Category Archives: Rivers & Oceans

Rivers & Oceans

Who Is Protecting Wild Salmon Behind The Fraser River’s Dikes & Side Channels?

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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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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Remove the Broughton Archipelago’s Open-Net Fish Farms

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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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Rivers & Oceans

How The Basil Creek Culvert Project Is Over The Top

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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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Rivers & Oceans

Replacing the Culvert at Basil Creek

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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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Rivers & Oceans

Whale Tales

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By Roy L Hales

In light of the wildfire situation in the interior of our province, it seemed like a good time for an update on the Strathcona Regional District’s emergency preparedness. Only there were three humpback whales along the route, as I crossed over to Quadra Island to meet with the district’s Protective Services Coordinator. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen whales along this route, but they were still whales in the area when I returned four hours later. So I asked I asked Jessica Towers, who works on this ferry, if she had any whale tales.

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