Legacy December 2013

Issue 26

December 2013

Legacy Š Wild Game Fish Conservation International

The Journal of Wild Game Fish Conservation Published by volunteers at:

Wild Game Fish Conservation International

Original cover art courtesy of Anissa Reed Designs

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy Wild Game Fish Conservation International Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI): Established to advocate for wild game fish, their fragile ecosystems and the cultures and economies that rely on their robust populations.

LEGACY – The Journal of Wild Game Fish Conservation: Complimentary, no-nonsense, monthly publication by conservationists for conservationists LEGACY, the WGFCI Facebook page and the WGFCI website are utilized to better equip fellow conservationists, elected officials, business owners and others regarding wild game fish, their contributions to society and the varied and complex issues impacting them and those who rely on their sustainability.

LEGACY exposes impacts to wild game fish while featuring wild game fish conservation projects, fishing adventures, wildlife art, accommodations, equipment and more. Your photos and articles featuring wild game fish from around planet earth are welcome for possible inclusion in an upcoming issue of LEGACY. E-mail them with captions and credits to Jim (wilcoxj@katewwdb.com).

Successful wild game fish conservation efforts around planet earth will ensure existence of these precious natural resources and their ecosystems for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. This is our LEGACY.

Wild Game Fish Conservation International Founders

Bruce Treichler

Jim Wilcox

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Contents WGFCI Outreach via Legacy and Facebook ________________________________________________________ 10 Special: _________________________________________________________________________________________ 11  What is Salmon Ranching? ___________________________________________________________________________ 11  SeaWorld, Russia, plus China Equals a Captive Dolphin and Whale Disaster _____________________________ 12  Despair, Courage, & Hope in an Age of Environmental Turmoil __________________________________________ 15

Seafood consumption: Public health risks and benefits _____________________________________________ 20       

Warning: Eating Farmed Salmon May Affect Your Baby _________________________________________________ Enjoy seasonal wild Pacific salmon dinners at these fine restaurants:____________________________________ PROUD TO SUPPORT WILD SALMON – Original art by Leanne Hodges __________________________________ Wild Salmon Supporters – View entire list here _________________________________________________________ 9 Things Everyone Should Know About Farmed Fish ___________________________________________________ 8 FOODS EVEN THE EXPERTS WON’T EAT ____________________________________________________________ Consumer magazine: “What’s in the farmed salmon you eat? ___________________________________________

20 21 22 23 25 28 32

 New Recommendations for the Archipelago Sea: Fish-Based Feed, Integration of Fish Farms, Planning Control ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 35  After the investigation of Special Envoy, the lobby of Norwegian salmon active ___________________________ 37  The truth about Internet food rumors __________________________________________________________________ 39

We’re seeking truth for wild game fish _____________________________________________________________ 40         

Matt Lorch ___________________________________________________________________________________________ The Honourable David Alward _________________________________________________________________________ Denny Heck __________________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Gary Kruger ______________________________________________________________________________________ The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq ______________________________________________________________________ Paul Wheelhouse ____________________________________________________________________________________ The Honourable Peter Kent ___________________________________________________________________________ Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. ___________________________________________________________________________ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, WA Department of Ecology, and Cowlitz County __________________________

40 40 40 41 42 43 43 44 44

 Food and Drug Administration ________________________________________________________________________ 45  Barak Obama ________________________________________________________________________________________ 45  Honourable Mary Polak _______________________________________________________________________________ 45

Responses to WGFCI: ____________________________________________________________________________ 46  Sobeys ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 46  Elizabeth May, O.C., M.P. _____________________________________________________________________________ 48

Community Activism, Education and Outreach: __________________________________________________________ 49  Leave this world better than when you found it _________________________________________________________ 49  salmonALERT.org ____________________________________________________________________________________ 51  Thousands rally to protest Enbridge, climate change ___________________________________________________ 52  Action Alert: Oppose the coal industry’s export plans __________________________________________________ 55  The Fight Large ______________________________________________________________________________________ 56  Who you gonna call? - Fish Busters ___________________________________________________________________ 57  GMO: Don’t eat it – Oppose GMO Atlantic salmon – Send your letter today! ______________________________ 58

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Tell the FDA: GMO salmon is too risky _________________________________________________________________ 59  WGFCI invited by US Congressman Heck to discuss open pen salmon feedlot risks ______________________ 60  Salmon (Boycott) Cause Spreads To The Island ________________________________________________________ 62  Protestors demand open-pen farmed salmon be pulled from Walmart's shelves __________________________ 64  Protest against ‘polluting’ salmon farms _______________________________________________________________ 65  Backers of Longview coal export terminal lonely in Tacoma at 5th and final hearing ______________________ 66  GET UNSAFE RAILROAD TANK CARS OUT OF WASHINGTON STATE ___________________________________ 70  Coastal First Nations Re-Write Enbridge's Latest Northern Gateway Pipeline Ad Campaign ________________ 71  New Brunswick First Nation criticizes RCMP as it promises to continue fight against shale gas ____________ 72  About SWN Resources Canada________________________________________________________________________ 74  Vancouver rally for Elsipogtog all about unity __________________________________________________________ 75  Chilliwack in Solidarity with Elsipogtog Community and Allies __________________________________________ 76    

Fracking Protest – From New Brunswick to Chilliwack __________________________________________________ Wild Salmon Warrior Radio with Jay Peachy – Tuesday Mornings________________________________________ Wild salmon vs. oil and aquaculture ___________________________________________________________________ Activists at Pittsburgh rally denounce fracking, coal; 7 arrested for blocking bank entrance _______________

77 78 79 81

Impacts of open pen salmon and trout feedlots _____________________________________________________ 82           

New Sea Lice Treatment Available to British Columbia Salmon Farmers __________________________________ 82 Interbreeding of Farmed and Wild Measured in Norway _________________________________________________ 83 Norwegian salmon farm offers bounty for escaped fish _________________________________________________ 85 Where have 750,000 farmed salmon gone? _____________________________________________________________ 88 Legal issues holding up fish-farming complaint to environmental commission ___________________________ 91 Found lethal number of lice ___________________________________________________________________________ 94 CFIA orders ISA infected salmon destroyed ____________________________________________________________ 96 Surface Water Is a Key Factor in the Transmission of Pancreas Disease in Salmon _______________________ 97 Incorrect reporting of lice - got millionbot ______________________________________________________________ 99 The Problem with Farmed Salmon (video) _____________________________________________________________ 101 Canadian Industry Fails to Report Escapes of Farmed Atlantic Salmon __________________________________ 102

 Farm destroys 180,000 small fish after ISA confirmed at site in western Norway _________________________ 104  Lice infested fish caught by Norwegian angler ________________________________________________________ 105  Episode 009: Interview with Lewis Hinks of ASF – Open Net Pen Fin Fish Aquaculture ___________________ 108  Bulging Mutant Trout Created: More Muscle, More Meat ________________________________________________ 109  GMOs 101: Our children are not Roundup ready _______________________________________________________ 111  Melanin pigmentation in salmon fillets—causes and risk factors ________________________________________ 112  Fears for Scottish salmon farming after China production targets missed _______________________________ 114

Impacts of salmon hatcheries ____________________________________________________________________ 117  Salmon, People and Place, Jim Lichatowich (Video) ___________________________________________________ 117

Climate Change _________________________________________________________________________________ 118  UN slams Canada for poor climate change record _____________________________________________________ 119  Water concerns farmers more than climate change ____________________________________________________ 122

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Ocean Health – Acidification, De-oxygenation, Warming ___________________________________________ 124  Acidification of oceans threatens to change entire marine ecosystem ___________________________________ 124

Energy production and wild game fish: Oil, Coal, Hydropower, Wind, Natural Gas ___________________ 126 Oil – Drilled, Tar Sands _________________________________________________________________________________ 128  B.C., Alberta premiers agree on pipeline framework ___________________________________________________ 128  It’s all about the oil –Canada’s wild ecosystems be damned ____________________________________________ 130  Newfoundland passes fracking moratorium ___________________________________________________________ 131  The high stakes of transporting oil by rail _____________________________________________________________ 134  Noam Chomsky slams Canada's shale gas energy plans _______________________________________________ 139  People Who Live Downwind Of Alberta’s Oil And Tar Sands Operations Are Getting Blood Cancer ________ 141      

Pipeline map: Have there been any incidents near you? ________________________________________________ Face to Face with Ingmar Lee ________________________________________________________________________ Gainford derailment: Explosions, fire follow CN tanker derailment west of Edmonton (with video) _________ Train carrying crude oil derails, explodes in Alabama __________________________________________________ State sides with Quinaults, environmental groups in crude-by-rail case _________________________________ First-Ever Footage of Aging Tar Sands Pipelines Beneath Great Lakes __________________________________

143 145 146 148 151 155

 In Canada's Alberta province, oil sands boom is a two-edged sword ____________________________________  Carcinogens emitted from Canada's main fossil fuel hub, study says ___________________________________ Coal __________________________________________________________________________________________________  ‘Major failure’ of coal mine pit releases waste water into Athabasca River _______________________________  Billion litres of coal-mine muck leaks into Alberta's Athabasca River ____________________________________ Hydropower and water retention ________________________________________________________________________  Laos dam threatens fishermen’s' livelihoods __________________________________________________________  Most run-of-river B.C. hydro projects can harm fish ____________________________________________________  Update: Proposed Chehalis River dam, Washington state ______________________________________________  Need for Site C Dam exaggerated as public hearings start next month __________________________________ Liquefied Natural Gas __________________________________________________________________________________  B.C. hints at carbon offsets to counter LNG plants' emissions __________________________________________

157 161 163 164 166 168 168 171 174 175 178 178

Wind__________________________________________________________________________________________________ 182  Wind Power Without the Blades ______________________________________________________________________ 182 Forest Management ____________________________________________________________________________________ 183  Scientists Oppose Logging Bills in Congress _________________________________________________________ 185  Cathedral Grove, Canada’s Most Famous Old-Growth Forest, Under Threat as Island Timberlands Moves to Log Adjacent Old-Growth Mountainside _____________________________________________________ 187  State seeks public input on timber land plan __________________________________________________________ 191

Government action/inaction and wild game fish ___________________________________________________ 192  I Don’t Pay Attention to Politics… ____________________________________________________________________ 192  GMO: Government-enabled, greed-driven, corporate crime against humanity ____________________________ 193  After Washington GMO label battle, both sides eye national fight _______________________________________ 194

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Salmon Farming: Is it Killing Canada’s Salmon Industry? ______________________________________________ 196  Still Fishing for government action on the Cohen Commission’s salmon recommendations? – So are we! _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 198  Grays Harbor Salmon Management Policy Public Workshop____________________________________________ 199  The True Cost of Scottish Salmon ____________________________________________________________________ 200  Science Matters: One year after Cohen report, salmon still face an upstream battle ______________________ 201  Comment: One year later, nothing has improved for wild salmon _______________________________________ 203  Is DFO protecting wild salmon? ______________________________________________________________________ 205  Scottish watchdog labelled ‘lapdog’ after agreeing to keep fish farm deaths secret ______________________ 206  Salmond and the salmon farmers_____________________________________________________________________ 208  When is the dirty salmon farming industry going to be properly regulated? ______________________________ 209  Scientists feel muzzled by Conservative government, union says _______________________________________ 212

“Greenwashing”: Corporate, Government and Non Government Organization _______________________ 215  Support for pipelines on the rise in B.C., industry minister says ________________________________________ 215  More oil trains expected in Washington under proposals _______________________________________________ 218  Crude-by-rail isn’t a safety concern, railroad officials say ______________________________________________ 220  American Gold Seafoods (Washington State) __________________________________________________________ 222  Salmon Farming in Washington State _________________________________________________________________ 223

Mining and wild game fish _______________________________________________________________________ 225  Taseko shares fall after review offers critical view of B.C. mine proposal ________________________________ 225  My Turn: Impact, science of mining near Bristol Bay are clear __________________________________________ 227

Wild fish management ___________________________________________________________________________ 229    

$5-million study hopes to study mortality of B.C. salmon _______________________________________________ Scientists say new fisheries law “guts” protection for habitat __________________________________________ Looking in vain for salmon in Gaula __________________________________________________________________ Tracking young salmon's first moves in the ocean _____________________________________________________

229 231 233 235

Ongoing Conservation Projects __________________________________________________________________ 238  New project gives ‘snapshot’ of CA’s wild salmon populations _________________________________________ 238  A River Returns (with video) _________________________________________________________________________ 239

Conservation-minded businesses – please support these fine businesses __________________________ 241  Jim and Donna Teeny: Jim Teeny Incorporated ________________________________________________________  Kim Malcom’s Riverman Guide Service – since 1969 ___________________________________________________   Anissa Reed Designs ________________________________________________________________________________  Cabo Sails __________________________________________________________________________________________

241 242 243 244

 The Bozeman Angler ________________________________________________________________________________ 245

Attention Conservation-minded Business Owners _________________________________________________ 247 WGFCI endorsed conservation organizations: _____________________________________________________ 247 Featured Artists: ________________________________________________________________________________ 248  The Wilds: “AYO!” __________________________________________________________________________________ 249  Dan Wallace: Commissioned engraving – strict attention to detail ______________________________________ 250  Diane Michelin: "FALL FASHION" ____________________________________________________________________ 251

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Gary Haggquist – Visual Artist _______________________________________________________________________ 252  Diane Michelin: "Skeena, ma belle" ___________________________________________________________________ 253

Featured Conservationist ________________________________________________________________________ 254  Bud Logan, Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada _________________________________________________ 254

Featured Fishing Photos: ________________________________________________________________________ 257  Sara Stevenson: 40” white sturgeon – released back to Willamette River ________________________________ 257  Alexandra Morton: The wild Pacific salmon lifecycle continues - naturally _______________________________ 258  Gary Haggquist: Canoeing on Cultus Lake ____________________________________________________________ 259  Antonio Amaral: Wahoo _____________________________________________________________________________ 260  Amber Serbin, Releasing a buck chinook salmon, Chilliwack River, British Columbia, Canada ____________ 261  Nutthawud Tunbooncharean: Giant Snakehead (channa micropeltes) ___________________________________ 262  Martine Bouchard: Du Gouffre River in Saint-Urbain, Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada _______________________ 263    

Double Island Fishing Charters: Coronation Trout _____________________________________________________ Bryanna Zimmerman: Wild coho (silver) salmon _______________________________________________________ Trevor Nearing: Triple… Steelhead fishin’ _____________________________________________________________ Gašper Konkolič: Fly Fishing Guiding Slovenia: _______________________________________________________

264 265 266 267

 And then there is this ________________________________________________________________________________ 268

Recommended Reading _________________________________________________________________________ 269  Alexandra Morton: “Listening to Whales”

Watch orcas up close HERE ________________________________ 269

Video Library – conservation of wild game fish ____________________________________________________ 270 Final Thoughts: _________________________________________________________________________________ 271  Truth _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 271

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy Forward Merry Christmas (a little early). The December 2013 issue of Legacy marks twenty six consecutive months of our web-based publication, the no-holds-barred, watchdog journal published by Wild Game Fish Conservation International.

Legacy is published each month to expose risks to the future of wild game fish and their ecosystems around planet earth to our growing audience. Legacy is also utilized to promote the many benefits of healthy populations of wild game fish. Please share this uniquely comprehensive publication with others far and wide as it includes something of interest and importance for everyone.

Our hope is that those who read Legacy will come to understand that what is good for wild game fish is also good for humans. Similarly, what is bad for our planet’s wild game fish is really bad for humans!

It’s exciting that a growing number of recreational anglers and others around planet earth are passionate about conserving wild game fish and their continued availability for this and future generations to enjoy and appreciate. Just as exciting is that growing numbers of consumers and retailers are paying close attention to the impacts each of us have on global resources through our daily activities and purchases.

We continue to urge our readers to speak out passionately and to demonstrate peacefully for wild game fish and their ecosystems; ecosystems that we are but one small component of.

As recreational fishermen, conservation of wild game fish for future generations is our passion. Publishing “Legacy” each month is our self imposed responsibility to help ensure the future of these precious gifts that have been entrusted for safekeeping to our generation.

Bruce Treichler

James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

WGFCI Outreach via Legacy and Facebook

The November issue of Legacy is being read in these countries

4,500+ WGFCI Faceb

ook friends

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Special:

 What is Salmon Ranching?

“Salmon Ranching” can be defined as the “artificial propagation of juvenile salmon for release into ocean basins”.

Salmon ranching may also be referred to as “ocean ranching”. Others may refer to it as “salmon enhancement”.

Simply put, salmon ranching refers to a process by which indigenous salmon are initially caught and stripped of eggs and milt.

The fertilized eggs are then cultured in a hatchery where they will hatch and begin feeding on a feed powder. Mimicking the natural life cycle of a wild salmon, these salmon are then transported from freshwater hatcheries to saltwater fish farms.

Salmon ranching exploded in the mid 1970s

The juvenile salmon continued to be cultured in saltwater fish farms using net pens to contain the salmon. While in net pens, salmon are fed feed pellets to gain size and strength. Also, by remaining captive in an area suitable for a future commercial fishery, the salmon are “imprinted” to the area where they are temporarily farmed. Imprinting ensures that these cultured salmon return to the same place where they were “born” – similar to natural, wild salmon.

Once large enough to successfully compete with wild salmon for food and space, these cultured salmon are released into the ocean to forage for food (referred to as “ranching”). Depending on the species of salmon (Pink, Chum, Coho, Chinook or Sockeye), they will return to their birthplace in two to four years. Upon return, a mixture of wild and ranched salmon are caught by commercial and sports salmon fisherman. Selected salmon are also retained by the source hatchery to be used again for eggs and milt – thus repeating the process.

In 2012, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported that 127 million salmon were commercially harvested. Of this, 44 million salmon were identified as ocean ranched. Therefore, in 2012, ocean ranched salmon represented over 34% of the commercial catch in Alaska.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Orca captures result in the injury, death, and disruption of wild pods (captured for Miami SeaQuarium, please see below).

 SeaWorld, Russia, plus China Equals a Captive Dolphin and Whale Disaster November 8, 2013 SeaWorld, while claiming that their killer whale shows are an exemplary blend of education and entertainment, has inadvertently managed to teach us that whales don’t belong in captivity, yet simultaneously they have also taught other countries – including countries such as China that have little respect for animal life – that there are huge profits to be had at the animals’ expense.

According to an article by Tim Zimmermann, A Surge In Wild Orca Capture for Killer Whale Shows, Russia’s recent capture of 10 wild orcas may result in some of them going to aquariums in China:

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

“It seems like China is becoming, or has become, a primary source of the demand for belugas, dolphins, and orcas alike,” says Courtney Vail, Campaigns and Programs Manager for Whale And Dolphin Conservation, which helps sponsor Hoyt’s and FEROP’s work. “Chinese facilities also source from the Taiji dolphin hunts. Twenty-four dolphins were exported from Japan to China in 2012, and CITES trade reports suggest over 60 wild-caught belugas were exported from Russia to China between 2008 and 2010 alone.”

The thought of orcas in Chinese hands is particularly onerous, as that country has no laws to protect animals from cruelty and abuse. That fact, coupled with deeply held superstitious beliefs by large segments of the Chinese population means that animals in that country suffer on all levels – the fur trade, scientific research, medicine, dietary preferences, and amusement. Dogs are baked and boiled alive (thought to taste better), other animals are skinned alive for fur, then sprayed with water to keep them moist until killed for food. Bears are cut to produce bile for Chinese Medicine. (A simple google search will show you more than you want to know on animal cruelty in China.)

An orca in a Chinese aquarium may receive better care than most animals there are entitled to, due to the whales’ high price tag as well as to the standards set by other aquariums. In order to belong to an accredited organization, any aquarium or theme park must care for animals by certain minimum standards – but when you think about it, even in the U.S. amusement parks such as the Miami SeaQuarium are able to dodge the minimum standards as set by law as well as by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. In the photo of Miami SeaQuarium below, one lone orca has been forced to live in a tank that is substandard in size for over 40 years. (Freelolita.org). As far as I am aware, there are no aquariums on mainland China that are even accredited at this point anyway (there are two in Hong Kong which is independently governed).

Editorial Comment:

 The

insanity of enslaving the world’s wild Orcas to make money for corporations and governments is not sustainable and must end.

 As the top predator in the marine food chain, these magnificent marine mammals play vital roles in maintaining healthy wild marine ecosystems.

 As social beings orcas deserve to remain with their families in order to learn and contribute.

Stop Enslaving Orcas Captured as a calf, pictured at the top. (Courtesy Orca Network)

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Zimmermann points out that we can help stem the flow of wild orcas into captivity by refusing to visit the amusement parks entirely.

But as the Russian Far East threatens to become the next wild orca gold rush, tapping into a remote orca population that until now has mostly been left alone, [Researcher Erich Hoyt] sees only one way the wild orca hunts will truly stop. “A lot depends on how many people per year pay to get into SeaWorld in the U.S., as well as paying to get into the growing number of such facilities in China, Japan and Russia,” he says. “By last count, more than 120 facilities in these countries exhibit whales and/or dolphins.

In Will SeaWorld tank after expose in ‘Blackfish’? Commentary: Stock sinks as documentary makes a big splash, the author points out the decline in SeaWorld’s stock value, and explains that as a highly leveraged company, SeaWorld may be facing some tough times ahead, due to increased public awareness resulting in part from the documentary film, Blackfish.

Shares of Orlando, Fla.-based SeaWorld (SEAS -0.58%) have been sinking with the gradual release of this independent documentary, and are now down about 25% from highs reached earlier in the year.

SeaWorld needs to survive this debacle, I personally take no joy in the prospect of them having to close their doors because they are uniquely poised to do immense good for whales and dolphins needing our help.

But if instead they choose to move their whales offshore (as they have in Loro Parque, Spain), and to support amusement parks in countries that have few regulations, then they deserve to go down in history as a truly amoral and exploitative organization.

Aquariums Must

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Despair, Courage, & Hope in an Age of Environmental Turmoil This may be the most psychologically trying time in all of human history.

(If you don’t believe global climate change is real or that it’s caused by humans, see below about denial.)

