Last fall’s chum runs were poor throughout British Columbia. Wilf Luedke, the chief biologist for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, described reports from the Sooke River, on Vancouver Island, as “the worst yet.” On the Fraser River, the Alouette River Management Society counted 500 instead of the 60,000 they expected. The chum returns on Cortes & Quadra Cortes were dismal.
Continue reading Last Fall’s Chum Returns On Cortes & QuadraCategory Archives: Rivers & Oceans
Who Is Protecting Wild Salmon Behind The Fraser River’s Dikes & Side Channels?
By Roy L Hales
There is more than 1,400 km of salmon habitat behind floodgates in the lower Fraser Valley. The lead author of a Simon Fraser University study wrote, ” … Floodgates are installed to protect homes and farms from flooding, however, when they are closed, they also bar native fish from accessing valuable habitat.” A related study by the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre found that there is little ongoing government oversight of fish habitat behind dikes, or fish passage through flood structures. Who is protecting wild salmon behind the Fraser River’s dikes & side channels?
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Remove the Broughton Archipelago’s Open-Net Fish Farms
Marine Harvest did not have the consent of local First Nations, when they set up an open net fish farm off Swanson Island farm thirty-one-years ago. They did not need it, with a Social Credit government ruling British Columbia. Only this is 2017, the courts recognize aboriginal title, and Premier John Horgan is more conscious of First Nation’s concerns. At the invitation of Chief Bob Chamberlain of Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis First Nation, Horgan and three of his top cabinet ministers visited Alert Bay. They met with forty Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) leaders, who demanded Horgan remove the Broughton Archipelago’s open net fish farms.
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How The Basil Creek Culvert Project Is Over The Top
By the time you hear this, the Ministry of Transportation crew will have left Basil creek. As Cortes Streamkeeper Cecil Robinson observed, prior to this “if the fish came early and the rains were late, they just simply couldn’t get through the old culvert. They died right there.” Now more of them will swim upstream to their spawning grounds. Then he proceeded to describe how the “Basil Creek culvert project was over the top from the very beginning. Everything that needed to be done, is done: and then some more, always some more.”
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Replacing the Culvert at Basil Creek
Two weeks ago, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure closed a small segment of Whaletown Road on Cortes Island. The impact on the local community is minimal. However British Columbia’s threatened fish stocks greatly benefit from projects like replacing the culvert at Basil Creek.
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