influenced ultimately by ocean conditions. DFO scientists have more credibility then Rafe's they are professionals doing the job the public expects. Also a natural fish barrier is significant as how can an IPP project destroy fish habitat if there are no fish in in the particular river reach? The public has rejected this fear mongering its time to power up B.C.
Luke Skywalker
25-05-2009
dirtmeister...
No kidding.
The river flow is diverted above any fish-bearing habitat and the river flow also re-enters the river above any fish-bearing habitat.
But if BC Hydro builds it, then it's OK even though they don't have much expertise in this area of micro-hydro development, aside from the expensive Aberfeldie re-development in the Kootenays.
Frank
25-05-2009
blackie
Good to hear the salmon and other species are thriving more than ever and that CBC's panels and talking heads are made up of Dippers. I'm not sure where you live but I want to come to your fairy-tale world for a visit one day just to see the colour of the sky.
freebear
25-05-2009
Too many sheep support the economics
Unfortunately too many people (sheep) have 'bought' in to the economic paradigm that is unsustainable on a finite Earth.
But wait, let's go beyond Earth; to Mars people, follow me!
We had an economic precipice appear, but we threw money at it to postpone the inevitable fall down of the economic system.
So get back buying stuff sheep, I mean people!
No money down; spend spend spend!
Besides the symbolic Carbon Tax will solve everything right David?
VivianLea Doubt
25-05-2009
the heart of our geography
Frank, the colour of my sky is a beautiful vibrant turquoise, how's yours?
Rivers don't exist to simply hold fish, they perform a central landscape function -bearing silt and nutrients etc. downstream to estuaries, and creating valleys - it would be hard to imagine any feature of our geography more essential to life as we know it. When a river is diverted or its flow altered in any way, many things, including the spiralling of nutrients throughout the watershed area, are altered, and much more than fish can be impacted. The precautionary principle was born of the realization that ecology is complex, and that seemingly innocuous changes can impact a variety of species, as well as humans, and in this case, the very formation of the features some apparently take for granted.
While it would be possible to develop run of river in some places, not every place will be suitable - how on earth could an environmental assessment determine that, short of many years of study? Any geography lesson can teach that, though - we are dealing here not just with an ideology that says economic activity is more important than anything else, but that short term gain is more important than the long term prosperity...in other words, it's not good business management, either. (We have examples of managing for the short term in many recent spectacular corporate failures.)
If the salmon are the soul of the province, the rivers are the heart...if some can apparently survive without a soul,none of us will without a heart.
biscotti
25-05-2009
Stake some claims
On a previous post-election thread, I floated the idea of a small, guerrilla style, faux private power project on a Lower Mainland creek, say, in Burnaby. Maybe West Van? Lots of water moving downhill fast over there...
Set up a tiny toy turbine, make an application for an assessment, have a Board of Directors with creative noms de plumes and get the story in the urban MSM's face. Hold independent hearings. Set up an electric train set and run the ghost of BC Rail with a transformer...
Time for some creative, non-violent direct action on this issue.
seth
25-05-2009
River run
Lukey (in the sky )
what is it with this Aberfeldie fixation you and your pirate friends have.
What part of:
BCHydro can contract out the construction to experts in the area just as Pirate power does
do you not understand. Bechtel and SNC Lavelin are two that come to mind.
Who are these great experts at Pirate Power anyway. Other than the contractor laying a piece of pipe, the employee list at Pirate Power reads straight off the Liberal party bagman alumni club. Who knew a buncha of lawyers had so much expertise in run of river construction.
Mr Dirt
BC Hydro has stated that in the 2008 call the firm power bids are coming in at 12 cents a kwh. For Non firm power and the open calls yes the rate is variable. One pirate spokesman in Scott Simpsons column calculated non firm freshet power at 9.5 cents. Since the actual contracts are private I suspect it will be a long time before we know the exact extent of the damage you Neocons have caused.
Gary
25-05-2009
It's not just the ROR
...That is devastating our salmon stocks. CN Rail is appearing in North Van Court today to answer to environmental charges for a spill that occurred in August 2005 in the Cheakamus River.
Those charges were finally laid only after the Squamish Nation announced at the last minute that they were going ahead with court action themselves. Apparently feet were being dragged and the time to lay charges was running out.
The derailment wiped out more than a Half million fish. Not to mention the animals that feed on them like eagles and seals.
reallife
25-05-2009
Could fishing
be what is killing the salmon? Might be a good idea to stop fishing for a while and see what happens.
avandoc
25-05-2009
facing a tragedy
This was the one election issue I so wanted to shout about, but with the Canucks topping the conversation charts, it seemed futile. Few people really care about this, and even the people I though should seemed to shrug it off.
Don't look to urbanites to make noise about this. If they can buy cheap sushi (all farmed samlon, of course), then all's right in the world. It's going to be up to the people whose livelihood depends on wild fish, and I guess there are fewer and fewer of them.
In the US, people seemed to wake up a bit with the last presidential election. I wonder what it will take in BC. Salmon extinction doesn't rank with torture, war, and financial chaos.
WEASER
25-05-2009
media wakeup
I believe we need to give Canwest something to report about. We need to give them some protests that say wakeup and report the news. We need to rally the people to speak up. There were 33,000 names signed on a petition against the fish farms in a two month period but they were turned away by the Liberals. We need to be louder.