Buying seventeen plane tickets is not a typical day in my life. Rather, it’s an extreme case that highlights the tensions that run through the lives of aware and informed people in our society.

Knowing of the harms associated with our flights diminishes my enjoyment of the trip. But I’m hoping that what we learn about human-environment relationships in Bali—and by comparison about those here in the U.S.—will compensate for some of the damages, along with some choices we’ll make to mitigate the harms, such as eating less meat on the trip (meat production contributes to climate change in multiple ways).

Normal damage I don’t have to buy a lot of plane tickets to harm the environment. Every day, I participate in a modern lifestyle and economy that I know contribute in one way or another to the deepening environmental crises we find ourselves in. I might buy some cookies containing palm oil, much of which comes from plantations in Indonesia where rainforests have been clear-cut to make way for the fruit-bearing palm trees that feed me over here on the other side of the planet (as I discussed in a previous post). Or I flip a light switch, placing a load on the power grid, which, added to other people’s demands, may cause a system operator to fire up a coal-fired power plant, which emits carbon dioxide (driving climate change), sulfur (creating acid rain), and mercury (poisoning the food chain and causing neurological damage to children who may eat mercury-contaminated fish).

We certainly can make choices that are more aligned with our values. And it feels empowering to do so. I ride my bike around town—about ten times for every one time I drive—and take public transit when I can, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s enjoyable, even when it’s cold and not particularly comfortable, because I know I’m “walking the talk.” I eat no meat because I can’t stand the thought of the suffering of animals in our factory farms and because industrial meat production contributes to various environmental problems.[3] Doing these things doesn’t make me superior: I know many people who live more ecologically benevolent lives than I, some by choice, some by necessity. It’s fulfilling, though, to follow my own values; it makes me feel better than I otherwise would.

Nevertheless, I don’t want to play a part in the loss of fish habitat by the diversion of a river into my faucet or the contamination of workers’ bodies and landscapes in Silicon Valley or China by buying and using electronics such this computer, as I explain in chapter 1 my book Invisible Nature. But it would be very hard to be a normal modern person without doing things that I know have results I don’t like. And the same is the case for the vast majority of informed people. Indeed, the modern era is unique in that so many of the outcomes of human activity—global environmental crisis in particular—are completely unintended.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Contaminating our Body with Oil Shale Processing Living in Conflict If our living conflicts with our values, and if it’s difficult in this society to get the two to truly match up, that should be a major cause for concern. Not only are our environments and physical health at stake, but so is our mental health. When behavior and values conflict, we’re setting ourselves up for angst and despair, and perhaps myriad unknown maladies.

Consider the subjects in Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiments, which I discuss in a previous post. They were instructed by a man in a white lab coat to give another person electric shocks by flipping switches, some of which were labeled “DANGER-SEVERE SCHOCK.” Probably none of the subjects wanted to hurt the “learner” in the experiment. The tension played out in various ways. Some subjects quit the experiment. Of those who continued to issue shocks to the screaming learner complaining about his heart trouble, many felt discomfort so extreme that it manifest itself as physical symptoms: sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their flesh, and smiling and laughing nervously. Fifteen subjects experienced full-blown, uncontrollable seizures.

If you know that animals are suffering in factory farms because of meat you buy, that people are being killed by the climate change you help create, that forests are falling as you clean the house with paper towels, what kinds of mysterious symptoms might express themselves in your body and mind?

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Perhaps foremost among our emotional responses to environmental hazards, loss, and turmoil is despair. The eco-philosopher and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy long ago tapped into the profusion of despair in modern lives in her work around nuclear power and weapons. Throughout human history people have had to live with the knowledge that they would one day die. With the nuclear age suddenly the specter of a far greater death came into consciousness: the possible loss of entire societies and perhaps humanity itself.

Coping with Despair Despair, sadness, and angst are natural human responses to such overwhelming threats and damages. But these feelings often get sublimated and repressed. They’re unpleasant and difficult.

They contradict the positive moral story of linear progress that underlies and propels modern society.

They’re so strong that they can interfere with us getting on in our busy daily lives and earning a living.

Worst of all, they can thwart action and solutions by overwhelming us and making us feel numb.

Joanna Macy’s genius has been to hone in on these emotions that often get pushed aside while we focus on daily living.

She helps people transform their despair into political action against the destructive forces in our society. After her work in the 1980s unearthing and mobilizing the deep despair and “colossal anguish” arising from the threat of nuclear Armageddon, Macy began to apply similar ideas to concerns about the environment.

With nuclear and other powerful weaponry and growing global environmental crises, we are among the first generations of humans who are no longer certain that future generations will be able to inhabit a safe and healthy planet, Macy observes. Powerful emotions may arise from this knowledge: terror at the possible suffering in store for our loved ones and descendants; rage that we live our lives under an existential threat to humanity that could otherwise be avoided; guilt because our everyday actions—driving, using products made with toxic chemicals—implicate us in this slow-motion catastrophe; and sorrow at the losses already realized and those threatening the future of this beautiful planet.

But these terms are too weak to convey the expanse of feelings that we experience in this context because they originate in concerns about individual persons. Now, we are experiencing the almost unspeakable depths of emotion related to species and planetary catastrophe.

Confronting the Depths Macy urges us to confront these feelings, to remember the original meaning of compassion— “suffering with.” We shouldn’t pathologize emotional pain arising from these circumstances, as if it’s inappropriate. Pain tells us where we should turn our attention. But we tend to oppress these powerful emotions, so our responses are blunted. Three psychological strategies insulate us emotionally from our environmental pain: disbelief, denial, and the double life, says Macy, in an article titled “Working Through Environmental Despair.”

Disbelief: It’s easy to dismiss the reality of the toxins in air, water, and food or global climate change when the evidence for these problems is not present and visible in our daily lives. Things that disappear—topsoil or birdsong—escape our notice. Problems we can detect with our own senses— smog or plastic trash in the environment—appear so gradually that they become normal parts of life.

Such problems hardly achieve a sense of reality for us.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Denial: When it’s hard to actually perceive environmental problems, their existence becomes a matter of debate. Rejection of the problem soothes us and eases the pain. Denial is made easier by the difficulty of understanding many environmental problems due to their complex origins. Because our energy systems are so heavily based on fossil fuels and because all products contain some embedded energy, virtually everything I purchase or use contributes to global climate change.

Something that’s everywhere is also nowhere.

In Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life, Kari Marie Norgaard studied Norwegians’ lack of response to climate change. Although Norway is affected by melting glaciers and flooding and the effects are expected to worsen, response has come slow as people push the problem out of their minds to get on with daily life. Norgaard observed how Norwegians in a particular town shaped their social norms and public discourse to create a communal denial of climate change in that prosperous and well educated country.[7] Our lack of direct visceral experience with the effects of climate change and the deep-seated origins of the problem combine to open us up to manipulations that foster more denial.

On February 10, 2010, Fox News Channel showed images of US Vice President Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It planted in a snow bank during a snow storm. Actually, an increase in the number and severity of storms, including snow storms, is one of the expected outcomes of global climate change, so the storm was no proof against climate change—on the contrary it might have been one of its effects.

Double life: Denial gives us the luxury of leading two lives. One is where everything seems OK and we can carry on our daily activities without constantly thinking about the detrimental effects. There, we can remain more or less positive about life. The other life is where we deposit our knowledge of climate change, acid rain, contaminated soils, and species being wiped out every week. That knowledge gets shoved aside as an “unformed awareness” that remains latent in the background, far enough back in our consciousness that it doesn’t interfere with “normal” living.

Macy thinks that repressing knowledge of the damages in this way drains us of the energy that could otherwise be used for clear thinking and action. Some people foreground in their minds environmental problems and begin to act—not only activists but people making changes to their everyday lives to be gentler to Earth.

Anguish into Action But a larger effort to access “the deep roots of repression” could mobilize great energy in our society to more adequately respond to environmental degradations and nature’s needs. Toward that end, Macy developed the “Five Principles of Empowerment.” 

Feelings of pain for our world are natural and healthy. When we learn of widespread suffering and destruction of habitats and the radioactive contamination of landscapes and oceans (such as that by the Fukushima disaster), we must expect fear, anger, grief, and guilt and not view them as pathological. They remind us that we’re human and that we desire a healthy, beautiful, and just world. We must share our grief over these problems and not reduce it to “private pathology.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish! 

Pain is morbid only if denied. Disowning our pain makes it dysfunctional, resulting in “numbness and feelings of isolation and impotence.” Repressed pain, Macy believes, makes us seek out scapegoats and turn to depression and self-destruction.

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Information alone is not enough. Great quantities of information are available about the state of nature and human societies—far more than any single person can grasp. “Terrifying information about the effects of nuclear pollution or environmental destruction,” writes Macy, “can drive us deeper into denial and feelings of futility, unless we can deal with the responses it arouses in us.” The question is, Can we better integrate this information in our psyches to make appropriate responses more likely? In my book Invisible Nature I show that we must actually witness with our senses, and not merely know about, the consequences of our own actions to be able to respond to them.

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Unblocking repressed feelings releases energy and clears the mind. Macy writes, “Repression is physically, mentally, and emotionally expensive; it drains the body, dulls the mind, and muffles emotional responses.” Unblocking our despair can lead to catharsis and release energy in us.

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Unblocking our pain for the world reconnects us with the larger web of life. Something more than catharsis takes place when we unblock our distress over the slow destruction of the planet. Our concerns for other people, other species, habitats, the whole living planet, and perhaps the cosmos that lie at the heart of this distress reveal our connections to the greater world. Those connections integrate us into the web of life and the cosmos. As we move through this suffering, we “reach the underlying matrix of our lives,” Macy says. Unblocking these feelings mustn’t be done for the purpose of catharsis alone. Catharsis would then be merely a personal undertaking that pays little heed to the interconnections and larger suffering at the heart of our concerns. As we instead suffer along with the world, we recognize that there is not only pain: “There is also wonder, even joy, as we come home to our mutual belonging—and there is a new kind of power.”

“When we recognize our embeddedness in the web of life that extends out into the cosmos, all the way through minerals that enter our bodies and starlight that energizes us, we can then recognize that the suffering of other people and animals and the degradation of all parts of nature are our suffering and our degradation.

When we can muster the courage to feel the pain and work through it, we give rise to hope and free up psychic energy to work toward a gentler, healthier world.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Seafood consumption: Public health risks and benefits

 Warning: Eating Farmed Salmon May Affect Your Baby (see article on next page)

Read related article HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Enjoy seasonal wild Pacific salmon dinners at these fine restaurants:

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 PROUD TO SUPPORT WILD SALMON – Original art by Leanne Hodges

Editorial Comment: When making your next dining reservations for yourself, you and your loved one or a party, please be sure to look first at the restaurants that do not offer open pen feedlot salmon on their menu.

This is a simple way that we can thank these businesses for their significant dedication and commitment to our iconic wild Pacific salmon.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Wild Salmon Supporters – View entire list here

Eddie Gardner: BAD CHOICE! So called “Fresh Farmed Atlantic Salmon Steak Tip" is very fatty and this absorbs high concentrations of PCBs. For your health and for the well being of the marine habitat, do not purchase this product.

Nikki Lamarre: They couldn't pay me to eat that!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 9 Things Everyone Should Know About Farmed Fish November 7, 2013 If you eat seafood, unless you catch it yourself or ask the right questions, the odds are pretty good it comes from a fish farm. The aquaculture industry is like a whale on steroids, growing faster than any other animal agriculture segment and now accounting for half the fish eaten in the U.S. As commercial fishing operations continue to strip the world’s oceans of life, with one-third of fishing stocks collapsed and the rest headed there by mid-century, fish farming is seen as a way to meet the world’s growing demand. But is it really the silver bullet to solve the Earth’s food needs? Can marine farms reliably satisfy the seafood cravings of three billion people around the globe?

This article looks at aquaculture and its long-term effects on fish, people, and other animals. With this industry regularly touted as a paragon of food production, whether you eat seafood or not, you should know these nine key facts about farmed fish.

1. Farmed fish have dubious nutritional value.

Here’s a frustrating paradox for those who eat fish for their health: the nutritional benefits of fish are greatly decreased when it’s farmed. Take omega-3 fatty acids. Wild fish get their omega-3’s from aquatic plants. Farmed fish, however, are often fed corn, soy, or other feedstuffs that contain little or no omega-3’s.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

This unnatural, high-corn diet also means some farmed fish accumulate unhealthy levels of the wrong fatty acids. Further, farmed fish are routinely dosed with antibiotics, which can cause antibiotic-resistant disease in humans.

2. The farmed fishing industry robs Peter to pay Paul.

While some farmed fish can live on diets of corn or soy, others need to eat fish – and lots of it. Tuna and salmon, for example, need to eat up to five pounds of fish for each pound of body weight. The result is that prey (fish like anchovies and herring) are being fished to the brink of extinction to feed the world’s fish farms. “We have caught all the big fish and now we are going after their food,” says the non-profit Oceana, which blames aquaculture’s voracious hunger for declines of whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, tuna, bass, salmon, albatross, penguins, and other species.

3. Fish experience pain and stress.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of many a catch-and-release angler, the latest research shows conclusively that fish experience pain and stress. In one study, fish injected with bee venom engaged in rocking behavior linked to pain and, compared to control groups, reduced their swimming activity, waited three times longer to eat, and had higher breathing rates. Farmed fish are subject to the routine stresses of hyper-confinement throughout their lives, and are typically killed in slow, painful ways like evisceration, starvation, or asphyxiation.

4. Farmed fish are loaded with disease, and this spreads to wild fish populations.

Farmed fish are packed as tightly as coins in a purse, with twenty-seven adult trout, for example, typically scrunched into a bathtub-sized space. These unnatural conditions give rise to diseases and parasites, which often migrate off the farm and infect wild fish populations. On Canada’s Pacific coast, for example, sea lice infestations are responsible for mass kill-offs of pink salmon that have destroyed 80% of the fish in some local populations. But the damage doesn’t end there, because eagles, bears, orcas, and other predators depend on salmon for their existence. Drops in wild salmon numbers cause these species to decline as well.

5. Fish farms are rife with toxins, which also damage local ecosystems.

You can’t have diseases and parasites infecting your economic units, so operators fight back by dumping concentrated antibiotics and other chemicals into the water. Such toxins damage local ecosystems in ways we’re just beginning to understand. One study found that a drug used to combat sea lice kills a variety of non-target marine invertebrates, travels up to half a mile, and persists in the water for hours.

6. Farmed fish are living in their own feces.

That’s right, fish poop too. Farmed fish waste falls as sediment to the seabed in sufficient quantities to overwhelm and kill marine life in the immediate vicinity and for some distance beyond. It also promotes algal growth, which reduces water’s oxygen content and makes it hard to support life.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

When the Israeli government learned that algal growth driven by two fish farms in the Red Sea was hurting nearby coral reefs, it shut them down.

7. Farmed fish are always trying to escape their unpleasant conditions, and who can blame them?

In the North Atlantic region alone, up to two million runaway salmon escape into the wild each year.

The result is that at least 20% of supposedly wild salmon caught in the North Atlantic are of farmed origin. Escaped fish breed with wild fish and compromise the gene pool, harming the wild population.

Embryonic hybrid salmon, for example, are far less viable than their wild counterparts, and adult hybrid salmon routinely die earlier than their purebred relatives. This pressure on wild populations further hurts predators who rely on fish like bears and orcas.

8. See: the Jevons Paradox.

This counterintuitive economic theory says that as production methods grow more efficient, demand for resources actually increases – rather than decreasing, as you might expect. Accordingly, as aquaculture makes fish production increasingly efficient, and fish become more widely available and less expensive, demand increases across the board. This drives more fishing, which hurts wild populations. Thus, as the construction of new salmon hatcheries from 1987 to 1999 drove lower prices and wider availability of salmon, world demand for salmon increased more than fourfold during the period. The net result: fish farming cranks up the pressure on already-depleted populations of wild fish around the world.

9. When the heavy environmental damage they cause is taken into account, fish farming operations often are found to generate more costs than revenues.

One study found that aquaculture in Sweden’s coastal waters “is not only ecologically but also economically unsustainable.” Another report concluded that fish farming in a Chinese lake is an “economically irrational choice from the perspective of the whole society, with an unequal tradeoff between environmental costs and economic benefits.” Simply put, aquaculture drives heavy ecological harms and these cost society money. In the U.S., fish farming drives hidden costs of roughly $700 million each year – or half the annual production value of fish farming operations.

Now What?

With its long trail of diseases, chemicals, wastes, and suffering, and the heavy pressure it puts on wild populations through parasites, escapes, and higher demand, the sustainability of fish farms emerges as a fish story. And by the way, farmed or wild, fish are only “healthy” when compared to high-fat foods like red meat. But wild fish is no great nutritional treat either: pound for pound, salmon has just as much cholesterol as ground beef, and virtually all wild fish contains highlytoxic mercury.

Here’s one solution to the farmed fish dilemma: vote with your pocketbook and eat less seafood or give it up completely. Get your omega-3’s from flax, hemp, soy, or walnuts – all without cholesterol or mercury. And just maybe, as George W. Bush hoped in a moment of unintended comedy, “the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 8 FOODS EVEN THE EXPERTS WON’T EAT We asked them a simple question: “What foods do you avoid? Experts from different areas of specialty explain why they won’t eat these eight foods. Food scientists are shedding light on items loaded with toxins and chemicals. The experts offer some simple swaps for a cleaner diet and supersized health.

Food scientists are shedding light on items loaded with toxins and chemicals–and simple swaps for a cleaner diet and supersized health. Experts from different areas of specialty explain why they won’t eat these eight foods.

Clean eating means choosing fruits, vegetables, and meats that are raised, grown, and sold with minimal processing. Often they’re organic, and rarely (if ever) should they contain additives. But in some cases, the methods of today’s food producers are neither clean nor sustainable. The result is damage to our health, the environment, or both. So we decided to take a fresh look at food through the eyes of the people who spend their lives uncovering what’s safe–or not–to eat. ” Their answers don’t necessarily make up a “banned foods” list. But reaching for the suggested alternatives might bring you better health–and peace of mind.

1. The Endocrinologist Won’t Eat: Canned Tomatoes Fredrick Vom Saal, is an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A. The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food.

Studies show that the BPA in most people’s body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. “You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that’s a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young,” says Vom Saal. “I won’t go near canned tomatoes.”

The solution: Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe’s and Pomi. Exposure to BPA Causes Permanent Damage In Offspring 2. The Farmer Won’t Eat: Corn-Fed Beef Joel Salatin is co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of half a dozen books on sustainable farming.

The problem: Cattle evolved to eat grass, not grains. But farmers today feed their animals corn and soybeans, which fatten up the animals faster for slaughter. But more money for cattle farmers (and lower prices at the grocery store) means a lot less nutrition for us.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

A recent comprehensive study conducted by the USDA and researchers from Clemson University found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s,conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium; lower in inflammatory omega-6s; and lower in saturated fats that have been linked to heart disease. “We need to respect the fact that cows are herbivores, and that does not mean feeding them corn and chicken manure,” says Salatin.

The solution: Buy grass-fed beef, which can be found at specialty grocers, farmers markets, and nationally at Whole Foods. It’s usually labeled because it demands a premium, but if you don’t see it, ask your butcher.

3. The Toxicologist Won’t Eat: Microwave Popcorn Olga Naidenko, is a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group.

The problem: Chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of the bag, are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans, according to a recent study from UCLA. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Studies show that microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize–and migrate into your popcorn. “They stay in your body for years and accumulate there,” says Naidenko, which is why researchers worry that levels in humans could approach the amounts causing cancers in laboratory animals. DuPont and other manufacturers have promised to phase out PFOA by 2015 under a voluntary EPA plan, but millions of bags of popcorn will be sold between now and then.

The solution: Pop organic kernels the old-fashioned way: in a skillet. For flavorings, you can add real butter or dried seasonings, such as dillweed, vegetable flakes, or soup mix. Make it organic and use coconut oil. If You’re Still Eating Microwave Popcorn, You’re Not Fully Grasping The Health Consequences 4. The Farm Director Won’t Eat: Nonorganic Potatoes Jeffrey Moyer is the chair of the National Organic Standards Board.

The problem: Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes–the nation’s most popular vegetable–they’re treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they’re dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. “Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won’t,” says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). “I’ve talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.”

The solution: Buy organic potatoes. Washing isn’t good enough if you’re trying to remove chemicals that have been absorbed into the flesh. Budget tip: Organic potatoes are only $1 to $2 a pound, slightly more expensive than conventional spuds.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

5. The Fisheries Expert Won’t Eat: Farmed Salmon Dr. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, published a major study in the journal Science on contamination in fish.

The problem: Nature didn’t intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT. According to Carpenter, the most contaminated fish come from Northern Europe, which can be found on American menus. “You could eat one of these salmon dinners every 5 months without increasing your risk of cancer,” says Carpenter, whose 2004 fish contamination study got broad media attention. “It’s that bad.” Preliminary science has also linked DDT to diabetes and obesity, but some nutritionists believe the benefits of omega-3s outweigh the risks. There is also concern about the high level of antibiotics and pesticides used to treat these fish. When you eat farmed salmon, you get dosed with the same drugs and chemicals.

The solution: Switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon. If the package says fresh Atlantic, it’s farmed.

There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon. Farmed Fish vs. Wild Fish: How Healthy Is The Fish At Your Favorite Grocery?

6. The Cancer Researcher Won’t Drink: Milk Produced With Artificial Hormones Rick North is project director of the Campaign for Safe Food at the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and former CEO of the Oregon division of the American Cancer Society.

The problem: Milk producers treat their dairy cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST, as it is also known) to boost milk production. But rBGH also increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It also leads to higher levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor in milk. In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers. “When the government approved rBGH, it was thought that IGF-1 from milk would be broken down in the human digestive tract,” says North. “There’s not 100 percent proof that this is increasing cancer in humans,” admits North. “However, it’s banned in most industrialized countries.”

The solution: Buy raw milk or check labels for rBGH-free, rBST-free, produced without artificial hormones, or organic milk. These phrases indicate rBGH-free products. Why Do Humans Still Drink Milk?

