Category Archives: Rivers & Oceans

Energy, Rivers & Oceans

Coastal First Nation’s cutting-edge ocean wave energy project just got a million-dollar boost

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A cutting-edge clean energy project to use ocean waves to power a coastal First Nation’s return to its traditional territory on Vancouver Island’s wild west coast just got a surge in funding. 

To buoy the next stages of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation’s (MMFN) Yuquot Wave Energy Project, $1 million was granted to one of the initiative’s partners, the University of Victoria’s Pacific Regional Institute for Marine Energy Discovery (PRIMED). 

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Rivers & Oceans

Clock is running out for Canada to help secure a global treaty to protect the ocean

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

It’s do-or-die time for Canada and the rest of the international community to finally get a deal done to protect the world’s oceans, say global leaders, environmental groups, and celebrity activists.

International delegates are hunkering down in the back rooms at the United Nations in New York until March 3 in a last-ditch attempt to broker a legally binding deal to protect biodiversity on the high seas. 

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Politics, Rivers & Oceans

Robyn Mawhinney: A Wharf Service for Area C

More than eight years have passed since Transport Canada (TC) transferred administration of three wharves to the Strathcona Regional District (SRD). Owen Bay on Sonora Island, Surge Narrows on Read Island, and Port Neville on the northern shore of the Johnstone Strait are all within Area C. The SRD was provided with $2.9 million for maintenance and upgrades that were to be completed sometime during the next decade. These upgrades have not yet occurred. Nor has a service to carry out operations and maintenance been established for Area C. Robyn Mawhinney, the new Regional Director, hopes to have this work well underway before the November 2024 deadline. 

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Rivers & Oceans

DFO Decision: Discovery Island Fish Farms remain closed

According to the Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) press release of February 18, 2022, “There are multiple stressors on wild salmon, including: climate change; habitat degradation and destruction; regulated fishing as well as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Given the state of Wild Pacific Salmon, the Government of Canada is taking a highly precautionary approach to manage Atlantic salmon aquaculture in the Discovery Islands area.”

Licenses for the 15 remaining fish farms in this region will not be reissued.

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Environment, Rivers & Oceans

Canada confirms protections for marine protected areas but shipping pollution isn’t included

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada formalized its minimum protection standards for marine protected areas on Wednesday at a global ocean conservation summit in Vancouver. 

Oil and gas activity, mining, the dumping of certain waste materials and destructive bottom trawling fishing won’t be allowed in any MPAs established from April 2019 and onward, said federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray and Steven Guilbeault, minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, during a press conference at the IMPAC5 summit. 

The new protection standard is a policy blueprint based on a 2019 promise by the federal government to curb these industrial activities.

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