Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Canada’s healthy oceans are worth billions more than what can simply be extracted from them.
Oceans and coastal ecosystems generated at minimum $7.1 billion in benefits in 2023, new figures from Statistics Canada suggest.
Continue reading Canada’s oceans provide billions in value beyond fish
By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Canada’s National Observer sent reporter Natasha Bulowski to B.C.’s remote central coast for a special expedition this month.
Teams of people are on B.C.’s central coast this week, facing the Sisyphean task of removing marine debris and garbage from remote islands. For every plastic bottle you pick up, there are at least five more buried under the mess of driftwood washed up on the shores. Ropes and nets are even worse: right when you think you’ve freed a section and are ready to move on, a flash of turquoise rope buried in the driftwood catches your eye and condemns you to another 15-minute to hour-long struggle — or “project” as the crew calls these monstrosities.
Continue reading Canada’s National Observer takes you on a sailing ship with an impossible mission
Janeen Sutherland has been the Wilderness Tourism Association’s (WTA) Executive Director for close to three months.
The North Vancouver native has a background in tourism and sustainable community development.
Continue reading Wilderness Tourism Association’s new Executive Director: Looking towards ‘a really bright future’The licenses for all 19 salmon farms in the Discovery Islands expire in June. There will only be 7 farms left in the Broughton Archipelago by 2023, at which point their tenure ends unless they can obtain First Nations approval and Department of Fisheries licences. That leaves an estimated 79 salmon farms throughout the province, and all of their licenses come up for renewal on June 30, 2022.
Continue reading Potential elimination of open-net salmon farm sector in sightThe President of the Wilderness Tourism Association (WTA) says eco-tourism could offer communities a reliable and more environmentally friendly source of employment than either fish farms or resource extraction.
“There are some viable alternatives, if they had a fair shake and didn’t get booted out every time a clear cut wanted to go in,” said Breanne Quesnel, who is also one of the co-owners of Spirit of the West Adventures on Quadra Island. “As rural communities, it is very important that we sit down and have discussions about what we want our communities to look like and how we’re going to get there.”
Continue reading A more environmentally friendly source of employment for communities