7. The Biotech Specialist Who Won’t Eat Conventional Soy: GMO Unfermented Soy Michael Harris is biotech specialist who has directed several projects within the biotech sector including those for genetically engineered food. He has been a consultant, manager and director for companies such as Xenon Pharmaceuticals and Genon Corporation.

The problem: Genetically engineered food is a cause of great concern due to the manipulation of DNA and genetic code including transfers from one species to another. Fermented Soy Is The Only Soy Food Fit for Human Consumption and since almost 90% of soy in the world is genetically modified, if you are not ensuring sources are organic, long-term health problems are inevitable, especially since soy has been found to affect hormonal balance and even cause cancer.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The solution: Check labels to ensure soy is Non-GMO or organic and never consume unfermented sources. If possible contact the company to find out exactly where the Non-GMO soy was obtained.

8. The Organic-Foods Expert Won’t Eat: Conventional Apples Mark Kastel, a former executive for agribusiness, is co director of the Cornucopia Institute, a farmpolicy research group that supports organic foods.

The problem: If fall fruits held a “most doused in pesticides contest,” apples would win. Why? They are individually grafted (descended from a single tree) so that each variety maintains its distinctive flavor. As such, apples don’t develop resistance to pests and are sprayed frequently. The industry maintains that these residues are not harmful. But Kastel counters that it’s just common sense to minimize exposure by avoiding the most doused produce, like apples. “Farm workers have higher rates of many cancers,” he says. And increasing numbers of studies are starting to link a higher body burden of pesticides (from all sources) with Parkinson’s disease.

The solution: Buy organic apples or apples from a farmer that you trust!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Consumer magazine: “What’s in the farmed salmon you eat?

Tank to table (Thanks to Don Staniford for sharing this article)

Most salmon sold here (New Zealand) starts life at a King Salmon hatchery. According to the company’s own figures, it produces around 55 percent of all farmed salmon and owns major brands Regal Salmon and Southern Ocean.

Before reaching the dinner table, the fish spend most of their lives in sea cages (King Salmon prefers to call them pens) being fattened up. A major part of their diet comes from abattoir by-products – off-cuts from poultry processing, including feathermeal, as well as bloodmeal from cattle, pigs and sheep.

King Salmon says the "feed replicates the natural diet of wild salmon". But unlike wild salmon, farmed salmon derive only a small proportion of their diet from marine sources. Environmental pressures and rising prices for fishmeal and fish oil have forced the industry to look for alternatives. Cheaper byproducts from abattoirs have been the answer. Plant materials such as faba-bean meal are also added for extra protein and to act as binding agents.

According to Skretting Australia, which manufactures the pellets fed at most salmon farms here, just under 10 percent of the feed is fishmeal derived primarily from Peruvian anchovies. Fish oil comprises 7 percent.

Some fish oil has to be added to the pellets because it’s the main source of omega-3 for farmed salmon (although it’s often promoted as a “natural source” of omega-3). Wild fish derive their omega3 from the algae and other marine plants found in the fish they eat.

Farmed salmon's artificial habitat also means their feed has to be supplemented with astaxanthin, a carotenoid pigment, to give the fish their distinctive pink flesh. In contrast, wild salmon get their pink glow from eating krill and other crustaceans.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Angela Koch: “Here a virus there a virus....everywhere a Norwegian strain damned farm virus!

Can someone please explain to me: 

why they are harvesting these fish at such a small size (if you look hard enough you can see a teensy weensy farmed salmon head)

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what the heck is up with that disgusting looking yellow flesh?”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Editorial Comment: 

Looks like most of the cost is in packaging.

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Everything else is waste from slaughtering.

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This chain has the audacity to call itself "Superstore" - Not so much!

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These were likely infected fish that were ordered by the Canadian government to be destroyed.

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Who in their right mind would eat this crap?

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 New Recommendations for the Archipelago Sea: Fish-Based Feed, Integration of Fish Farms, Planning Control Oct. 25, 2013 Extraction of Baltic Sea fish recommended for fish feed. This would enable the recycling of marine nutrients and eliminate the need for fish feed imports. This is one of the recommendations jointly drawn up by the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the Finnish Environment Institute for the promotion and coordination of fishing, fish farming and other methods of exploiting the marine environment and resources in the Archipelago Sea. The two institutes conducted a case study on the sustainable use of the Archipelago Sea under the EU-funded COEXIST project -- Interaction in European coastal waters: A roadmap to sustainable integration of aquaculture and fisheries.

The Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the Finnish Environment Institute drew up six sustainability recommendations for the Archipelago Sea. The six recommendations are:

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish! 

Fish farms start using fish feed produced from the Baltic Sea's raw materials, and receive support through an incentive system, such as higher production volumes.

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The national planning control for future fish farms is put into practice and taken account of in the environmental permit process.

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Maritime spatial planning (MSP) should be developed through regional cooperation.

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Fishers are encouraged to engage in lowvalue fish extraction and financial support is provided for such activities.

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Removal of nutrients through low-value fish extraction is made a compensation payment option in the licensing of fish farms.

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A functional and acceptable management strategy is promoted through multi-partner collaboration and coordination of goals.

Claudette Bethune: “The current news that the Baltic, one of the most contaminated seas in the world, will be used as a new source of industrial scale fish feeds is alarming.

Our current understanding on the safety risk and damage to health of dioxin and dioxin-like PCBs is one of the most extensive for any dangerous chemical. It is clear that the exposure to these compounds has the same deleterious effect regardless of the food type consumed.

We also know that farmed Atlantic salmon accumulate the most toxic forms of the dioxins and PCBs at 5 to 10 times more than for other types of animal proteins at the market (NIFES publications 2004, 2011).”

These recommendations benefit all kinds of marine use. Regional fish farm planning control that benefits all parties helps reduce conflicts with other users of the water body. Planning control can be used to integrate one owner's fish farms into larger facilities. This would reduce the number of fish farms in the Archipelago Sea by up to 60%. It would also mean that the number of summer cottages located closer than 500 metres from a fish farm would come down by more than 80%. The profitability of fish farming would also improve, because larger facilities have lower production costs.

Swedish authorities communicate more The study also involved comparing the Finnish and Swedish management and planning systems for fish farming. Both countries have been enforcing a strict environmental policy which has restricted production. In recent years, however, Swedish fish farmers have been allowed to increase production, and Finnish farmers have started transferring their operations to Sweden. This shows that the strict Finnish licensing procedure has driven production, employment opportunities and environmental effects to other parts of the Baltic Sea's catchment area.

The study revealed that, throughout the licensing process, there is more interaction between Swedish fisheries industry authorities and fish farming license applicants than in Finland, which is reflected in the content of licensing decisions as more wide-ranging consideration of perspectives specific to the fisheries industry. On the other hand, the increased cross-sectoral interaction of Finnish government sectors concerning the planning control of future fish farms is indicative of a more acceptable and comprehensive management strategy for fish farming that will benefit the environment and society as well as the fisheries industry.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 After the investigation of Special Envoy, the lobby of Norwegian salmon active November 11, 2013

In an excellent survey released Thursday by Special Envoy on France 2, we saw confirmed what we begin to know for a long time: farmed fish are packed with toxic substances. Chemicals used in their food and the substances with which it is sprinkled.

Overcrowding in their cage farmed salmon fall sick more easily because infested with sea lice A Norwegian environmental activist and tells Envoy: "In the salmon, there is the diflubenzuron and all kinds of chemicals. This is disgusting, this stuff. You know the Norwegian salmon is the most toxic of the world food. " The report did not like the center of seafood from Norway ( CPMN ). In September, the organization has signed a collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. Objective: "To support internationalization, innovation and marketing of seafood from Norway."

It is under these ambitions that lobby issued a statement in response to the issue, reported by one reader. We learn that basically there is no public health problem: "Recent findings inform the Norwegian salmon is perfectly safe and healthy. " But that salmon farming is "a transparent activity, regulated and controlled" or "priority for Norway is to produce healthy and safe for consumption. " A researcher pushed the door However, the arguments of the paper suggest skeptical. Example:

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"All the tests on the Norwegian farmed salmon are made in accordance with the European and Norwegian law. They are published on the website NIFES." The NIFES is a Norwegian state research institute. Problem: we learn just in the story that led to the resignation of a researcher who studied the effects on human health of ethoxyquin, a food additive in this fish.

She had found annoying things, as she tells Envoy: "I discovered that ethoxyquin has the power to cross the barrier blood-brain. Yet this barrier has a very important function. It is used to physically protect your brain against toxic substances and any foreign substance to the human body is not supposed to cross. "

Cleaner fish eats lice The CPMN has other arguments to defend its salmon. About sea lice in particular, the center concedes that "diflubenzuron is sometimes used" but tempers awkwardly: "The statistics show that in 2012 the use of diflubenzuron is rare, and that other methods of control sea lice are used in preference.

The treatment method most used is to introduce a "cleaner fish" (called "old town") in ponds. The cleaner fish eat lice present on the skin of salmon. " Yum everything. To read the press release, it was almost like reading vintage arguments of tobacco when they ensured that smoking was good for your health.

Yet difficult to forget that in June, as the rappellait Rue89, the Norwegian government issued "a new recommendation , forced to recognize - belatedly - that oily fish is also full of toxic chemicals. "

Lobby combined with the Norwegian Foreign At the same time, should we expect a better response CPMN such serious charges? The statement said: "The CPMN was established by the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries in 1991 to increase awareness of the products of the Norwegian Sea in the world. Its activities are funded by the fisheries and aquaculture through a levy on exports of seafood " By e-mail, I asked our blogger Norway, Diane Barbain to tell us his opinion on the matter. Secretary of the Green City Council Bergen, she criticized the agreement signed in September between CPMN and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "The Centre is located with the services of the Norwegian diplomacy abroad, and enjoys diplomatic status and address of the Norwegian Embassy in France. " Is that France is an important market for Norwegian salmon producers. By the admission of CPMN in its press release: "France is the second largest export market for seafood in Norway with about 671 million per year, which is also of Norway's largest provider of seafood France is also the largest export market for Norwegian salmon with 136,000 tons imported in 2012. " Salmon is the second economic resource of Norway after oil.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The truth about Internet food rumors October 26, 2013 Practically everyone with an Internet connection has seen them by now: those links, often posted on Facebook by well-meaning friends, claiming that the foods we eat are filled with iffy chemicals and banned in every nation but our own. Rice seasoned with arsenic and sodas containing flame retardant sure sound hazardous, but are they really? We parsed the research to give you the bottom line on which foods are safe and which you should keep out of your cart.

Health.com: 16 Most Misleading Food Labels

Farm-raised salmon The concern: Farmed salmon, particularly from the North Atlantic, has been found to contain toxins like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins, industrial pollutants in the food the salmon is given.

The research: Scientists found that North Atlantic farmed salmon had up to eight times the concentration of certain contaminants compared with wild fish. Dioxins are a known human carcinogen, while PCBs have been linked to cancer in animals and may trigger it in humans. Research has shown that babies of women exposed to high levels of PCBs are more likely to have neurological problems.

The Bottom line: Go wild when possible. But if you can't find it, don't skip salmon, said Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health: "While farmed salmon has some toxins, the nutritional benefits still outweigh the risks." Try these 20 heart-smart salmon recipes.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

We’re seeking truth for wild game fish

 Matt Lorch Anchor, Q13 Fox News You're recent special report regarding the health of southern resident Orcas was spot on - hopefully you will do additional in depth reporting on this subject, especially regarding declining populations of wild chinook salmon and increased pollution; both of which are exacerbated by open pen salmon feedlots sited within wild salmon migration routes in Washington state and British Columbia marine waters.

Matt Lorch

 The Honourable David Alward Premier, New Brunswick, Canada As New Brunswick Premier, your leadership is needed now more than ever to help unite all Canadians to effectively address the many risks associated with efforts to extract, transport and export Canada's fossil fuels.

The recent clashes in New Brunswick between First Nation protesters and RCMP were absolutely inappropriate - if anything they added fuel to an increasing fire that could easily lead to unthinkable results.

David Alward These heavy-handed actions in New Brunswick by RCMP are being intently followed around planet earth by those who care about human dignity, our rights and the conservation of our life-sustaining natural resources.

 Denny Heck US Congressman, Washington State, 10th Congressional District Thank you and your Lacey District staff for taking time to learn more about the social, economic and environmental risks associated with open pen salmon feedlots sited within wild salmon migration routes in Washington state and British Columbia marine waters.

Continued operation of these open pen salmon feedlots must not be permitted as their risks are significant and global in scope. If for no other reason, they must be removed for the recovery of Puget Sound is to be realized. There is no evidence that open pen salmon feedlots and wild Pacific salmon can successfully co-exist.

Denny Heck

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

You asked for specific details regarding the joint ISAv study by Washington State, the federal government and Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. Below is the link to the program summary posted on the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife website. You’ll note that we at Wild Game Fish Conservation International find fault with the report’s closing statement.

Infectious Salmon Anemia Monitoring Program http://www.wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/research/projects/salmon_anemia/

The closing statement of this report (below) is inaccurate and misleading as ISAv has been confirmed in west coast salmon by specialists in Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Canada) laboratories and Evidence of this presented during Canada’s Cohen Commission inquiry into declining populations of Fraser River sockeye salmon – conducted by the honorable Justice Bruce Cohen. This evidence has been presented in the 2013 documentary Salmon Confidential and elsewhere.by world renowned scientists who specialize in the detection and reporting of ISAv results.

“There have been no confirmed reports of ISAV in wild or farmed salmon on the West Coast.

In 2011, a Canadian researcher reported detecting the virus in some British Columbia Pacific salmon. However, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency – the Federal agency with authority for fish health in Canada – tested fish tissue samples from British Columbia using internationally approved methods and found no ISA virus present.”

We look forward to working with you and your Lacey District staff on issues that impact wild game fish and those who rely on them.

 Dr. Gary Kruger Area Program Specialist (Aquatics) Western Operations Canadian Food Inspection Agency I am writing on behalf of Wild Game Fish Conservation International and our colleagues around planet earth to formally express our complete distrust in Canadian Food Inspection Agency analyses that determined that Pacific salmon have not been negatively impacted by Infectious Salmon Anemia and other deadly European salmon diseases directly associated with open pen salmon feedlots sited within wild salmon migration routes in British Columbia marine waters.

Claiming that feedlot salmon and wild Pacific salmon in British Columbia are free of these deadly diseases is nothing short of fraud by the CFIA. The risks of this irresponsible course of action by CFIA to public health, wild ecosystems, cultures, communities and economies are global in scope.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Given that Department of Fisheries and Oceans laboratories as well as world-renown scientists in state-of-the-art laboratories on multiple continents have detected deadly European salmon diseases in fresh samples from British Columbia salmon, we can easily come to the conclusion that CFIA scientists are either inept when it comes to identifying and reporting these diseases or they CFIA scientists are directed to falsely report their findings.

Given the tremendous revenue potential derived from open pen salmon feedlots to Canada, it appears to many that CFIA is covering up the truth about these deadly diseases in order to reap as much money as possible from unsuspecting countries.

Canada's not reporting confirmed, deadly salmon diseases is absolutely shameful and will no longer be tolerated by those who care about wild salmon and their fragile ecosystems.

Canada's ignoring the recommendations of the recently concluded Cohen Commission is further evidence that these issues of global concern will not be effectively addressed by Canada any time soon.

 The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq Minister of the Environment, Canada I'm writing on behalf of Wild Game Fish Conservation International and our associates around planet earth to respectfully urge you as Canada's Minister of the Environment to deny the environmental certificate required for the proposed New Prosperity mine to proceed.

Our request is supported by several significant statements including: 

Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency's recent finding: "Taseko has underestimated the volume of water that would leave a tailings storage facility and there was "considerable uncertainty" regarding Taseko's contingency plan for water treatment

The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq



Grand Chief Edward John ; "Clearly this report should provide the federal government the necessary evidence to immediately reject, yet again, Taseko's Prosperity Mine proposal"



B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett: "mines can't be built without causing significant environmental issues"

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Paul Wheelhouse Scottish Environment Minister We at Wild Game Fish Conservation International respectfully urge you as Scotland's Minister of Environment to protect Scotland's public health, wild ecosystems, communities and economies from the significant risks directly associated with open pen salmon feedlots.

Scotland's wild ecosystems and uniquely-beautiful scenery are far more valuable to local citizens and those who visit Scotland than the unsustainable and problematic open pen salmon feedlot industry will ever be.

Lastly, wild ecosystems and open pen salmon feedlots are incapable of co-existing - to believe otherwise is irresponsible.

Paul Wheelhouse

 The Honourable Peter Kent Minister of the Environment, Canada Cc: Hon. Keith Ashfield, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Cc: Robert Chisholm, NDP Fisheries Critic Cc: Hon. Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal Party Fisheries Critic Cc: Elizabeth May, Green Party Leader Wild Game Fish Conservation International is writing to express our urgent concern about the environmental risks of genetically modified (GM) fish and to ask you to make sure Environment Canada does not approve production of dangerous GM Atlantic salmon eggs or fish in Canada.

Peter Kent

The small US company AquaBounty wants to produce all of its GM salmon eggs on Prince Edward Island and then ship the eggs to Panama for growing out and processing, to send the fish into the US consumer market. This plan is extremely risky for Canada and the rest of the world.

We are alarmed that the entire process for assessing environmental risk is secret and that the public has no chance to be involved or be consulted.

AquaBounty plans to ship GM salmon eggs from PEI to Panama, but Canada has not even ratified the United Nations Protocol on Biosafety which regulates the international movement of Living Modified Organisms.

Canada has an international responsibility to stop living pollution. Please instruct Environment Canada to reject any request to approve production of GM salmon or salmon eggs. The risk to Atlantic salmon is too great.

We urge you to take immediate action to stop GM salmon in order to protect endangered wild Atlantic salmon.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. Commissioner, Food and Drugs Administration I'm writing to you as Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration on behalf of Wild Game Fish Conservation International and our associates around planet earth to ask two important questions regarding public heath risks associated with; 1. Consumption of diseased salmon raised in foreignowned, open pen feedlots and imported into the USA for human consumption.  This question arises often given that greater numbers of feedlot salmon are being confirmed with one or more deadly salmon diseases including, but not limited to Infectious Salmon Anemia, Heart Muscular Skeletal Inflammation Margaret Hamburg and Piscine Reo Virus  The concern is that these diseases may be public health risks - we know they adversely impact wild salmon and trout.

2. Consuming genetically modified Atlantic salmon if this product is unfortunately approved by the FDA for human consumption in the United States  It's fully expected that if approved for human consumption by the FDA, GM Atlantic salmon will be reared in open pen salmon feedlots where they will suffer sea lice infestations and deadly salmon diseases Given the very real risks to public health associated with eating open pen feedlot salmon, genetically modified or otherwise, these risks must be rigorously examined by your agency to protect US citizens from undue exposure.

 U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers, WA Department of Ecology, and Cowlitz County

We at Wild Game Fish Conservation International strongly oppose the construction of a coal export terminal at Longview, WA that would transport coal on trains and ships throughout the Northwest.

This proposal would hurt or harm communities by increasing congestion and noise with more coal train traffic, polluting air and local waterways, harming existing businesses, and delaying emergency responders. It would also damage aquatic ecosystems and fishing areas on the Columbia River, harm human health, increase tanker traffic and the potential for shipping accidents and spills, expand stripmining in Wyoming and Montana, and escalate climate change.

We respectfully urge you to consider these impacts in the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Food and Drug Administration There are serious environmental and public health risks associated with genetically-engineered salmon.

Wild Game Fish Conservation International and our associates are deeply concerned about the impact on wild fish populations, increased resistance to antimicrobial drugs, and the spread of infectious disease to fish and humans.

The potential risks to human health, fish populations, the broader ecology, and our economy simply cannot be justified without a much more rigorous review of the potential dangers.

 Barak Obama President United States of America I am writing to respectfully urge you and your administration to strongly oppose the transfer of bitumen from Alberta, Canada to any American destination.

America must discourage further environmental devastation in Alberta as government-enabled, greed-driven corporations continue to disrupt this uniquely beautiful place.

Barak Obama

At the same time the environment in Alberta is being destroyed public health, cultures, communities and economies find themselves directly in harm's way. The statistics are staggering!

Your courageous leadership is needed now, more than ever before, to end this greed-driven insanity before it is too late.

 Honourable Mary Polak Minister of Environment British Columbia, Canada We at Wild Game Fish Conservation International respectfully urge you to deny the Pesticide Use Permit Application recently submitted to your office by Clare Backman (Marine Harvest).

As we have seen with open pen salmon feedlots sited in British Columbia marine waters and elsewhere around the world, sea lice infestation is an inevitable risk to feedlot salmon and more importantly to wild salmon and their fragile ecosystems.

Mary Polak

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Not only do sea lice rob life sustaining nutrition from their host salmon, but they also serve as vectors for a growing number of deadly salmon diseases; some of which have been confirmed as originating in Europe.

As has been demonstrated in Norway and elsewhere, sea lice have the ability to become resistant to any number and strength of chemical pesticides including SLICE and the proposed Hydrogen Peroxide being requested in the Marine Harvest application referenced above. In the meantime, the treated salmon, those who eat them, wild salmon and the impacted ecosystem suffer from additional exposure to dangerous, ineffective chemicals.

The ongoing experiment to artificially rear hundreds of thousands of salmon in cramped conditions sited in wild ecosystems is an absolute failure on many fronts including public health, wild ecosystems, cultures, communities and economies.

British Columbia's citizens, its unique beauty and irreplaceable natural resources deserve your courageous leadership as Minister of Environment today more than any other time in history.

Your denial of this irresponsible permit application will be truly appreciated by those who care about British Columbia.

Responses to WGFCI:

 Sobeys Food safety is the highest priority for Sobeys, and it is our policy that all products offered for sale must be safe, secure, and meet or exceed Canadian standards and requirements. Also, our suppliers must also meet or exceed government regulations when it comes to salmon and all other products that we do sell.

We thank you for your feedback, and have shared it with the appropriate department.

Editorial Comment: Canada’s standards, requirements and regulations ignored mad cow disease, denied ISA in BC salmon and permit the sale of diseased salmon. Easy to comply with them.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Dr. Laura J. Richards Regional Director, Science Pacific Region

Dr. Laura Richards

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Elizabeth May, O.C., M.P. Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands Leader of the Green Party of Canada Thank you for your email regarding genetically modified salmon and their potential threat they pose to our health.

I promise to continue to be a voice for green ways of life.

Ecological wisdom and sustainability are, of course, two of the Green Party’s most important founding values, which underlie all of our policy making and political activism.

Elizabeth May

The Green Party of Canada not only recently called for increased transparency on the approval of GMO salmon, but also urged Environment Canada to seriously consider the future environmental and health effects of producing genetically modified salmon eggs. We know from experience that fish have a habit of escaping and the use of GMO salmon would be a significant threat to the wild salmon populations, which are already in serious peril.

Environment Canada has yet to release information to the public on their negotiations with Aqua Bounty, the company responsible for manufacturing the GMO salmon eggs, nor have they conducted any public risk assessments. Thank you for your dedication and I encourage you to continue drawing attention to this important issue, because without public attention, may continue on without proper evaluation.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Community Activism, Education and Outreach:  Leave this world better than when you found it

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 salmonALERT.org

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Thousands rally to protest Enbridge, climate change Saying no is as black and white as the orcas the project threatens, say protesters November 16, 2013 Thousands of protesters gathered in Vancouver’s False Creek area on a chilly, windswept afternoon on Saturday to protest the Enbridge pipeline proposal.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The rally outside of Telus Science World and Main Street SkyTrain station was one of more than 130 events held around the country, as part of a national Defend Our Climate day of action, according to the environmental advocacy group Defend Our Climate.

The umbrella group organized the rallies across the country to oppose the Alberta oilsands and the pipelines that carry the region’s crude oil.

As Bob Dylan’s immortal song The Times They Are a-Changin’ boomed from speakers on the stage, Vancouver protester Anne-Marie St. Laurent explained a sign she had made using the colourful fish from a Dr. Seuss children’s book.

The satirical sign, which read: “One Fish, Two Fish, Oiled Fish, Dead Fish” is her way of telling the government that she is unhappy with the federal government’s position on expanding the oilsands.

“It’s a disaster. The government seems to be intent on going ahead, with no brakes on the process, in developing energy projects like the Enbridge pipeline, without any concerns for the environmental effects,” she said.

Sporting a shiny green fish hat, the Vancouver resident doubted the government would heed the message of Saturday’s rally, but was pleased to see such a huge turnout.

“The government seems to be impervious to what the public wants but I think it’s important to register dissent,” she said.

Hundreds of demonstrators held signs, some that read: “Oil is our heroin,” or “No economy on a dead planet,” while many others dressed in splashy costumes to get their point across.

Timothy Carson, a 20-year-old student in the global stewardship program at Capilano University, wore a full-body scaly rainbow fish suit. The suit came from a children’s play his parents produced a decade ago in Ontario about sustainability, and so he thought it apropos to wear to the event to voice his opposition to the Enbridge pipeline.

“It’s an eye-draw and you’ve got to have a bit of fun while doing it,” he said. “As a student and a Vancouverite I feel really passionate about this issue because it’s the wrong choice. We know it’s not economically viable and we know it’s not environmentally sustainable. There’s money power and then there’s people power and we need to do this to show them this is a bad idea for Canada.”

Speakers at the rally included First Nations leaders, politicians and environmentalists.

The rally also drew several artists, who set up installations at the event. One that was garnering a lot of attention was a giant hypodermic needle attached to a Chevy Suburban truck installation entitled Quick Fix, built by local artist Hugh Patterson.

He built the installation in February and set it up on the last day of the Enbridge pipeline hearings at Vancouver’s Wall Centre as a way to speak his mind about his own relationship with oil.

“I struggle with it. I see a lot of the things that I do in my life are carbon intensive yet I see the damage it is doing to the environment and the path that our government is taking and it’s really frustrating that there are so many really smart people proposing real solutions to the problems and they are not being listened to because there is a small group of people in power who are driving this energy economy.” he said.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Another artist Shannon Roszell was building an installation she called the Love Tree, with messages of “love, hope, despair, longing anger and frustration,” from people all over the world to the Alberta oilsands.

She began the project after attending a 14-kilometre “healing walk” in July in Fort McMurray, Alta., with members of First Nations.

“These letters will be hung on the tree,” she said. “I have letters from Wales, England, Denmark and across Canada. It has been a really magical project.”

Youth activist Sam Harrison, a 17-year-old student at Vancouver’s Prince of Wales Secondary, says his generation of British Columbians are determined to stop the Enbridge pipeline.

“We see this as a major turning point for this province — this is a global crisis and the public in B.C. wants us to be part of the solution to climate change, not a big part of the problem.”

“Saying no to the Enbridge pipeline is as black and white as the orcas the project threatens. Today’s rally is sending a strong message to Christy Clark and Stephen Harper — it’s time to listen to the people and stop this reckless pipeline project once and for all,” said Ben West, a spokesman for of ForestEthics, an environmental advocacy group.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Action Alert: Oppose the coal industry’s export plans

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The Fight Large Watch and listen HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Who you gonna call? - Fish Busters

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 GMO: Don’t eat it – Oppose GMO Atlantic salmon – Send your letter today!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

ď ś Tell the FDA: GMO salmon is too risky The Food and Drug Administration is considering approving a geneticallyengineered salmon.

Never before has a genetically-modified animal been approved for human consumption. And yet, the FDA's review has been insufficient, failing to consider broad environmental and public health risks from GMO salmon.

The company that is producing these salmon says they won't be able to cross-breed, and yet their own data suggest that 5% of the eggs they produce and transport around the world may not be sterile. If released accidentally, these transgenic fish could severely endanger natural fish populations.

As a fish designed to grow twice as fast as natural salmon, these engineered fish may also increase human exposure to growth hormones, anti-microbial drugs, and disease.

Salmon is one of the world's healthiest foods, and a fish celebrated by native cultures and modern consumers alike. We simply cannot afford to jeopardize this great resource and put the environment and public health in danger. But that's exactly what will happen FDA rushes through approval of genetically engineered salmon without a much stronger review of the risks.

Sign the petition and tell the FDA: GMO salmon is too risky.

Senator Jeff Merkley

Senator Jon Tester

Senator Mark Begich

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 WGFCI invited by US Congressman Heck to discuss open pen salmon feedlot risks Wild Game Fish Conservation International co-founders, Bruce Treichler and Jim Wilcox, recently had the opportunity to meet with US congressman, Denny Heck (Washington State) and three of his staff to discuss many of the risks of open pen salmon feedlots. This was a worthwhile meeting for Congressman Heck as he was not aware of the urgent need to remove these weapons of mass destruction from wild salmon migration routes.

The letter below to Congressman Heck was drafted with considerable assistance from Alexandra Morton. Before leaving Mr. Heck’s office, we provided him with the Atlantic Salmon Boycott brochure that was recently published by Eddie Gardner and the wild salmon warriors in Chilliwack, BC who are making significant strides in removing feedlot salmon from BC’s stores and restaurants.

Dear Congressman Heck; We look forward to our meeting with you to discuss documented risks of open pen salmon feedlots, especially to wild Pacific salmon and anadromous trout. To maximize our time with you, the points below were prepared with much appreciated input from Ms. Alexandra Morton (Marine Biologist), We expect that we will not get to each of these during our brief time with you. (ed. Our scheduled time of 20 minutes was increased to 40 minutes) 

Public Health  The news out of Norway since June 2013 reveals that farmed salmon are one of the most contaminated proteins widely sold including PCBs, and Dioxins from fish oils and cheap grain products grown with pesticides banned in most countries such as Endosulfan  Atlantic salmon grown in open pen salmon feedlots are fed GMO grains and byproducts from harvesting chickens and other domestic animals



Wild ecosystems  Open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots are breeding grounds for parasites such as sea lice that are transferred to juvenile wild Pacific salmon and anadromous trout during their out migration. These lice are controlled by salmon farmers using drugs that enter the marine environment. As the lice become resistant to the drugs, more toxic drugs are used, currently in Norway lice are so resistant that massive farm salmon culls are underway to try to control them  Open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots risk wild Pacific salmon with European diseases. The presence of Infectious Salmon Anemia, is highly debated because government testing requires the whole living virus, while other labs are finding long pieces of ISA virus RNA sequence which cannot occur without the virus. Piscine reovirus is in nearly 100% of farmed salmon for sale in BC supermarkets, a July 2013 paper published on it states it came from Norway in 2007, interviews with Norwegian scientists warn it must be contained as it spreads rapidly and can weaken salmon to the point they cannot swim up a river. There is no testing known for this virus in the US.  Reductions to wild salmon stocks will reduce their predators including marine and land mammals and birds of prey  Open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots attract marine mammals (whales, seals, sea lions, otters, dolphins) that are shot to death to protect the caged salmon. – Additionally, these mammals often drown when entangled in these open pen feedlots.  Excess feed, chemicals, feces and dead Atlantic salmon accumulate on the sea floor beneath open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots rendering these areas as wastelands  Atlantic salmon that escape from open pen feedlots carry their diseases and chemicals to other predators and watersheds



Cultures  Indigenous cultures along North America’s west coast rely today, as they have for thousands of years, on robust populations of wild Pacific salmon.  Protein for themselves and animals they hunt  Commerce

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish! 

Ocean derived nutrients for riparian zones and other watershed ecosystems



Communities  Indigenous and non-indigenous communities have developed along North America’s west coast to take advantage of robust populations of wild Pacific salmon.  Cultures  Commercial fishing  Recreational fishing  Hunting  Ecotourism



Economies  Approximately $2 billion dollars per year will be lost in Washington state alone if the open pen salmon feedlot industry is permitted to continue as it will destroy our wild Pacific salmon populations and all that rely on them. Research has shown wild salmon go into steep decline wherever there are salmon farms – worldwide Ford and Myers 2008. There is no evidence they can co-exist 

A similar economic impact is underway in British Columbia. Consider this, the Fraser sockeye are in decline, except for one run, the Harrison, which Department of Fisheries and Oceans research suggests migrate to sea via a different route, around southern Vancouver Island where they do not come into close contact with farmed salmon effluent – they are increasing. Tucker et al 2009 (see figure below)



Losing Alaska’s wild Pacific salmon to the unsustainable open pen salmon feedlot industry would be disastrous!

Bottom line: 

Intact, wild ecosystems attract, retain and expand businesses

Recommended near term actions:  

Remove open pen salmon feedlots from wild Pacific salmon migration routes Develop comprehensive costs and benefits of raising Atlantic salmon in land based facilities

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Salmon (Boycott) Cause Spreads To The Island October 22, 2013 Eddie Gardner - Shawna Green - drum song in regalia – watch and listen HERE

Anissa Reed Designs

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Duncan, B.C. – With Successes locally regarding their cause, members from the Chilliwack Chapter of the Farmed Salmon Boycott is migrating to other communities in B.C. to help with spreading the message.

On Tuesday afternoon, members of the farmed salmon boycott movement in Chilliwack travelled to Duncan, B.C. to help rally the troops for a protest outside of the Walmart Supercenter.

The group popping up on the Island is called the ‘Wild Salmon Warriors’ and are being led by Shawna Green, adamantly opposed to open-net pen farmed salmon.

Organizer of the Chilliwack Chapter of the Salmon Feedlot Boycott, Eddie Gardner has leant his voice to the ‘Wild Salmon Warriors’ for the boycott Tuesday afternoon in Duncan.

In Chilliwack, Gardner and his group have been making some headway with the Walmart, but nothing concrete in the form of removing farmed salmon from its shelves as of yet. A dialogue continues with Walmart’s corporate social responsibility division; however, it remains to be seen if Walmart makes the same jump as Safeway, Save-On-Foods, PriceSmart, and Coopers Foods in Chilliwack.

The growth of the cause on the Island is proof positive that the message and efforts provided by the Chilliwack Chapter of the Farmed Salmon Boycott is spreading beyond the Fraser Valley.

Don’t buy it!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Protestors

demand open-pen farmed salmon be pulled from Walmart's

shelves Protestors against stores selling open-pen farmed salmon took their message to Duncan's Walmart Supercentre Tuesday.

"Safeway and Overwaitea have already changed their policies," said Shawna Green of Wild Salmon Forever.

She explained Walmart brass have signaled a willingness to ban open-pen farmed salmon, but failed to pull it from their freezers.

"They haven't changed a thing. Our job is to let people know, so maybe (Walmart) will change its policy. It's really up to consumers now."

Walmart leaders are following the retail giant's sustainable-seafood policy — while keeping doors open to feedback from groups such as Green's, plus other non-governmental groups, its corporate affairs director said.

Alex Roberton explained his company's policy recognizes claims by various NGOs, the Global Aquaculture Alliance, and followers of best aquaculture practices.

"At this point, we don't have any plans to pull open-pen farmed salmon from our shelves, but we'll continue dialogue (with various groups)," he told the News Leader Pictorial from headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario.

Green, and several other supporters in Duncan, claimed activity and compounds in open-pen fish farms are basically poisoning coastal waters — claims that are vehemently disputed by the industry and not supported by government.

They also cited sea lice, and three viruses, affecting wild-salmon stocks.

"It's affecting the ecosystem," Green said. "Lots of people don't know the dangers of open-pen farmed salmon."

Protestor Leanne Hodges claimed she does.

The former federal fisheries worker explained she left her job in 1997 after realizing what she saw as impacts of open-pen farmed salmon on wild stocks.

"No one knows if salmon parasites go into people. It's insanity on multiple levels."

Hodges explained how wild salmon help sustain some 200 plant-and-animal species in coastal ecosystems.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Protest against ‘polluting’ salmon farms Salmon farming is destroying wild fish stocks, according to protesters.

November 1, 2013

Watch Halloween video HERE

Members of Protect Wild Scotland were in Perth to appeal to members of the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland (RAFTS) to withdraw support for a Scottish Government initiative to identify suitable fish farm locations.

After leafleting the annual meeting of RAFTS at Perth Racecourse, the protesters targeted the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation’s head office on Isla Road before taking their campaign to local supermarkets.

“The RAFTS leadership have shamefully agreed to the Scottish Government’s plan to increase polluting salmon farms on the west coast of Scotland to the detriment of wild fish,” Protect Wild Scotland Jenny Scobie claimed.

She has filed a complaint against RAFTS with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.

“By underhandedly working with the Scottish Government, RAFTS members are being deceived,” she added.

The protesters claim RAFTS back the expansion of salmon farming on the west coast of Scotland due to the importance of salmon farming to the economy.

“RAFTS have waved the white flag of surrender without even putting up a fight for the protection of wild salmon and sea trout on the West coast of Scotland,” Protect Wild Scotland director Don Staniford said.

“Scotland’s rivers deserve an organisation which has the political will to fight to protect wild salmon.”

The Perth protest is part of a nationwide campaign to highlight the threat to wild salmon. Protect Wild Scotland is organising protests outside the Atlantic Salmon Trust gala dinner in London on November 20 and the First Minister’s residence in Bute House in Edinburgh on December 5.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Backers

of Longview coal export terminal lonely in Tacoma at 5th and final

hearing October 17, 2013 Hundreds of red-shirted opponents of a coal-export facility in Longview packed a hearing in Tacoma Thursday, concerned about local and global spin-off effects of the project.

The “scoping” hearing was the fifth and final one in a series of meetings held around the state.

Opponents have dominated all of them.

By now they have a well-practiced routine, waving signs, handing out free T-shirts and rallying around a 12-foot inflated globe and giant salmon puppets.

In Tacoma, City Council member Ryan Mello was head cheerleader at a pre-hearing rally next to the Tacoma Convention and Trade Center where the 5 p.m. hearing took place.

“Together we’re going to say no to those coal trains,” Mello said. “No matter where these terminals are, they’re going to hurt Tacoma. Coal trains rumbling right through our great city would hurt our economy, and I think we can do better.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Except, no one has proposed that loaded coal trains will travel through Tacoma or Olympia.

The proposed plan is for the loaded cars to travel west to Longview through the Columbia Gorge. But opponents worry empties will return to mines in Montana and Wyoming through South Sound cities.

They argue that the Environmental Impact Statement on the project should take a broad view, considering impacts far from terminal.

Proponents of the project, about 100 of the 800 who attended, generally argue for a more limited scoping process. They say the project would provide hundreds of jobs and boost the economy across the state.

Mark Martinez, executive secretary of the Pierce County Building & Construction Trades Council, was one of few people who testified in favor of the project.

He supports it because it will create jobs, he said.

“These are not the sexy, so-called ‘green’ jobs that everybody thinks they want,” Martinez said. “They are old-fashioned, middle-class jobs that people can use to support families.”

The project is being proposed by Millennium Bulk Terminals, a subsidiary of Ambre Energy North America and Arch Coal. It would build a coal export terminal at the site of the former Reynolds Aluminum smelter, outside Longview in Cowlitz County.

Millennium has said the terminal would ultimately export as much as 50 million tons of coal annually.

At least initially, the coal would travel primarily from mines in Montana and Wyoming and be transported by rail through the Columbia Gorge. Most would be sold to China.

Ken Miller, the president and CEO of Millennium Bulk Terminals, didn’t testify at the hearing, but he made remarks at a brief rally and press conference on the steps of the convention center before the hearing started.

Miller rejected the notion that building the Longview terminal and shipping coal from Washington would have an effect on global warming or on the decision by China and Third World countries to use coal as a primary source of energy.

“This project is not the reason power plants are being built in Asia,” Miller said. “In the year 2000, Asia consumed 2 billion tons of coal. In 2010 it was 5 billion tons. In the next several years we will see the use of coal continuing to increase, in the order of at least another billion tons.”

That’s going to happen whether or not the coal comes through Washington, he said.

“Coal suppliers around the world are seeing this demand and trying to meet it,” Miller said.

Miller acknowledged coal-fired power plants might be contributing to global warming, but he said the positive effects of providing electricity more than compensate for the effects of carbon emissions.

“I feel what we’re doing for people in poverty with electricity is a higher need,” he said.

Thursday’s hearing was part of the initial phase of preparing an environmental impact statementon the project under the state’s environmental policy act.

The Washington Department of Ecology and Cowlitz County will guide the preparation of the EIS, which will then be used to decide whether or not to grant permits to proceed.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

During this “scoping” phase, the agencies are in a listening mode, using public comments to decide the range of topics that will be included in the EIS. Meetings also have been held in Longview, Spokane, Pasco and Vancouver, Wash.

Hundreds of people have attended the meetings, and thousands have submitted written testimony during the process.

According to Department of Ecology spokeswoman Linda Kent, a total 50,000 comments have been received so far.

The scoping period is open for public comment until Nov. 18

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 GET UNSAFE RAILROAD TANK CARS OUT OF WASHINGTON STATE Big oil companies have proposed a giant increase in trains full of crude oil and tar sands through Washington, with new crude-by-rail terminals proposed along the Columbia River, in Grays Harbor, and at all five refineries along Puget Sound.

Worse yet, they’re planning to use incredibly dangerous tank cars that are prone to punctures and explosions.

We have to speak out now to stop this irresponsible and potentially disastrous plan. That's why I started my own campaign on CREDOMobilize.com, which allows activists to start their own petitions.

My petition, which is generating public comments to the U.S. Department of Transportation, says the following: Tell the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to remove all the unsafe tank cars (called DOT-111s) from Washington's railways. Unsafe tank cars full of crude and tar sands pose a serious and growing threat to our communities. DOT-111s should be banned, and any new cars built to a higher standard.

Tell the Department of Transportation: Keep dangerous tar sands trains out of Washington.

The DOT-111 rail cars the oil industry wants to use are often in trains of 100 or more tank cars at a time -- a massive concentration of risk on tracks that could be shared with an equally huge increase in coal train traffic.

Trains derail. When derailments involve these tank cars, that means massive risks to people and the environment.

The dangers are real: the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says these cars show a ‘high incidence of failure during accidents.”• The NTSB has known for decades that the most common tank cars (DOT-111s) are unsafe, but no one has held the appropriate agencies accountable for getting rid of them.

A sampling of recent accidents illustrates the problem:   

In Alberta last month, 13 cars burned and one exploded after a train with liquefied petroleum gas and crude oil derailed.

A unit train of DOT-111 cars carrying Bakken crude oil derailed and exploded on July 6, 2013, in Lac-Megantic, Quebec devastating the entire town and claiming the lives of 47 people.

In a 2009 accident in Cherry Valley, Illinois, 15 DOT-111 cars derailed and 13 ruptured. The ensuing fire left one nearby driver dead, and seven other drivers plus two firemen injured.

A national comment period on rail car safety is open right now -- so it is the perfect time to tell the Department of Transportation we don't want these dangerous rail cars full of dirty tar sands in our communities.

Will you join me and add your name to my petition to the Department of Transportation to demand that it removes all unsafe tank cars from Washington's railways?

Thank you for your support.

Matt Krogh

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Coastal

First Nations Re-Write Enbridge's Latest Northern Gateway Pipeline Ad Campaign Watch video HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 New Brunswick First Nation criticizes RCMP as it promises to continue fight against shale gas Watch video HERE October 21, 2013

Related CBC article

ELSIPOGTOG FIRST NATION, N.B. - The people of the Elsipogtog First Nation will continue their fight against shale gas exploration in New Brunswick, the community's chief said Monday as he criticized the RCMP for the way it handled a protest last week that spiralled out of control.

"What the RCMP put our people through was almost horrendous, to say the least," Aaron Sock told a news conference.

Sock said every effort will be made to keep its opposition peaceful after 40 people were arrested and weapons seized when the Mounties enforced a court-ordered injunction Thursday to end the blockade of a compound near Rexton, where SWN Resources stored exploration equipment and vehicles.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

On Monday, a judge with the Court of Queen's Bench in Moncton, N.B., lifted that injunction, saying it was no longer required since the energy company's equipment and vehicles have been removed from the site and the protesters are no longer blocking the road.

Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is in New Brunswick to show his support for Elsipogtog and said the RCMP's actions last week were heavy-handed.

"I think every Canadian should be concerned when we look at the use of coercive state power against indigenous people," he said.

Elsipogtog member Amy Sock lifted her arms to show bruises on her biceps that she says she received when she was arrested at the protest site.

Assistant commissioner Roger Brown, the RCMP's commanding officer in the province, has defended the police response, saying officers seized firearms and improvised explosive devices that were a threat to public safety.

Sock was among those arrested last week. Police say the arrests were for firearms offences, threats, intimidation, mischief and violating the injunction.

Six police vehicles including an unmarked van were burned and the RCMP said they had Molotov cocktails tossed at them. In response, police fired non-lethal beanbag type bullets and used pepper spray to defuse the situation.

The burned vehicles were removed from the area Sunday night and taken to nearby Rexton.

RCMP Const. Julie Rogers-Marsh said the force is pleased with efforts from all sides to restore peace at the protest site.

"Anyone who wants to demonstrate can do so in a peaceful and lawful manner," she said Monday.

"Criminal behaviour of some individuals in recent days is not representative of the greater First Nations community."

Sock said no decisions have been made on how Elsipogtog will proceed but he expects a meeting later this week with Premier David Alward, whose government believes shale gas exploration can be done while protecting the environment and encouraging economic growth.

A spokesman for the premier's office said he expects a meeting to be held this week, but no arrangements have been made yet.

On Monday, the Assembly of First Nations Chiefs issued a statement, calling for the provincial government to suspend the permits granted to SWN Resources so that a cooling period can take hold.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"There has to be recognition on behalf of the government that the consultation process has failed," said Chief George Ginnish. "The Assembly has been telling the government and SWN for years that the phased approach to consultation is incompatible with the aboriginal perspective, and that it was not working."

A small group of people remains at the protest site on Route 134. There are tents and many signs opposing shale gas exploration and the presence of SWN Resources in the province.

The RCMP blocked Route 134 three weeks ago after protesters began spilling onto the road.

Protesters then cut down trees and placed them across another part of the road, blocking the entrance to the company's equipment compound.

The protesters want SWN Resources to stop seismic testing and leave the province. The company says it's only in the early stages of exploration in New Brunswick.

 About SWN Resources Canada

About Us We are a team dedicated to safe and responsible natural gas and oil exploration in the province of New Brunswick. We began our exploration program in 2010, and continue today within our licence areas, with a focus on better understanding the geology of the region and its potential for natural gas and oil.

In March 2010, the Province of New Brunswick accepted our bid for a licence to search, exploring 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) in the province. We are committed to invest approximately $47 million CAD in the province.

SWN Resources Canada, Inc., is a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwestern Energy Company.

Founded in 1929, Southwestern Energy is a growing North American company, with more than 2,300 employees, that focuses on the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. To find out more about Southwestern Energy Company, visit www.swn.com.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Vancouver rally for Elsipogtog all about unity October 18, 2013

Empowering words from wide range of speakers at this Oct. 18 Vancouver rally in support of the Elsipogtog First Nations’ fracking protest.

Sundance Chief Rueben George, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, recent law school graduate Caleb Behn and a representative of the Canadian Association of University Teachers were among the leaders who called for unity and solidarity with the Mi’kmaq peoples whose peaceful protest camp was raided by the RCMP last week.

On Monday, a New Brunswick judge denied SWC Resources’ request to extend an injunction against the Elsipogtog protestors, which was greeted with cheers from First Nations and their many non-indigenous supporters Watch Grand Chief Phillip’s full speech here

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Chilliwack in Solidarity with Elsipogtog Community and Allies October 21, 2013

EVENT UPDATE: The ELSIPOGTOG Solidarity Gathering happened today at Community Central Park in Chilliwack, British Columbia. And like all the Solidarity rallies across B.C. and Canada the past 10 days, it was vital and full of meaning.

Hats off to Natalie Jones, Larry Commodore and Joanne Hugh, who served as event chairperson.

Input was informal but heart-felt, and Eddie Gardner summarized well that “this is an issue that affects ALL of us and touches on ALL aspects of protecting our land, air and sacred waters”.

The crowd of 50 supporters included 16 drummers providing rousing and inspiring music.

Commentary included words from Tim MacDonald, Mi'kmaq FN member now living here in B.C. speaking about his earnest concerns for his people back east, and his acknowledgement of the support here in Chilliwack and the B.C. coast.

Attendees also included Terry Wilkinson, Idle No More event supporter from Mission; and a spirited team of five FN drummer /singers whose names I did not get... (apologies). Acknowledgement also goes out to Carol Kelly for her attendance support - and to everyone who came out on a beautiful Chilliwack afternoon to say WE ARE WITH YOU, ELSIPOGTOG!!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Fracking Protest – From New Brunswick to Chilliwack October 21, 2013 Rexton, N.B./Chilliwack- A Manitoba grand chief is in eastern New Brunswick to show his support for the growing campaign against shale gas exploration.

Grand Chief Derek Nepinak is in Rexton to support the Elsipogtog First Nation and other protesters who want SWN Resources to stop seismic testing and leave the province.

Nepinak says he`ll stay as long as he`s needed, but he isn`t suggesting how the Elsipogtog should wage their fight against the so called fracking operation.

The protest Thursday.

turned

violent

last

Forty people were arrested after six police vehicles were torched and several guns and other weapons were seized.

At a community hall meeting Sunday, one speaker apologized to media who had their vehicles and equipment seized by a small group of protesters on Saturday.

Wayne Froese with the Chilliwack Idle No More movement released an open letter on social media stating :” A number of doctors, including the New Brunswick College of Family Physicians, have called for a moratorium on fracking. Various jurisdictions, including France, Quebec, and New York, currently have moratoriums on fracking. The more people know about fracking, the more they give pause to its use.

The Mi’kmaq First Nations peoples, and their supporters and allies, are conducting a legal and peaceful protest and barricade to bring to bear their constitutional entitlement to be fully consulted in this industrial process in their traditional territories. I ask you, along with fellow Canadians here in Chilliwack, throughout B.C. and all over Canada: stop the illegal actions to attack and subdue the protesters.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Wild Salmon Warrior Radio with Jay Peachy – Tuesday Mornings “Streaming like a wild fish” October 22, 2013 with Robert Holler and Shawna Green November 5, 2013 with Robert Haller, Adam Siddartha and Lili Dion November 12, 2013 with Robert Haller, Lili Dion, Cameron Harper

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Wild salmon vs. oil and aquaculture WILD SALMON WARRIOR NEWS Adam S. Sealey November 2013 When it comes to the precarious relationship between wild salmon, farmed salmon and the looming spectre of heavy oil pipelines and super-tankers along BC’s coast, would it surprise you that one of the world’s top 100 richest men, Norwegian born John Fredriksen, is not only the owner of the world’s largest oil tanker fleet, but also the majority shareholder in Marine Harvest, the world’s largest salmon farming multinational with dozens of operations in BC’s once pristine waters?

Would it profit Fredriksen and others like him in oil and aquaculture if wild salmon would simply become extinct so conditions could be perfect for their corporate interests? Of course it would. We now have foreign multi-national corporations like Marine Harvest and Kinder-Morgan giving Canadian environmental law and all of us the proverbial finger while exerting tremendous financial and legal power upon our government to remove the arguments against and ram through projects such as Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline twinning while continuing to farm salmon like nothing is wrong.

What stands in the way of these oil projects – culturally, economically and legally – are First Nations’ title and the right to be properly consulted on such projects, the coastal economy and the majority of BC residents.

The damage to wild salmon and their habitat by the salmon farming industry and its unfathomable quantity of chemical, fecal, viral and parasitic pollution now pouring into our coastal oceans could ultimately and conveniently lead to the end of wild salmon as well as the coastal culture and economy that is arguing against the oil agenda. Salmon farms in BC are permitted to offload their waste directly into the ocean instead of paying for proper disposal like all other animal farms in Canada must. They simply let it drift into the ocean.

Ian Roberts of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, interviewed by the Water Brothers in their recent film Farmed and Dangerous about salmon farming, provided further evidence of the above, stating, “We don’t really care whether we raise fish on land or in the ocean as long as two key things are met: the needs of the business (it’s viable and sustainable) and the needs of the [farmed] fish.” Period. Not a mention or hint at doing what’s good for the marine environment and wild fish! Watch it at http://thewaterbrothers.ca/farmed-and-dangerous/

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Let’s also remember that Justice Bruce Cohen, appointed by Harper to get to the bottom of why Sockeye stocks are crashing, concluded in his final report in October of 2012; “In my view, when DFO has simultaneous mandates to conserve wild stocks and promote the salmon farming industry there are circumstances in which it may find itself in a conflict of interest.”

The Watershed Watch Salmon Society is now calling on Canadians to demand by petition via its website that the federal government implement the 75 recommendations to protect wild salmon made

by Cohen one year ago.

Meanwhile, noted BC fish biologist Alexandra Morton and many members of the Department of Wild Salmon continue to find disturbing signs that something is very wrong in our waters; herring bleeding from their fins, pre-spawn dead salmon in rivers, some a disturbing yellow colour with internal organ evidence of disease and many salmon testing positive for European salmon viruses like Infectious Salmon Anaemia.

Here are some ways you can help:

Don’t eat farmed salmon,

support SalmonFeedlotBoycott.com, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, First Nations and other groups opposed to tar sands oil pipelines and tankers.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Activists at Pittsburgh rally denounce fracking,

coal; 7 arrested for blocking

bank entrance October 21, 2013

PITTSBURGH — Hundreds of environmental activists protesting fracking and mountaintop-removal mining staged a rally and marched through downtown Pittsburgh on Monday amid a call for renewable energy.

A small group of activists — all wearing green T-shirts that said "Earth Quaker Action Team" — blocked the entrance of a PNC Bank branch, forcing it to close. Seven protesters were arrested, according to a police spokeswoman. The activists accuse PNC of financing energy companies that blast the tops off mountains to access seams of coal.

The larger protest was held on the final day of a national conference that provided training to young people on how to fight coal mining, fracking for oil and gas, and climate change. The four-day Power Shift conference has drawn thousands of environmental activists to Pittsburgh.

Activists gathered at Allegheny Landing Park to call on the federal government to embrace renewable forms of energy and reopen pollution investigations at fracking sites in Pennsylvania and Wyoming. They marched peacefully through downtown, holding signs and chanting.

Counter-protesters from a labor union — the Boilermakers Local 154 — met the activists at one end of the Roberto Clemente Bridge across the Allegheny River, holding signs that said "Stop the War on Coal," while a river barge from Consol Energy displayed giant banners touting coal as supporting U.S. jobs.

The young protesters should understand that "when they turn their light switches on, it comes from coal," Craig Rossiter, 53, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"You can't take coal out of the equation at this stage of the game."

Editorial Comment: Not only can we take coal out of the equation, we have no choice but to take coal out of the equation.

The risks from coal to the air, water, soil and food that sustain our lives must be avoided by transitioning to renewable energy production.

Delaying and denying this necessary transition is irresponsible.

A few dozen activists also held a sit-in at the office of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald to protest plans to drill under a county park.

"We are here to express our anger and frustration over what is clearly a top-down process that fails to involve those most affected by the toxic process of fracking, the public that owns the parks," said Ashley Bittner, 21, a student at Chatham University, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Impacts of open pen salmon and trout feedlots

 New Sea Lice Treatment Available to British Columbia Salmon Farmers November 15, 2013 CANADA - Marine Harvest Canada has received Health Canada approval for a new sea lice management option for farm-raised salmon.

Hydrogen peroxide (Brand name Interox™ Paramove 50) is now in application for a provincial permit.

The use of Paramove 50™ will enable the company to continue managing sea lice and reduce its use of the drug emamectin benzoate (Brand name Slice™) - the only effective treatment available to BC salmon farmers for the past 14 years.

Editorial Comment:  More government-enabled "Our current use of Slice is minimal and has been very industrial bovine excrement. successful," says Clare Backman, Marine Harvest Canada's  Sea lice evolve to become Director of Sustainable Programs. "However, strict third party resistant to chemical salmon certification standards press for continued treatments (ie Norway) reduction of Slice over time, so we are seeking to have  Wild ecosystems suffer from another option for sea lice management." this ongoing insanity.

Paramove 50™ has been used successfully elsewhere, including Eastern Canada, and is applied topically as a bath to remove small external fish parasites attached to the salmon. After treatment, the compound rapidly breaks down into water and oxygen. A summary of recent studies is available on the Marine Harvest Canada website (www.marineharvestcanada.com).

British Columbia salmon farmers are recognised for successful management of sea lice on their cultured salmon (Rogers et al, 2013), but have for many years requested additional treatment options for the region.

After thoroughly reviewing Marine Harvest's science based application, submitted through Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Health Canada has authorized use of the product until June, 2014, during which time it is expected that national, full registration will be completed.

100% Pure Bovine Excrement

"Access to several options for health management of livestock is important to all farmers," says veterinarian Diane Morrison, "so we are pleased with this authorization and look forward to receiving a provincial permit. Even though we will use it at 1/20 the mixture available at drugstores , we are now training our staff on safe handling procedures for Paramove 50™."

Additional information regarding this application can be found here. A person wishing to contribute information about the treatment site for the evaluation of this permit application may send an email to communication@marineharvestcanada.com within 30 days of this posting. Please use subject title "Paramove 50 Application".

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

ď ś Interbreeding of Farmed and Wild Measured in Norway October 21, 2013 For the first time, scientists have managed to quantify how escaped salmon have interbred with wild salmon in Norwegian rivers. These results provide a basis for reassessing the impact that escapees from fish farms have on the wild salmon in Norwegian rivers.

Escapees are considered as one of the most serious environmental problems in the fish farming industry, and since the Atlantic salmon farming industry was established in the early 1970's, there has been a long-standing debate about farmed escapees, and their genetic impacts on native populations.

"Methodological limitations have created insecurity on how big the problem is. However, we have now developed a stronger tool that can measure the percentage of farmed fish that has interbred," says Kevin Glover, senior scientist at Institute of Marine Research in Norway (IMR).

Surveyed 20 rivers To reach this answer, the scientists have investigated 20 rivers along the Norwegian coast. These rivers have been studied before and genetic changes in the native populations were discovered then.

Introgression from escaped farmed fish were looked upon as the most probable cause at that time.

However, now the scientists can confirm that farmed escapees are the reason.

This new knowledge generates a far better basis for measuring genetic changes taking place over generations because of farmed escapees. This method will become a useful tool to the managers.

"The new results show significant changes in five of the 20 native populations we have studied. We found the highest level of changes in Loneelva, Vosso and Opo, where the introgression rates vary from 31 to 47 per cent," says Glover.

The models that have been used to quantify the introgression have so far revealed higher genetic impact on native populations than the empirical estimates from this study. Despite the fact that strong introgression has been observed in some of the rivers, the results show that in Norway we still have numerous populations of wild salmon that show low or moderate signs of change.

Former studies of spawning behaviour and survival of juveniles show that farmed salmon often looses in the competition with wild salmon in nature. The result is that the introgression is lower than expected from observations of the number of escapees in the rivers.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"We observe lower interbreeding in rivers with big, robust stocks of wild salmon than in rivers with less wild fish. Probably, the farmed fish looses the battle on the spawning grounds when there are large numbers wild fish present, while they have more success in rivers with low numbers of wild fish," says Glover.

New method A new genetic and statistic method developed by Norwegian scientists have generated these results.

The method requires access to both new samples and old control samples from the same populations.

"For the first time in the international scientific world, someone has been able to establish a method where it is possible to quantify the genetic changes that happens over time and caused by introgression of farmed salmon," says Glover.

Biological consequences?

The new method makes it possible to decide the extent of introgression by escaped farmed salmon.

The next step is to develop methods to quantify the biological consequences of different levels of such introgression.

"Several national and international projects are working on this topic. However, it’s a time demanding work, which means that it might take years before we can see the results," Glover underlines.

For more, refer to study report HERE

Escaped farmed salmon can alter marine environments and associated food chains around the world.

It’s estimated that nearly 3 million salmon escape from farms worldwide each year (Source)

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Farmed Norway salmon at a market in France.

 Norwegian salmon farm offers bounty for escaped fish Escaped salmon can edge out their wild cousins and weaken the gene pool November 18, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The world’s largest producer of farmed salmon is offering a $90 bounty for every recaptured fish after possibly thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon staged a jailbreak from their 127,000-fish cage in Norway, further endangering the wild salmon population and concerning those who prefer the wild variety for health reasons.

Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that farms and exports fish all over the world, announced the reward on Monday after discovering over the weekend that fish had escaped their massive submerged cage through a hole likely caused by ongoing stormy weather.

"Marine Harvest takes the incident very seriously. We acknowledge that escapes can have a negative impact on wild salmon, and we have a goal of zero escapes," Marte Grindaker, a spokeswoman for the company, told Al Jazeera.

In addition to setting out nets in the surrounding area and immediately repairing the damaged cage, Marine Harvest has contacted local fisherman to offer them a cash incentive for help recovering the fish.

But Grindaker said that, as far as she knew, no fish had yet been returned and that the total number of escapees was unknown.

“We will count the fish as soon as the weather conditions improve. We cannot do that at the moment due to the weather, which is quite harsh now,” she said.

Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, which monitors the environmental impact of fish farming through its Seafood Watch advisory, say farmed salmon escapes harm the marine ecosystem in several ways.

This latest escape “underscores our general concern that escapes — and their potential impact on wild populations — are a factor that makes nearly all farmed Atlantic salmon a species to avoid," the aquarium told Al Jazeera.

Escaped farmed salmon threaten their wild cousins because they compete for food and mates.

Because farmed salmon are bigger and faster-growing, they often win out.

And when farmed salmon succeed in mating with wild salmon, they are liable to produce genetically inferior offspring.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) says salmon farming is “associated with numerous environmental concerns, including water pollution, chemical use, parasites and disease.” Experts say farmed salmon can pass contaminants, parasites and pathogens to wild salmon.

Though on the decline, farmed salmon escapes are not exactly rare. Strong winds and predators like seals can breach the salmon cages, freeing hundreds of thousands of salmon a year.

In 2006, the worst year on record, 921,000 farmed salmon escaped, according to the Norwegian Fisheries Directorate. Last year, improved prevention measures reduced that number to 38,000.

Health concerns?

The farmed-salmon industry has been subject to health scrutiny for decades, and some consumers worry escaped salmon could have implications for the healthfulness of their seafood.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Many consumers avoid eating farmed salmon, citing a controversial 2004 study that found they contained higher rates of carcinogenic chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which have been banned by most salmon-producing countries but are persistent in the environment and feed for some farmed salmon.

But salmon farmers say their fish are not as bad as they used to be. Many health authorities note that improved farming standards, as dictated by organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, are closing the gap between farmed and wild salmon.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has even issued a “buy” recommendation to the Chilean Verlasso brand of farmed salmon, which are not at risk of interacting with wild salmon if they manage to escape, since salmon are native to the Northern Hemisphere.

Citing reduced levels of toxins in today’s farmed salmon, Norway’s Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research in June repealed an advisory that limited the amount of farmed salmon consumers should to eat.

The salmon farmed by Marine Harvest, however, is still designated “avoid” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

But wild salmon are growing scarce: Divided among the world’s population, wild salmon could provide only a single serving for each person per year.

In response to this, many scientists advocate for the farming of genetically modified salmon to meet world demand.

Not a “land-based” salmon feedlot!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Where have 750,000 farmed salmon gone?

DFO confirms escaped fish found in nine rivers on Newfoundland's south coast November 14, 2013 Concern is escalating on Newfoundland's south coast about the effect escaped farmed fish will have on the wild salmon population.

Fishermen say farmed salmon are showing up as far west as the Grandy River, near Burgeo.

Tony Tuck, who runs a fishing lodge near the Grey River on the south coast, fears fish farming is harming wild salmon.

He believes sea lice infestations at fish farms are killing young, wild salmon. "[The] vicinity around the sea cages is heavily infested with sea lice ... and the sea lice gets on these smolt and kills them."

More than 750,000 salmon have escaped from sea cages on the south coast since fish farming started, and DFO has confirmed that farmed salmon are now in nine south coast rivers.

Don Ivany of the Atlantic Salmon Federation said no one knows what's happened to them.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"DFO doesn't have an ongoing monitoring program on all the other rivers, and given the large number of escapes that have occurred down there recently, farmed fish may be in other rivers such as Grandy and Grey River, and others if you looked," said Ivany.

Ivany said the situation is out of control, and added the solution is land-based, contained fish farming.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Legal issues holding up fish-farming complaint to environmental commission Nobember 10, 2013 VANCOUVER -- An effort by environmentalists, a First Nation and commercial fishermen to use a NAFTA side agreement to force Canada to change the way it polices British Columbia's salmon farms has bogged down in legal arguments.

Fish-farming opponents from B.C. and the United States wrote the Commission for Environmental Co-operation in October 2012, alleging the federal government wasn't enforcing the Fisheries Act.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The groups claim Ottawa is exposing wild salmon to sea lice, disease, toxic chemicals and concentrated waste.

RELATED STORIES: 

B.C. First Nation taking fight against fish farms to Supreme Court of Canada



Canadian engineered salmon moves closer to FDA approval



Reports of salmon virus in B.C. tied up federal resources for months



Activist wins defamation case launched by salmon-farming company

Environment Canada wrote the commission last month, arguing a continuation of the complaint would interfere with two legal cases that are currently underway.

The commission has now written back asking for further explanation within 30 working days and has a set final deadline of Dec. 17.

According to their submission, the complainants want the commission to write what's known as a factual record on the issue.

"The submitters may be able to use that to press the government to make changes in the way they enforce the law," said Hugh Benevides, legal officer for the commission in Montreal.

Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Kwikwasu'tinuxw Haxwa'mis First Nation in Alert Bay, B.C., said a factual record would also put the issue on the record.

"The NAFTA agreement ... has some teeth, some validity between the governments, and it's important for us because what we're doing is we want to raise the awareness about what we see the impact at an international level, and that's what the NAFTA agreement provides us," said Chamberlin.

He said the majority of product that comes out of his territory goes to the United States.

Also listed as complainants are Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, Calif.; Alexandra Morton of the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society in Sointula, B.C.; Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations in San Francisco; and Prof. Michael Harris and clinical fellow Kevin Lynch of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Specifically, the complainants argue the federal government isn't enforcing two sections of the Fisheries Act. Section 35, they argue, prohibits any work or undertaking that results in harmful alteration or disruption to fish habitat without valid authorization. The complaint involves more than 100 commercial salmon farms operating on B.C.'s coast.

They also point to Section 36, which prohibits the deposit of deleterious substances in water frequented by fish unless a deposit is authorized by regulation. The groups' complaint refers to a neurotoxic chemical known as emamectin benzoate that's used to treat sea lice.

"The potential for British Columbia salmon feedlots to introduce, amplify and spread pathogens also jeopardizes the health of every other wild salmon run along the Pacific Coast, as well as the entire West Coast salmon fishing industry, because these stocks co-mingle," says the submission.

Environment Canada could not be reached for comment, but in an Oct. 4 letter, the agency refers to separate lawsuit launched by Morton and Chamberlin's First Nation.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"The government of Canada is concerned that proceeding with the B.C. Salmon Farms submission would result in the duplication and/or interference with these domestic legal actions," wrote Dan McDougall, assistant deputy minister.

He also referred to Canada's commitment under Article 6 of the NAFTA agreement to ensure people with legally recognized interests are given appropriate access to legal proceedings, and that requests for investigations receive due consideration under Canadian law.

McDougall asks the commission to terminate the proceedings.

Meantime, Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, said in a statement her members are confident they are raising fish in a responsible way.

"We believe our farmers are reducing the risk on wild salmon by providing an alternate source to this popular food choice," she said in an email, adding the submission repeats many pieces of misinformation that have been corrected by experts and extensive research.

"We are confident that will be made clear as the process unfolds."

100% Bovine Excrement!

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The North American Agreement on Environmental Co-operation was signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. in 1993.

The commission that oversees the agreement is tasked with supporting the governments' efforts to green North America's economy, promote a low-carbon economy, address climate change and protect the continent's environment, as well as the health of citizens.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The sea trout is covered with lice. Lusa has become such a big problem that FSA was forced to impose several plants total slaughter in summer

 Found lethal number of lice Sea trout have several places have been very troubled by lice in the summer. Ie it is found as much as 134 lice per fish, which is a lethal amount.

November 5, 2013 Original article in Norwegian translated to English Several places in North -Trøndelag trout greatly troubled by lice in the summer.

Both in Flatanger and inside Namsenfjord fish was attacked, but VIKNA situation was bad.

Surveys done by the Institute of Marine Research shows that in VIKNA municipality found fish with more than 130 lice. Such infestations of lice is deadly to fish.

- To remove lice from the inlet pools, we have required farmers to harvest out, and there have also farmers even seen the need. It is the means we turn to first, says John Bjarne Falch at the FSA. Read: Will fight lice with mussels

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

- Scaling sea lice Authority has for the first time in the country imposed harvest of an entire area to get rid of lice infestation.

Now butcher the five large farmers Marine Harvest, Mid-Norwegian Aquaculture , Fish Emilsen, Salmanor and Sinkaberg-Hansen, 2 million salmon northern VIKNA. - You get almost cleared the sea lice. Lice larvae holder does not live in the water column for very long when there are fish to settle on. Thus, there should be a clean area to put fish in the spring again, Falch says to NRK. Read: Minister can get lice-bot - Effectively kills It was IMR as this summer conducted an extensive collection of sea trout on Namdalskysten.

It was not particularly cheerful results that came out of the survey. All sea trout were attacked in all areas, but worse the farther north you came.

There, every trout well over 100 lice on the average.

- These investigations are not done for many years, but there are dramatic figures. There is little doubt that this charge effectively kill the trout, says Falch.

Unusual grip North of VIKNA have the run of sea lice treatment long time, but drugs had stopped working. Sea lice survive anything that was tried.

This may FSA do the unusual choice to require abandonment of the area.

- It's probably the first time in the country's history that we've had demanded harvest to gain control over an unwieldy lice situation. The reason why this has happened in these areas is complex enough, but it is reasonably certain that the location of plants has led to that they have infected each other, said district chief at the FSA. Also read : Wrasse sea lice Looking for new methods He also believe something must be done in the future, both to salvage trout, but also to avoid new situations similar to northern VIKNA. - Breeders himself admits that the way plants operated on today is not sustainable.

There are major problems related to debugging, animal welfare one of them, says Falch.

- We are now working hard to find alternative ways to get rid of lice. This is also the economically difficult, he says.

A total of five large farmers to slaughter 2 million tonnes of fish in the summer.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 CFIA orders ISA infected salmon destroyed Harbour Breton plant shutting down for extended period November 8, 2013 Cooke Aquaculture is shutting down its Harbour Breton salmon processing plant in the wake of an order by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to destroy a large number of its ISA-infected salmon, CBC News has learned.

CFIA previously confirmed the ISA outbreak at the company's Hermitage Bay facility back in June, but the company had hoped to grow out and process some of the stock.

Editorial Comment:  Had CFIA not ordered the destruction of these ISA-infected salmon, they would have been processed for human consumption  Taxpayer money will compensate Cooke Aquaculture again for CFIAordered destruction of “crop”  Infected salmon and their cages remained in the ocean for nearly six months impacting wild ecosystems.

Cooke spokesperson Nell Halse said this latest depopulation order now means there won't be enough market-sized salmon currently available to operate the Harbour Breton plant.

"We brought in our employees yesterday and they have been given notification of a layoff. It's really all about loss of fish, or lack of market-ready salmon to go through the plant," Halse told The Fisheries Broadcast.

"Really, our hope had been we would have been able to grow the rest of the fish out to be able to market and harvest them. But we had been experiencing some mortalities and so we now have this depopulation order." '"We brought in our employees yesterday and they have been given notification of a layoff. It's really all about loss of fish, or lack of market-ready salmon to go through the plant."- Cook Aqua's Nell Halse Halse said the company will be forced to depopulate two cages at the site, but she couldn't say how many fish were affected, only that the number was "certainly significant for our Newfoundland operations."

"Overall its less than three per cent of our whole volume for North America, "Halse said. "While it will have a short-term impact in Newfoundland, overall in our business it's not going to have a negative impact in the marketplace. We'll still be able to serve our customers and meet their requirements. It's an unfortunate circumstance that we are dealing with right now."

It's been suggested that the shutdown of the Harbour Breton plant could last up to six months or more, but Halse said the company wasn't entirely sure when the plant might get back up and running.

"It's a temporary situation," she said. "We are not sure how long this will be. But we are certainly working to be able to process again as soon as possible."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Surface Water Is a Key Factor in the Transmission of Pancreas Disease in Salmon October 29, 2013 Anne Stene's PhD thesis explains how environmental factors affect the outbreak and transmission of pancreas disease (PD) in farmed salmon. Both infected and dead salmon can shed the salmonid pancreas disease virus into the sea and the virus particles can be spread by the wind and ocean currents from one fish farm to the next along the coast.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Pancreas disease (PD) is currently the most serious of the viral infections affecting Norwegian farmed salmon. The disease leads to increased mortality, weight loss and low fish product quality. It therefore has a significant influence on fish welfare and on profitability in the aquaculture industry.

Coastal currents are a key factor in disease transmission The PD virus can survive for long periods of time outside the salmon host in cold, clean seawater and it therefore has a strong infective potential along the Norwegian coast. Using a hydrodynamic model developed by SINTEF (http://www.sintef.no/home/), Stene was able to demonstrate that the transmission of the disease between fish farms at different locations is primarily caused by the direction of ocean currents near the surface of the water. Her findings also show that fish farms located in close proximity to infected/diseased salmon and fish farms owned by companies with many other infected farms have an increased risk of their stocks becoming infected with PD. In addition to identifying risk factors for the transmission of PD, Stene focused on risk factors for outbreaks of the disease. Her doctoral project, which was carried out at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, shows that salmon become infected with PD when the sea's temperature rises over a period of time. The reason for this may be that the increase in water temperature leads to a state of chronic stress in the fish, which in turn has a negative effect on their immune defence system. An outbreak of the disease usually occurs when there is a high concentration of the virus in the fish. This can result in extensive shedding of the virus, which in turn leads to a high infection pressure in the sea.

An important finding in Stene's study is that fat from infected and dead fish at the bottom of the cages also contains the virus. Some of this fat will float to the surface and can potentially infect salmon that come into contact with it. This floating layer of fat can spread to other fish farms by means of ocean currents near the surface. This underlines the need to remove dead fish as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Important knowledge to prevent infection Stene's thesis shows that the virus does not pose a problem during the smoltification of salmon in fresh water. Rather, the most important factor is the transmission of infection during the growth phase in salt water. If it is possible to slaughter infected fish before the temperature rises, outbreaks of PD can be limited and this will reduce concentrations of the virus in the sea. And when fewer viruses are carried by the currents, the risk of infection will decrease. Knowledge about water-born transmission and the risk of outbreaks is an important tool in when it comes to production planning with a view to preventing infection.

Stene's research therefore provides fish farmers with new information, when they are considering locations for releasing young salmon, as regards the direction of predominant surface currents in relation to farms containing infected fish. Similarly, the slaughter of fish can be planned in relation to the location's infection status, outbreak risk and the probability of disease transmission to neighbouring farms with fresh fish. Such measures must of course be weighed up against concerns regarding commercial viability for the individual farm and for the industry as a whole in each area.

The costs can be high in the short term but must also be appraised in a more long-term perspective.

Anne Stene defended her doctoral research on 23rd October 2013 at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science with a thesis entitled "Transmission of Pancreas Disease in marine salmon farming in Norway".

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

ď ś Incorrect reporting of lice - got millionbot Grieg Seafood Finnmark has been fined 2.3 million, in order to have reported improper about the extent of sea lice. Economic Crime takes very seriously the matter.

November 6, 2013 Original article translated from Norwegian to English Million bot for several offenses. Norwegian authorities believe the most serious is that the company has given FSA incorrect reports of counting of lice and the size of the cage bags as fish goes in.

- It is very serious because it undermines the entire control system and thus the quality of the aquaculture industry, says Attorney Aud Slettemoen in Economic Crime.

Norwegian authorities are concerned It was in the period 2008 to 2011 Economic Crime believe the company deliberately reported the incorrect information to the FSA. The company counted and journaled the incidence of sea lice on several of its facilities. The reports were then submitted to the FSA was based on assumptions rather than actual data.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

According Slettemoen is the first time you have such a comprehensive issue related to error reporting.

- We are concerned that we are seeing a trend where there are more cases of this type and it is important that the aquaculture industry takes this seriously, said the prosecutor.

Maximum fine given Grieg Seafood Finnmark has adopted the fine of 2.3 million, the largest fine given for this type of relationship.

CEO of Grieg Seafood, Morten Vike, denies that there has been a deliberate and systematic error reporting. He also says that they have never had lice higher level than is allowed.

The Company has adopted the fine because it would be very resource-intensive and expensive to take it to court.

It also indicted the production manager of the company misstated the FSA. The charges against the production manager is less comprehensive than the conditions the company has been fined for.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The Problem with Farmed Salmon (video) Alexandra Morton: “German TV examines the dirty salmon farming industry with me and Grieg Seafoods. Talk to your markets and sushi restaurants, it is unacceptable for Norway to use the oceans of western Canada as their corporate dumpsite.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Houston. We have a problem!

 Canadian Industry Fails to Report Escapes of Farmed Atlantic Salmon Atlantic Salmon Federation says farmed escapees threaten Maine’s endangered salmon.

October 30, 2013 St. Andrews, New Brunswick Biologists with the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) are concerned that the large number of farmed salmon showing up at a fish trap on the Magaguadavic River in New Brunswick is indicative of a large escape of farmed salmon.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Escapes from sea cages in the Bay of Fundy that have gone unreported by the aquaculture industry are very likely entering other Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine rivers.

In most Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine rivers, there is no trap to prevent farmed salmon escapees from entering these rivers. Some of the escapees are sexually mature and the timing of this latest incident coincides with the wild salmon spawning season, which increases the likelihood and severity of negative interactions between wild and farmed fish. When farmed and wild salmon interbreed, the progeny are less fit to survive and are less likely to produce healthy offspring themselves. Salmon farming has been identified by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada as a significant threat to endangered wild salmon.

“This is a serious issue,” said Jonathan Carr, ASF’s Director of Research and Environment. “It is mandatory in New Brunswick for industry to report incidents of escapes of 100 salmon or more.

Our monitoring program on the Magaguadavic provides an early warning system for the salmon rivers in the region,” said Mr. Carr. “For instance, when previous escapes have been reported to Maine officials, they have set fences or traps in specific rivers to try to stop the infiltration of the escapes into those systems. These methods should also be adopted in Canada. Keeping these escaped salmon from interacting with endangered wild salmon in the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy is fundamental to the recovery of wild Atlantic salmon populations.”

“The problem is that reporting escape events is self-regulated by the Canadian industry,” said Carr. “If they don’t report it, then we usually don’t know about it unless there is a monitoring station in place such as on the Magaguadavic River.”

In Maine’s industry, escaped farmed salmon can be traced back to the sea cage operator responsible using DNA technology. “This helps to keep the industry honest,” said Carr.

Carr says he has counted a total of 89 farmed salmon this season, 70 in the past few weeks, at the Magaguadavic fish trap, the largest number of escapees encountered since 2001. He says this number of escapees entering one river indicates a large escape of tens of thousands of salmon from ocean sea cages. Following a reported escape from Cooke Aquaculture operations in 2005 of 50,000 farmed salmon, only 30 salmon were counted at the Magaguadavic fish way.

“How many other escaped farmed fish are entering other rivers?” questioned Carr. “We have no idea because there is no comprehensive monitoring program in New Brunswick, despite salmon being farmed in the Bay of Fundy at some of the highest densities in the world.”

This most recent unreported escape highlights the need for better containment of farmed salmon, as well as regulatory development and increased enforcement of existing provincial and federal regulations in Canada. ASF has long called for more transparency and accountability within the aquaculture industry, which will depend on stricter regulations by provincial and federal governments.

ASF in partnership with the Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is studying the feasibility of growing farmed Atlantic salmon in land-based, freshwater, closed-containment facilities. There needs to be government support for transitioning to closed-containment facilities that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Farm

destroys 180,000 small fish after ISA confirmed at site in western Norway

October 31, 2013 Some 180,000 salmon of just 250 grams on average had to be slaughtered after a case of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) was confirmed at a farm owned by Firda Sjofarmer in Vatnoy, in the Norwegian western municipality of Gulen.

The outbreak is the first case of ISA to be confirmed so far south in the country in eight years, said the Norwegian Food Safety Authority.

ISA has mainly been a problem in the more northern region of Nordland this year, where five of the six confirmed cases, and the latest suspected case, have occurred so far this year.

In contrast, no case of ISA had been reported south of Stadt, a peninsula on the northwestern part of the Sogn and Fjordane district, for the past eight years, according to NFSA. Vatnoy is also in Sogn and Fjordane, one of the major salmon farming regions.

Firda has destroyed all the fish at the cage, which numbered 180,000, with an average weight of around 250 grams. The fish had been released to the sea only in August 2013.

Measures to prevent the spread of the disease have been put in place, and nearby sites and wellboats in particular will be monitored.

The outbreak is the first to occur south of Selje, on the northern part of Sogn and Fjordane (area highlighted in red), in eight years.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Lice infested fish caught by Norwegian angler October 20, 2013 The shocking image above is of a sea lice infested salmon caught by Svein Ingvar Opdalingen in the Guddalselva in Kvinnherad where he lives. The fish also seems to have a fungal infection on its head. Since September, there has been an increased number of escaped salmon in the river and heavy infestations of sea lice have been observed in both wild and farmed fish.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

There have not been any reported escapes from nearby Tucumcari which would suggest that the escaped salmon are from other open net cage farms

The suggestion that sea lice are becoming more resistant to chemical treatments is evident in the photos and there are obvious implications for wild salmon and sea trout. Svein stated that as long as the industry continues to have high faming density in Hardanger Fjord, the infestation of sea lice will persist.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The industry is given fines if lice levels are above permitted levels but the infestation problem is not solved. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority (NFSA) has in the last number of weeks ordered the mass cull of 940,000 farmed salmon.

Five Norwegian salmon producers are mass-slaughtering some 8,000 metric tons of salmon from their pens in an area north of Vikna, central Norway, due to high lice levels. Three of those, Marine Harvest, Emilsen Fisk and Midt-Norsk Havbruk, are rushing to empty some 5,000 metric tons within deadlines set by the (NFSA). In late August, the authority had informed these three producers that they would have to slaughter all their salmon in the area, after all other measures to counter the lice infestation failed.

NFSA has ordered the producers to slaughter all their fish, or face a fine of approximately NOK 100,000 per day, for every day extending beyond the deadline. Under Norwegian regulations, when a farm first exceeds its lice level limit, NFSA orders it to address the situation using all delousing methods available. Failing which, as in this case, the authority orders the affected pens to be emptied of all fish.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Episode

009: Interview with Lewis Hinks of ASF – Open Net Pen Fin Fish Aquaculture

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed In this episode of The Maritime Outdoorsman, host Dave Doggett talks open net pen fin fish aquaculture with Lewis Hinks, director of programs for the Atlantic Salmon Federation in Nova Scotia.

Lewis is currently one of only 11 master certified fly casting instructors in all of Canada. Open net pen fin fish aquaculture is not only having a negative impact on our native wild Atlantic Salmon stocks by way of escapes and disease transfer, but is also the cause of many other environmental concerns in our region.

Though many other countries have banned open net pen fin fish aquaculture, our local governments have embraced the industry, despite the indisputable negative environmental impacts, hoping that aquaculture jobs will impact our economy.

ASF does not oppose aquaculture, but does oppose open net pen fin fish aquaculture.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Bulging Mutant Trout Created: More Muscle, More Meat The genetically engineered fish have 15 percent more flesh. Yum? March 29, 2010 Scientists have created hundreds of mutant fish with" six-pack abs" and bulging "shoulders" by beefing them up with new genes.

While the fish aren't going to win any beauty contests, the genetically engineered rainbow trout could hold some appeal at market, because they each provide 15 to 20 percent more flesh than standard tout, researchers say.

Developed with fish farming in mind, the genetically modified trout is the result of ten years of experimentation by a team led by Terry Bradley of the University of Rhode Island's Department of Fisheries, Animal, and Veterinary Sciences.

The team injected 20,000 rainbow trout eggs with different types of DNA from other species, making them transgenic. The added DNA was intended to suppress a protein called myostatin, and it apparently worked in about 300 of the eggs, turning them into the muscle-bound superfish.

The transgenic trout incorporate genes modeled on myostatin-inhibiting proteins found in powerfully built Belgian blue cattle, a beef breed noted for its "double muscled" appearance.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

In mammals, including humans, mysostatin is known to keep muscle growth in check—controlling myostatin is touted as a potential way to reverse muscle-wasting diseases in humans.

(Related: "Forty Percent of North America's Freshwater Fish at Risk.")

New Genes Showcase Six-Pack Abs The muscle-bound trout is the first real proof that mysostatin inhibition has a similar effect in both fish and mammals.

Although fish lack abdominal muscles, the modified trout exhibited a "six pack" effect along the sides of the their midsections and developed prominent humps on their backs, Bradley recently reported.

"Our findings are quite stunning," Bradley said in a statement. "The results have significant implications for commercial aquaculture."

If met with regulatory approval, the fish-gene modifications could mean cheaper trout for consumers, as farmers would be able to grow larger fish without having to feed them more, he said.

(Video: Biggest Trout Fished in Asia.)

Mutant-Trout Takeover?

Though some trout with altered genes have been approved for release, trout with added DNA from other species have yet to be approved for commercial use, according to zoologist Fredrik Sundström of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Other genetically modified trout in the works have been engineered for faster growth, disease resistance, or frigid-water survival (via "antifreeze genes").

Sundström, who has investigated the potential risks of transgenic trout escaping into the wild, said studies suggest the fish can not only breed in rivers but also pass on their lab-altered genes to natural populations. (Read about threats to freshwater fish.)

"Under certain conditions the transgenic fish do better than the wild types, but under other conditions we see the opposite," he added.

"If they have a lot of food, transgenic fish can use that food to a greater extent, but if you have predators nearby they also seem to be more susceptible to predation," Sundström said.

He doubts, however, whether this latest transgenic trout would find enough food in the wild to support its body builder physique—or that the bulky fish would be able to maneuver swiftly enough to avoid being eaten.

But if the fish did survive in the wild—for instance, if juveniles are able to "grow too big for birds to feed on them"—they could overturn their ecosystems, Sundström said. For one thing, he said, the six-pack trout's greater size could allow them to outcompete their unmodified cousins, leaving them with little food and an imperiled future.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 GMOs 101: Our children are not Roundup ready

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Don Staniford Mmm - anyone for black spots on their farmed salmon (with side orders of brain tumour, parasites, disease, dioxins, PCBs and lashings of listeria)?

 Melanin pigmentation in salmon fillets—causes and risk factors October 23, 2013 A PhD project carried out at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science has examined the unwanted discoloration, or melanin "black spots", of muscle fillets from farmed salmon.

The cause of these spots was previously believed to be due to the use of vaccines with oil-based adjuvants, but this study shows that spots with similar characteristics can also occur in unvaccinated salmon. The search for the cause of this phenomenon must therefore focus on other areas.

Farming of Atlantic salmon in Norway contributes to make the country the world's second largest producer and exporter of fish. Norwegian aquaculture generates a great deal of revenue.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

However, the downgrading of salmon fillets due to melanin spots leads to losses of several hundred million kroners per year. At the time of slaughter, up to 10-30% of the salmon can show signs of black spots in their muscle fillets. This phenomenon is caused by chronic inflammation sites in the muscles, where cells containing melanin accumulate and give rise to black discoloration. The cause of these spots was thought to be linked to the use of vaccines containing oil adjuvants, but other factors such as environmental conditions, genetics and disease also appear to play a role.

Hilde Fagerland's thesis is a study of pathological melanin pigmentation in farmed salmon. Her analyses showed that the melanin probably arises as a result of chronic inflammations and scar tissue formation.

Fagerland used data obtained from vaccinated fish to analyse equivalent spots in unvaccinated fish – both diploid and triploid fish and spring and autumn smolt (juvenile salmon).

The formation of the black spots in unvaccinated fish resembled those found in the vaccinated fish, irrespective of ploidy or production season (spring or autumn). Fagerland found just as many individuals with fillet pigmentation amongst unvaccinated fish as amongst vaccinated fish. However, triploid fish were found to be more likely to develop black spots than diploid fish.

One particularly interesting finding was the combination of vaccination and temperature/photoperiod smolt production (autumn smolt), which resulted in a larger number of affected fish compared to fish that are vaccinated and then undergo simulated natural smoltification (spring smolt). This may point to a possible cumulative effect of, or interaction between, raised temperatures and vaccination. This temperature-related effect was corroborated by the results of a cell experiment (SHK-1), where the synthesis of melanin appeared to be affected by the temperature.

Analyses of pathological pigmentation in the hearts of fish suffering from cardiomyopathy syndrome (CMS) also found a link between black discoloration and processes of repair and scar tissue formation in the fish.

In short, the findings of this project indicate that melanin is formed as a support to the defence and repair processes that occur following chronic inflammation.

Cand.med.vet. Hilde Anette Søiland Fagerland defended her doctoral research on 4th October 2013 at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science with a thesis entitled: "Studies of extracutaneous pathological pigmentation - black spots - in Atlantic salmon."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Scotland's farmed salmon industry is struggling to meet demand from China.

 Fears for Scottish salmon farming after China production targets missed • •

Rapid expansion needed to meet Chinese demand by 2020 Concern that new strict eco standards may be compromised

November 4, 2013 The Scottish salmon farming industry is struggling to meet a controversial target to rapidly increase production to help feed China's growing appetite for fresh and smoked salmon.

The Guardian has established that Scottish salmon producers have fallen way behind their goal of increasing production by 60,000 tonnes, or 50%, by 2020 to help meet surging demand for the fish from China's middle classes. Scottish ministers now admit that hitting the target is a "challenge".

Don Stanford (Protect Wild Scotland): "Scottish salmon farming is dead in the water with production actually decreasing due to infectious diseases, sea lice infestation and mass mortalities.

Yes, the salmon farms in Scotland are all in the wrong place – they should be located close to the market in Asia and the United States."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

It is central to a major deal to become one of China's preferred suppliers, struck in January 2011 by Alex Salmond, the first minister, just as China signed parallel deals to lend two giant pandas to Edinburgh zoo and take a major financial stake in Grangemouth oil refinery.

In the weeks before that agreement, the Beijing government had dropped Norway as China's preferred salmon supplier in retaliation for the decision by the Oslo-based Nobel organisation to award the Nobel peace prize in 2010 to the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Scottish ministers soon promised that Scotland's fish-farming industry would rapidly expand production to 210,000 tonnes a year by 2020, to help meet Chinese demand. That is equivalent to China's total salmon consumption in 2009, which has since grown substantially.

Salmond started his fourth trade visit to China on Saturday, where he is promoting Scottish salmon and seafood. Scottish seafood producers are also flying out to China for a major trade fair on fisheries and seafood this week, to bolster the sales push.

Before leaving, the first minister said salmon exports to the Far East had leapt from 2% to 19% of all overseas sales already this year: more than half has been sold to China, with sales there now worth ÂŁ20m annually.

Yet that sharp increase in exports could stall.

After hitting less than half that growth target in 2011 and 2012, Scottish salmon production is expected to fall by 10,000 tonnes this year to roughly 152,500 tonnes, the largest annual fall in nearly a decade, after being hit by a series of disease outbreaks and production stoppages.

Environmentalists now fear the missed targets could lead to salmon farmers reneging on stricter environmental standards which they recently accepted, after the industry came under intense pressure to deal with disease outbreaks, marine pollution from toxic veterinary chemicals and surges in infestation by sea lice parasites.

Paul Wheelhouse, the Scottish environment minister, insists he will not allow environmental protection to suffer, but said the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the official body which protects water quality, is under pressure to speed up its approval system for new sites to help increase production.

He recently told a salmon industry event that hitting that target was now "a challenge", after the latest figures showed that salmon production needed to jump by 32% in six years to meet it. "So it's a substantial growth that we need to achieve. It's relatively clear to us that there is already enough capacity consented out there in Scotland for additional fish farms, in theory, to meet that demand," he told a fringe event at the Scottish National party's annual conference, but warned some farms were in the wrong place and of the wrong size.

Hitting the target depended on salmon companies agreeing to invest the millions needed to build the extra sites, he said: "I think it's doable but I can't guarantee it. It's out with my hands. The industry is telling me they can hit this target. So we have to take this on trust."

Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmond Producers Organisation, the largest industry body, told the Guardian that the 2020 figure "gave a focus for growth". But he sounded clear notes of caution, adding: "We are optimistic that this figure will be achieved but planning consents do not follow a consistent pattern and obviously this has an impact on production figures."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Soon after Chinese salmon deal was unveiled in 2011, British anglers said they were horrified by its implications for wild fish stocks, because of the impact of sea lice infestation on wild salmon, and the risks of escaped farmed salmon having cross-bred with wild fish.

Partly in a bid to defuse those attacks, two-thirds of the Scottish industry has recently joined the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) eco-labelling and accreditation scheme, binding them to accept stricter environmental standards on water quality, pollution and damage to the wider marine environment.

Lang Banks, Scotland director for the environment group WWF, a co-founder of the ASC, said that a rush to hit the 2020 target could threaten those new industry commitments.

"It's very hard to see how the rapid expansion in farmed salmon production being expected by ministers can realistically be met without the industry having to backtrack on their pledges, under the Aquaculture Stewardship Council scheme, to reduce their impacts on the environment," Banks said.

"There is a real danger that this government target could drive Scotland's salmon farmers to become less sustainable, not more."

Don Staniford, an anti-fish farm campaigner and director of the small Protect Wild Scotland group, said China should try farming its fish in closed-containment factories on dry land – a proposal now being pushed by Norwegian firms. "Not for all the farmed salmon in Norway will Scottish ministers be able to meet their targets of 50% expansion by 2020," Staniford said.

"Scottish salmon farming is dead in the water with production actually decreasing due to infectious diseases, sea lice infestation and mass mortalities. Yes, the salmon farms in Scotland are all in the wrong place – they should be located close to the market in Asia and the United States."

CFIA orders ISA infected salmon destroyed

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Impacts of salmon hatcheries Trading habitat for hatcheries

 Salmon, People and Place, Jim Lichatowich (Video)

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Climate Change

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 UN slams Canada for poor climate change record November 5, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

WASHINGTON — As nations continue to increase their carbon emissions, pumping billions of tonnes into the atmosphere, the world is unlikely to meet its target of keeping temperature rises below the critical 2-C by 2020, a new UN report says.

Failure to meet emission pledges will increase the cost and difficulty of avoiding catastrophic climate change, the report states.

The most recent figures indicate that emissions are already 14 per cent higher than what is required to keep global average temperatures from rising above 2 C. The authors expressed confidence that if countries aggressively reduce fossil fuel consumption they can still meet their pledges by 2020 with minimum cost.

Jennifer Morgan, a co-author of the report, noted in a conference call that for every dollar invested in renewable energy, the global community subsidizes fossil fuels to about five dollars.

“If the emissions gap is not closed, or significantly narrowed, by 2020, the door to many options limiting the temperature increase … will be closed,” the report states.

The authors picked out Canada as a lead laggard. Canada is on track to exceed its 2020 target of 607 megatonnes by slightly more than 110 megatonnes or about 20 per cent, according to its own reports. (A megatonne is a million tonnes.)

“So it is significantly off track right now,” Taryn Fransen, another report author, said.

Morgan added, “Canada doesn’t seem to fully grasp the risk that climate change poses to it and its people in its approach to climate change.”

Fransen noted that Canada’s National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy published a report in 2012 that concluded there is still time for Canada to meet its commitments without disrupting its economy if it moves aggressively.

The NRTEE was created in 1988 to advise the federal government on sustainable development. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper, which has aggressively promoted the expansion of the nation’s largest emitter, the oilsands, defunded the NRTEE this year.

The Harper government has claimed that Canada’s overall emissions of about two per cent are insignificant in a global perspective.

Morgan noted, however, that the Copenhagen treaty requires that industrialized countries take the lead in emission reductions, which Canada is not doing.

“It is very important that countries like Canada meet its targets not only for atmospheric reasons – I mean the need to reduce emissions in the atmosphere – but also because of the signal that it sends to others,” Morgan said. “Canada is a wealthy country. It certainly has the resources to do it.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The fourth annual Emission Gap Report, published by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Resources Institute, says the gap between national pledges and what the world is on track to emit in 2020 has widened by about one gigatonne, or a billion tonnes, compared with last year.

Like Canada, the United States, Japan and Mexico are also on track to miss their targets. Unlike Canada, however, both the United States and Mexico are ratcheting up action on climate change.

The authors noted that Mexico not only has more ambitious targets than Canada or the U.S., it is also in the process of enacting legislation to achieve those targets.

U.S. President Barack Obama last week signed an executive order that compels all branches of government to initiate national policies and regulations that will lead to reduced emissions throughout the economy and put the U.S. on track to meet its commitments.

Canada has tied its pledges to those of the U.S., which are to reduce emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. The authors expressed hope that Canada will follow Obama’s new and more stringent policy moves.

The report notes that the European Union – particularly Germany – China, India, the Russian Federation and Australia appear to be on track to meet their pledges. Australia’s ambitions, however, are low and allow it to continue to increase emissions.

The global average surface temperature rise is approaching one per cent. The report notes that even if all pledges are met they will fall short of stopping global temperatures from exceeding the critical 2C mark. Much greater reductions of 55 per cent below 2010 levels will be required by 2050, the report states.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Water concerns farmers more than climate change November 5, 2013 Two Western Washington farmers discuss their views on climate change and how its effects might be mitigated.

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Water worries carry more weight than climate change for two Western Washington farmers.

Dairy farmer Jay Gordon sees too much water, and he doesn’t know whether to blame coalburning in China or a warming Earth, but “for a bunch of us in the Chehalis, the question is over: It’s raining more.”

Gordon and his wife own a 600acre dairy on the Chehalis River that his family homesteaded in 1872. The river has flooded many times during that span. The most recent major floods, in 2007 and 2009, left vast areas of farmland and a 20-mile stretch of Interstate 5 underwater.

“The river gauge shows earlier floods, more floods and higher levels,” he said.

“We’ve had four 100-year floods in 23 years’ time; 75 percent of the highest floods were in the past 23 years.”

Chehalis River flood – December 2007 Editorial Comment: During the past four years, Wild Game Fish Conservation International has advocated throughout the Chehalis River basin for wise land use practices including:  Moratorium on floodplain development  Moratorium on steep slope logging

He said fellow dairy farmers have told him, “I can’t handle one more of these. This is getting old.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Gordon, executive director of the Washington State Dairy Federation, spoke during a recent symposium on “Climate Change and the Future of Food.”

Symposium sponsors and coordinators included Washington State University, the University of Washington, government agencies, conservation districts, researchers and a shellfish producer.

Henry Bierlink, executive director of the Washington Red Raspberry Commission, said he doesn’t see climate change as a high priority.

“Everyone in ag knows about adapting to change,” he said. “It’s down on the list of worries.”

Water management and growing conditions are critical to berry growers, though, he said. Red raspberries grow well in northwestern Washington because of its temperate climate. If summers do get hotter, as some researchers predict, it will challenge the industry.

Because most water in the area is groundwater, he said, “I don’t see climate change changing that dramatically.”

As far as mitigating any changes, growers invest in research, in both the public and private sectors, for both immediate returns and for the long term.

“Breeding new varieties is 12-to-13-year process,” he said. “Planning way ahead is what we do.”

When it comes to water, Bierlink called Western water law “dysfunctional.”

“It creates more problems than solutions,” he said. “We have to get agencies to encourage what we know we have to do.”

Gordon pointed to the discrepancy in water availability on either side of the Cascades. The Yakima Basin is losing its snowmelt earlier, and the Chehalis Basin can’t hold what it’s getting.

“The Tulalip Tribe (in northwestern Washington) is looking at glaciers melting and asking, ‘What will we do when there’s no water for fish?’” he said. The answer, Gordon said, has to be more water storage on both sides. Farms, tribes and government have to cooperate to make that happen.

“We need a lot of dialogue and a lot of partnerships,” he said. “A diverse group of people is the only way we’re going to adapt. And we need information we can trust.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Ocean Health – Acidification, De-oxygenation, Warming

Ocean acidification due to excessive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is threatening to produce large-scale changes to the marine ecosystem affecting all levels of the food chain, a University of B.C. marine biologist warned Friday.

 Acidification of oceans threatens to change entire marine ecosystem October 25, 2013 Ocean acidification due to excessive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is threatening to produce large-scale changes to the marine ecosystem affecting all levels of the food chain, a University of B.C. marine biologist warned Friday.

Chris Harley, associate professor in the department of zoology, warned that ocean acidification also carries serious financial implications by making it more difficult for species such as oysters, clams, and sea urchins to build shells and skeletons from calcium carbonate. Acidic water is expected to result in thinner, slower-growing shells, and reduced abundance. Larvae can be especially vulnerable to acidity.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

“The aquaculture industry is deeply concerned,” Harley said. “They are trying to find out, basically, how they can avoid going out of business.”

While there is potential for, say, commercial oyster growers to reduce acidity for larvae in land-based facilities, the greater marine environment doesn’t have that luxury. “For wild populations, you can’t just take part of their lifecycle and babysit it,” he said.

A total of 10,000 tonnes of oysters, clams, scallops and mussels worth $21.7 million were harvested in B.C. in 2010. The sea urchin fishery was worth another $9 million, based on a harvest of 2,300 tonnes.

Lab studies at the University of B.C. also show that acidic water can impair the ability of salmon to grow and smell properly, which has implications for their ability to find native spawning streams.

Research in Australia’s coral reefs has found that acidity can erode a fish’s ability to sniff out their best habitat and to avoid predators.

Development of small creatures such as pteropods — free-swimming snails that are food for salmon — will also be stunted by acidity.

Harley was speaking in an interview at the conclusion of a week-long meeting on ocean acidification involving some 20 scientists and research students from Canada, the U.S., Scandinavia, Australia, Italy, Great Britain, and Hong Kong.

Harley said that research into ocean acidification is only about a decade old, which is why it is important to bring researchers together from different parts of the world to share findings and better understand the big picture.

“We know the impacts are going to be really widespread. The last big unknown is whether species will be able to adapt.”

Coral reefs in tropical waters also stand to be severely impacted, which he described as a pending “biodiversity catastrophe.”

On the other hand, kelp and seaweed, including those found on the B.C. coast, may benefit from increased carbon dioxide through enhanced photosynthesis. They will also benefit from a decline in grazers such as urchins and snails. “If they become less abundant or smaller, they’ll eat less kelp and that’s a win-win for the kelp.”

Purple sea stars also grow faster under acidic conditions. “That good for them, but it’s bad for the mussels, which are their favourite food,” Harley noted.

Average pH levels in the oceans have dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 and are “headed to 7.8 or below by the end of this century,” he said.

While part of the equation involves the upwelling of naturally acidic waters from the deep ocean, researchers believe that the major driver is carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels.

While the issue is global in scale, there are steps that can be taken locally to lessen the impact such as by reducing fertilizer runoff from farms and protecting biodiversity through measures such as marine protected areas.

“Every little bit helps. The more we can transition from fossil fuels, the better off we’ll be.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Energy production and wild game fish: Oil, Coal, Hydropower, Wind, Natural Gas

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Oil – Drilled, Tar Sands

 B.C., Alberta premiers agree on pipeline framework 2 premiers announce surprise agreement on pipelines and energy exports November 5, 2013 Alberta Premier Alison Redford and British Columbia Premier Christy Clark said in a surprise announcement this morning that they have reached a framework agreement between the two provinces on moving energy resources to new markets.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

According to a statement released Tuesday morning: 

Alberta has agreed to accept B.C.'s five conditions for pipeline approval.



B.C. has agreed to sign the Alberta Energy Strategy.



Alberta agrees that B.C. has a right to negotiate with industry on appropriate economic benefits.



Both governments agree it is not for the governments of Alberta and B.C. to negotiate these benefits.



Both provinces reaffirmed that Alberta's royalties are not on the table for negotiation.

The deal does not appear to endorse any particular pipeline or energy export project. Instead, it lays out the terms under which a future project would be negotiated.

"Agreement on B.C.'s five conditions is a necessary first step before any proposals can be considered for approval," said Clark in the statement from her office.

"It is the way we do business in B.C. and it works. By working together with Alberta through these principles, we can grow our economies and strengthen Canada's economy overall."

The framework will also see the B.C. government endorse Redford's energy strategy.

"A key part of our Building Alberta Plan is getting Alberta's resources to new markets at much fairer prices so we can keep funding the programs Albertans told us matter most to them," said Redford in the statement.

"Today's agreement with B.C. is good news for Alberta, for British Columbia and for all Canadians. I welcome Premier Clark's endorsement of the Canadian Energy Strategy and our shared commitment to create jobs, long-term growth and position Canada as a true global energy superpower. We look forward to continued constructive dialogue with B.C." Unexpected development The agreement comes as a surprise, after a meeting scheduled for Tuesday between the two premiers was suddenly cancelled by them on Monday night.

Clark and Redford were originally scheduled to discuss the progress of a joint energy export plan Tuesday in Vancouver, following the Alberta premier's address to the city's Board of Trade.

The meeting was supposed to be the next step in healing the B.C.-Alberta pipeline rift, which had appeared to be healing this summer when the two appeared in public sharing takeout coffee and looking friendly and relaxed.

Read more about the premiers' "frosty" meeting last October Then on Monday night, there appeared to be a major setback for the talks. Both provinces said behind-the-scenes talks haven't made enough progress to warrant Clark and Redford meeting in person again.

Redford said in a news release late Monday that there is still work to be done.

READ ENTIRE CBC ARTICLE HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 It’s all about the oil –Canada’s wild ecosystems be damned

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Newfoundland passes fracking moratorium November 4, 2013 ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador is shutting the door on applications for hydraulic fracturing or fracking for oil and gas while it reviews regulations and consults residents.

Plans to frack wells near Gros Morne National Park pending government approvals had raised concerns about groundwater pollution and the impact on one of the province’s prime tourism draws.

Natural Resources Minister Derrick Dalley said Monday that no fracking applications will be accepted before the review is complete and made public. He set no deadline.

“We need to be cognizant of the consequences of the decision and we’ll move through that process in due time,” he said outside the legislature.

Dalley said the Progressive Conservative government’s top concern is health and safety, telling the house, which began its fall session Monday:

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

In making this decision, our government is acting responsibly and respecting the balance between economic development and environmental protection.

Fracking concerns Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, involves pumping water, nitrogen, sand and chemical additives at high pressure to fracture shale rock formations and allow gas or oil to flow through well bores to the surface. It’s increasingly used across Canada and the United States as energy demands grow while conventional sources wane.

Fracking and UNESCO heritage The province has not yet received formal applications to frack wells in western Newfoundland although exploration licences have been granted in what’s known as the Green Point shale near Gros Morne National Park.

The prospect of drilling near Gros Morne, a spectacular hiker’s paradise recognized by UNESCO world heritage status, set off intense debate. It has also raised alarms about groundwater pollution and other risks.

It’s believed Newfoundland’s west coast has deep shale formations that hold oil — unlike more shallow coalbed gas deposits in western Canada and parts of the U.S. More independent research needed Still, the Council of Canadians has warned that a lack of independent research before and after fracking means safety assurances ring hollow.

NDP Leader Lorraine Michael said her party has long urged the government to halt any fracking applications until the process is better understood.

“There are a lot of issues that are out there in the environmental world,” she told reporters. “Some of them are proven, some aren’t. And I think we have to make sure before we go any further that we have absolute proof that if there are environmental concerns, which there are, that they can be dealt with.”

Newfoundland taking its time Dalley said the government will take the time it needs to assess the geology of western Newfoundland and compare its existing regulations to other jurisdictions.

Western Newfoundland’s shale-oil deposits have been described as a potentially huge resource.

Shoal Point Energy Ltd. (CNSX:SPE) holds three exploration licences. It reached a farmout deal earlier this year with Black Spruce Exploration, a subsidiary of Foothills Capital Corp., for as many as 12 exploration wells to be drilled over the next few years in the Green Point shale, if the province approved.

No one with Black Spruce could be immediately reached to comment on Monday’s announcement.

In Quebec, a moratorium on fracking for natural gas under the St. Lawrence River is now the subject of a $250-million lawsuit by Lone Pine Resources Inc. (TSX:LPR). The company says it bought leases in good faith and is now being denied a chance to develop them.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Editorial Comment: What does “world class” oil spill detection look like?

What does the response to “world class” oil spill detection look like?

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The high stakes of transporting oil by rail November 4, 2013 Despite the cancellation of a high-stakes meeting between the premiers of B.C. and Alberta Tuesday, the option of transporting oil from Alberta to the coast by rail remains a hot topic.

But a recent slew of sensational derailments and crashes involving rail cars carrying oil and petroleum products — including a fiery explosion in Alberta last month involving a train bound for Metro Vancouver — is raising concerns about a potential human or environmental disaster in B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Alberta Premier Alison Redford are grappling with how to open new markets for oil in Asia. Clark wants assured economic rewards and world-leading spill prevention and response systems before B.C. will say yes to oil pipelines.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

With rail shipments of oil and petroleum products already on the increase in B.C. — and poised to escalate dramatically in the absence of new pipelines — local politicians fear the consequences of a major oil-related train derailment or crash in the region.

“This issue is only now coming to the fore,” said Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew, who wants Metro Vancouver to ensure that Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion plans respect the ecology of Burrard Inlet.

“It’s one thing to ship tanker cars on the Prairies flat and straight, but coming through the mountains, in my view that’s the worst possible scenario. It’s an order of magnitude, or more, increase in the level of concern, for sure,” Drew said.

“I’d get far more excited about rail cars transporting oil into the Lower Mainland than pipelines.”

The pipeline-versus-rail debate may be lost on anyone opposed to increased tanker traffic, regardless of how Alberta oil gets to B.C. ports.

“The recent discussion between Alberta and B.C. where they seem to be indicating that we need to build pipelines or it will just come by rail — I view that as a negotiating tactic: ‘Give us our pipeline, or we burn your cities to the ground,’” said Greenpeace researcher Keith Stewart.

Railways were involved in 166 accidents last year in B.C., including 33 collisions with people or vehicles, according to federal Transportation Safety Board reports. Of the total, 91 were derailments, down from 99 in 2011 and 142 in 2008.

On Nov. 28 last year, a CN freight train moving cars in Fort Nelson derailed a tank car loaded with diesel fuel. The car fell on its side and killed the conductor.

Transport Canada estimates almost 1,200 carloads of crude oil and petroleum products were sent to B.C. in 2012, up from fewer than 50 in 2011 and “an insignificant number of carloads in every year before that,” said spokeswoman Sara Johnstone.

That is a drop in the barrel compared with the prospect of hundreds of thousands of rail cars delivering oil to the B.C. coast in the absence of new pipeline construction. “With the increase in oil production and with the North American pipeline network operating near maximum capacity, transportation of oil by rail is increasing,” said Johnstone, noting federal safety regulations have also been beefed up.

Which poses the question: how real is the possibility of large-scale oil-by-rail shipments to the coast for export?

While there is no port infrastructure in place in B.C. for off-loading rail-delivered oil for export to Asia, industry observers say it remains a possibility.

The B.C. government has stated that both pipelines and rail are viable methods to get oil to the coast for export. And the province said recently that if pipelines are not built, rail will fill the void.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

That would result in an enormous increase in rail traffic, and likely increased environmental and safety concerns.

To replace Enbridge’s proposed $6.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline, 275,000 rail cars a year would need to be added to the northern B.C. route to Kitimat or Prince Rupert. An additional 300,000 tanker cars would be needed to replace the oil capacity of Kinder Morgan’s planned $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to Burnaby.

It would require a terminal on the coast at a cost of $200 million to $500 million, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.

The ports of Prince Rupert and Metro Vancouver say they are not aware of any plans to build such a terminal.

In an email response this week, Canadian National Railway spokesman Mark Hallman said the company has no plans to move any oil to B.C. ports or terminals for export.

But earlier this year, CN president Claude Mongeau said the railway did not carry crude oil to the West Coast simply because no customer has yet asked them to do so. He made the statement in a letter he wrote responding to environmental groups over their safety concerns.

“But if infrastructure was permitted for this purpose on the West Coast and a request was made to CN, we would respond and do what our business mandate and common carrier obligations call for — move these products as safely and efficiently as we can for the benefit of all Canadians,” Mongeau wrote.

Internal federal government memos published earlier this fall showed CN, at the urging of Chineseowned Nexen Inc., was considering shipping Alberta bitumen to Prince Rupert in northwest B.C. by rail as a possible Plan B if the Northern Gateway is blocked.

Research by the Seattle-based Sightline Institute shows that since 2012, nearly a dozen plans have emerged to ship crude oil by train to Pacific Northwest refineries and port terminals. Those include plans for a $75-million to $100-million rail complex in Vancouver, Wash. capable of handling 360,000 barrels of oil.

U.S. crude must be refined before it can be exported, but there would be no such rules for bitumen from the Alberta oilsands, noted Seattle Institute researcher Eric de Place. He was not aware of any plans to build terminals on the B.C. coast.

While it is more expensive to ship oil by rail than pipeline, rail has advantages.

A large export terminal would likely be subject to a federal environmental review but there is no such requirement for moving oil by rail. The upfront capital costs for moving oil by rail are also lower.

The advantages and disadvantages were discussed in a recent Canada West Foundation report, Pipe or Perish: Saving an Oil Industry at Risk.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

“You have to optimize across all of those factors to determine which one is best,” says Len Coad, director of the foundation’s Centre for Natural Resources Policy. “But until recently, the preferred alternative was almost always pipeline.”

The federal review decision on Northern Gateway will influence oil-by-rail decisions, Coad noted.

Geoff Morrison, spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said he’s not aware of any specific plans to bring oil by rail to B.C. but he expects companies are looking at the opportunity.

“When the market sees a pinch point, it looks for another way to get there,” he said, referring to the inability of western Canadian oil producers to access Asian markets.

“When does a gleam of an eye become an idea? I think we are in that kind of conceptual moment where people are looking at all their options,” said Morrison.

Oil is definitely on the move by rail across North America.

Canadian Pacific Railway moved about 13,000 carloads of crude oil in 2011, 53,500 carloads in 2012, and expects to move 90,000 in 2013, most of it shipped to the Gulf Coast and U.S. northeast.

In comparison, CN moved about 5,000 carloads of crude oil (heavy crude, light crude and pure bitumen) in 2011, increasing six-fold to more than 30,000 carloads in 2012, with the potential for business to double to more than 60,000 in 2013.

And even in the absence of port infrastructure for exporting to Asia, crude oil is coming to B.C. by rail.

Hallman said CN transports crude oil to Metro Vancouver for local refinery production and to New Westminster, where it is interchanged with U.S. railroads. Hallman noted that “none of this crude oil is moving to B.C. ports or terminals for export.”

The Chevron refinery in Burnaby built a facility just last spring to specifically off-load oil delivered by CPR along the same tracks used by the West Coast Express commuter train.

Chevron currently off-loads eight to 14 rail cars per day, representing 15 per cent of the refinery’s current crude oil requirement of 55,000 barrels per day, said Chevron spokesman Ray Lord.

The West Coast Express route runs through urban communities on the north side of the Fraser River from Mission west through Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Port Moody, where it hugs the south shore of Burrard Inlet through Burnaby, past the Chevron refinery, to its terminus on the downtown Vancouver waterfront.

CN also delivers crude oil to a transloading facility in Langley, where the oil is loaded onto tank-trucks and delivered to the Chevron refinery at the rate of 18 tank-trucks per day, representing 10 per cent of the refinery’s requirement. There is capacity to off-load up to 24 trucks per day.

The other 75 per cent of the refinery’s crude oil comes from Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline system.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Chevron’s Lord confirmed that oil-filled rail cars bound for the Langley facility — and eventually the refinery — were part of the CN train that crashed and burned Oct. 19 in the hamlet of Gainford, Alta., about 85 kilometres west of Edmonton.

Of 134 rail cars in the train, four carrying crude oil and nine carrying liquefied petroleum gas derailed, sparking a dramatic explosion. No one was injured, but homes to about 100 people in the area were evacuated.

CN’s Hallman cited statistics from the Association of American Railroads suggesting 99.997 per cent of “hazardous materials carloads moved by railroads arrive at their destination without a release caused by an accident.”

He refused to disclose where the rail cars of refined petroleum gas in the Gainford crash were headed.

“Railways in general, including CN, do not own rail tank cars; the vast majority of tank cars are owned by leasing companies or rail customers to ship products,” Hallman said.

He added that “DOT-111 tank cars for crude oil and ethanol ordered after October 2011 meet higher standards” and that “nearly 25 per cent of tank cars used to move crude oil today were built to higher specifications.”

Added CP spokesman Ed Greenberg: “CP continues to meet or exceed all federal operating and safety regulations and rules, which includes a strict inspection protocol for the thousands of miles of track over which we operate and a rigorous inspection and maintenance program for all of our trains.”

The most serious recent accident occurred July 6, 2013, when a runaway train of 72 tank cars loaded with crude oil crashed in Lac-Mégantic, Que., killing 47 people and destroying half the downtown area. The train was owned by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway.

“After Lac-Mégantic, everybody across the country is at a heightened sense of vigilance with respect to the transportation of hydrocarbons,” Dan Holbrook, Transportation Safety Board western regional manager of rail investigation, said in an interview.

The good news about the Alberta crash is that the four derailed cars carrying crude oil that did not rupture had full or partial “head-shield protection” — an extra layer of steel to guard against punctures in a crash or derailment, he said.

Main-track derailments, where speeds and risks are greatest, have been declining in Canada, said Holbrook, attributing the trend in part to increased automated track inspections of bearings and wheels, as well as distribution of locomotives to better manage power and braking.

Metro Vancouver has not debated the threat posed by increased rail shipments of oil through the region, but is due to receive a report on Trans Mountain’s expansion plans at the environment and parks committee meeting on Nov. 14.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Noam Chomsky speaking at University of Montreal conference

 Noam Chomsky slams Canada's shale gas energy plans “Exploitation of Canada's tar sands and shale gas will have dire consequences for the environment”, says Chomsky November 1, 2013 Canada's rush to exploit its tar sands and shale gas resources will destroy the environment "as fast as possible", according to Noam Chomsky.

In an interview with the Guardian, the linguist and author criticised the energy policies of the Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

He said: "It means taking every drop of hydrocarbon out of the ground, whether it's shale gas in New Brunswick or tar sands in Alberta and trying to destroy the environment as fast as possible, with barely a question raised about what the world will look like as a result."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

But indigenous peoples in Canada blocking fossil fuel developments are taking the lead in combating climate change, he said. Chomsky highlighted indigenous opposition to the Alberta tar sands, the oil deposit that is Canada's fastest growing source of carbon emissions and is slated for massive expansion despite attracting international criticism and protest.

"It is pretty ironic that the so-called 'least advanced' people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction," said Chomsky.

Chomsky expressed concern about an indigenous community in New Brunswick whose encampment blockading shale gas exploration was raided by a heavily armed Canadian police force two weeks ago.

Those protests come on the heels of the indigenous-led Idle No More movement that sprang up in late 2012 in response to the Harper government's repeal of numerous environmental protections and aggressive promotion of resource projects, often on indigenous lands.

Chomsky was in Montreal last weekend to give a lecture and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the magazine Canadian Dimension.

He told the Guardian that progressives "should work climate change into their efforts to organize", but in a way that emphasizes how addressing climate change can improve rather than worsen peoples' lives.

"If it's a prophecy of doom, it will act as a dampener, and people's reaction will be ok, I'll enjoy myself for a couple of years while there's still a chance. But as a call to action, it can be energizing. Like, do you want your children, and grandchildren, to have a decent life?"

While supporting the principles of the "de-growth" movement that aims to reign in over-production and over-consumption, Chomsky cited mass transportation, localised agriculture, and energy efficiency improvements as useful forms of growth that could mitigate climate change and improve quality of living.

"If you could take a subway from the suburbs in Boston, where I live, to downtown in 10 minutes, that improves your life over sitting in a traffic jam. People should see that."

Chomsky said that a "major issue" behind climate change is the deficiencies of the market system.

"Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions on the environment," he said.

"When you turn to energy production, in market exchanges each participant is asking what can I gain from it? You don't ask what are the costs to others. In this case the cost to others is the destruction of the environment. So the externalities are not trivial."

Chomsky said during the 2008 financial crisis, the big banks could "forget the fact that they're supposed to believe in markets, run cap in hand to the government and say bail us out".

"In the case of the environment there's no one to bail it out."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 People

Who Live Downwind Of Alberta’s Oil And Tar Sands Operations Are Getting Blood Cancer October 28, 2013

A new study has found that levels of air pollution downwind of the largest tar sands, oil and gas producing region in Canada rival levels found in the world’s most polluted cities. And that pollution isn’t just dirtying the air — it also could be tied increased incidence of blood cancers in men that live in the area.

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The study, published last week by researchers from University of California Irvine and the University of Michigan, found levels of carcinogenic air pollutants1,3-butadiene and benzene spiked in the Fort Saskatchewan area, which is downwind of the oil and tar sands-rich “Industrial Heartland” of Alberta.

Airborne levels of 1,3-butadiene were 322 times greater downwind of the Industrial Heartland — which houses more than 40 major chemical, petrochemical and oil and gas facilities — than upwind, while downwind levels of benzene were 51 times greater. Levels of some volatile organic compounds— which, depending on the compound, have been linked to liver, kidney and central nervous system damage as well as cancer — were 6,000 times higher than normal. The area saw concentrations of some chemicals that were higher than levels in Mexico City during the 1990s, when it was the most polluted city on the planet.

“These levels, found over a broad area, are clearly associated with industrial emissions,” said Stuart Batterman,” one of the study’s co-authors. “They also are evidence of major regulatory gaps in monitoring and controlling such emissions and in public health surveillance.”

The high levels of dangerous pollutants may be harming the health of residents downwind of the industrial center. The study, which examined ten years of health records, found incidence of leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in men was higher in communities closest to the sources of pollution than in the surrounding counties. Though the study could not definitively link the uptick in cancer incidence to the increased pollution, the researchers said it was enough to call for reductions in the emissions from the industrial center.

“We’re seeing elevated levels of carcinogens and other gases in the same area where we’re seeing excess cancers known to be caused by these chemicals, ”said lead author Isobel Simpson. “Our main point is that it would be good to proactively lower these emissions of known carcinogens. You can study it and study it, but at some point you just have to say, ‘Let’s reduce it.’ ” The study comes just weeks after a World Health Organization agency classified air pollution as a carcinogen for the first time. And it’s not the first study to find a link between tar sands and other industrial energy extraction and increased levels of dangerous pollution. A 2012 study found pollution levels in lakes around tar sands operations increased significantly after tar sands development began, and another 2012 study found emissions of certain gases from tar sands operations rivaled those of major power plants. In 2009, Alberta health officials confirmed that there were higher than usual rates of cancer in a small aboriginal village downwind of Alberta’s major tar sands operation, and the oil town of Port Arthur, Texas — the last stop of the Keystone XL’s proposed path — sees cancer rates that are 15 percent higher than the rest of Texas.

The latest study’s findings point to the need for better monitoring of Alberta’s tar sands’ pollution.

Right now, the tar sands’ emissions are monitored by the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, a group that’s funded by Canada’s oil and gas industry. And according to the study, energy operations in Alberta aren’t disclosing all their emissions — high levels of one carcinogen documented by the researchers could only have come from one facility, but the researchers found that company hadn’t reported any emissions of the chemical.

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 Pipeline map: Have there been any incidents near you?

From small to large-scale spills to fires, explosions and worker deaths October 23, 2013 Ever wonder whether your community contains any buried pipelines? Or if any issues have arisen with them over the years?

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Through an access-to-information request, CBC News obtained a data set of every pipeline safety incident reported to the federal regulator in the past 12 years.

The National Energy Board oversees cross-border pipelines. The data doesn’t include smaller pipelines within provincial boundaries.

The documents reveal details about more than 1,000 incidents that have happened across the country since 2000 until late 2012 and suggest the rate of overall incidents has doubled in the past decade.

An incident can include anything from a fire or explosion to a spill, leak or a worker fatally or seriously injured.

Explore the map above to see incidents near your city or filter using various categories, such as the type of event, substance spilled or company name. Click on each incident to read a full description.

You can help CBC add to the website by sending us your stories related to an incident or tell us about other ones missed by the database.

We are also looking for people to review summaries of the incidents to help us identify discrepancies between the summaries and the original NEB documents. See the Can You Help? button on each incident summary.

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 Face to Face with Ingmar Lee Watch video HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Editorial Comment: Another in a series of multi-car “crude by rail” derailments resulting in multiple explosions, fires, oil spills and evacuations.

At the same time, we are told that “crude by rail” is much more safe than “crude by pipelines”.

And folks wonder why a growing number are opposed to new crude oil and bitumen pipelines.

 Gainford

derailment: Explosions, fire follow CN tanker derailment west of Edmonton (with video) 22 cars were laden with petroleum crude oil and LPG October 19, 2013

Related Vancouver Sun article

GAINFORD, Alta. - Emergency crews were battling a massive fire Saturday after a CN tanker train carrying oil and gas derailed west of Edmonton overnight.

Thirteen cars — four laden with petroleum crude oil and nine carrying liquefied petroleum gas — came off the tracks around 1 a.m. local time in the hamlet of Gainford, about 80 kilometres from the provincial capital, authorities said.

Three cars containing gas were leaking and on fire, said CN spokesman Louis-Antoine Paquin.

Witnesses said they heard an explosion at about 1 a.m. and officials said there was another blast around 9 a.m.

"It's still leaking, so there is that risk of explosion," said Carson Mills, spokesman for Parkland County, which includes Gainford.

"It's still a risky situation so we need to contain as much as possible and keep people far away."

The area is under a state of emergency and the community of roughly 100 has been evacuated, he said. Travel has been restricted and news media were being kept about 20 kilometres from the scene.

No injuries had been reported.

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One resident told CHED radio that he heard a series of crashes moments before seeing a "huge, huge fireball" shoot into the sky.

"The fireball was so big, it shot across both lanes of the Yellowhead (Highway) and now both lanes of the Yellowhead are closed and there's fire on both sides," said the witness, identified only as Duane.

Devon Cadwell, who lives on a ranch just outside Gainford, said he was sleeping when he heard the noise. He gathered his animals into a corral and got ready to leave.

"It was a huge boom and the house started shaking," Caldwell said.

Paquin said the train was travelling to Vancouver from Edmonton.

Gainford resident Glenda Madge said she and her husband were jolted awake at 3 a.m. by pounding on their door. It was the fire department telling them they had to get out immediately.

"They were waiting outside for us, so we had to hurry up and get dressed and grab whatever we could — medication that my husband is on," Madge said, speaking by phone from a hotel in Entwistle about 20 minutes' drive from Gainford.

Madge said that when she reached an evacuation centre in Entwistle, she and her neighbours were talking about events earlier this year in Lac Megantic, Que., where a train derailment and explosion killed 47 people.

"It was a little scary," Madge said, noting she felt lucky that no one appeared to have been hurt in this derailment.

At one point, Madge said officials were going to allow residents to be escorted back to their homes to pick up additional medication and pets. But she said after the second explosion they were told to turn around and go back to Entwistle.

Sara Jensen, the community development co-ordinator with Parkland County, said about half a dozen Gainford residents were being taken back to the community and were in a safe zone when the second blast was heard.

Parkland County said it appears the evacuees will be out of their homes for at least the next 24 hours.

The Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to the scene.

Jensen said people in Entwistle got up early to open restaurants for the evacuees. A gas station was also opened early so Mounties and other emergency officials could get fuel.

"It's a good rural environment where people support each other," Jensen said.

"Everyone's either in bed or being fed."

Mills noted that it was in Parkland County that more than 40 cars of a CN Rail train derailed in 2005, spilling 800,000 litres of bunker oil and wood preservative into Wabamun Lake.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Train carrying crude oil derails, explodes in Alabama November 8, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

A 90-car train carrying North Dakota crude derailed and exploded in a rural area of western Alabama early on Friday, leaving 11 cars burning and potentially bolstering the push for tougher regulation of a boom in moving oil by rail.

Twenty of the train’s cars derailed and a number were still on fire on Friday afternoon, local officials said. Those cars, which threw flames 100 metres into the night sky, are being left to burn out, which could take up to 24 hours, according to the train owner, Genesee & Wyoming. No injuries were reported.

A local official said the crude oil had originated in North Dakota, home of the booming Bakken shale patch. If so, it may have been carrying the same type of light crude oil that was on a Canadian train that derailed in the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic this summer, killing 47 people.

That incident, which the operator Montreal Maine & Atlantic blamed on a train engineer for not braking sufficiently on an incline, fueled a drive for tougher standards for oil rail shipments.

Proposed measures included better testing of potentially explosive ultra-light shale crude and improved rail tank car standards. Tank cars made before 2011 have been cited by regulators as dangerously prone to puncture.

It was not clear what caused Friday’s accident in Pickens County, Ala., nor how old the tank cars were. The train was being driven by two engineers, both unharmed, officials said.

Though it appeared to pose no environmental risk, the accident still appeared to be the most dramatic of its kind in the United States since trafficking of crude by rail began to increase with the growth of shale oil production three years ago.

“It will provide very clear evidence of the potential risks for environmental groups and others opposed to the growth of crude by rail, and will likely increase pressure to tighten regulations,” said Elena McGovern, Global Energy and Natural Resources analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington.

Traders said they feared that tougher regulations could drive up costs for shipping U.S. crude by rail, reducing its competitiveness. Such speculation weakened U.S. crude oil futures relative to London’s benchmark Brent, which already trades at a premium to the price in New York.

Assuming the tank cars were full, the train, which passes near schools and crosses rivers in the area, held around 65,000 barrels of crude oil, according to Reuters calculations.

The train was carrying crude from Amory, Mississippi, to a terminal in Walnut Hill, Florida, that is owned by Genesis Energy, the company’s chief financial officer Bob Deere said. It was to be pumped into a regional pipeline and delivered to a 80,000-barrel-per-day Shell Chemicals plant near Mobile, Alabama, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Deere said Genesis was still able to receive rail shipments, and deliveries were being rerouted around the affected area.

The accident happened in a wetlands area that eventually feeds into the Tombigbee River, according to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. Booms were placed in the wetlands to contain the spilled oil.

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Don Hartley, regional coordinator for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, said the tank cars originated in North Dakota. Three cars had a “bleve – where pressure builds up and blows a hole.” That started the fire, he said.

Alabama Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Yasamie August said that one family was evacuated due to the incident but had already been able to return home.

“We don’t have a cause yet, that will be determined with the investigation,” said a Genesee & Wyoming spokesman.

The company said it had notified the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Railroad Administration and National Crisis Response Center as is standard procedure.

Rapid proliferation of oil-by-train shipments started more than three years ago to get oil to markets as pipeline infrastructure lagged booming production in remote places such as North Dakota, as well as Canada’s oil sands.

The East and West coasts in particular turned to rail to draw cheaper U.S. and Canadian crude. With no major oil pipelines in operation, or even planned, rail allowed them to tap into the burgeoning shale plays in North Dakota and Texas.

In the third quarter, crude-by-rail shipments rose 44 per cent from the previous year to 93,312 carloads, equivalent to about 740,000 barrels per day (bpd) or almost one tenth of U.S. production.

That was down 14 per cent from the second quarter due to narrower oil spreads that made costlier rail shipments less economic.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has issued safety guidelines on the widely used, cylindrical tank cars known as DOT-111s, including a recommendation that all tank cars used to carry ethanol and crude oil be reinforced to make them more resistant to punctures if trains derail.

The new guidelines, put forward in March 2012 but which have not yet been adopted by the Department of Transportation agency that oversees the sector, stem from a deadly ethanol train derailment and explosion in Illinois in 2009.

DOT-111 rail cars ordered after October, 2011, have been manufactured to the new code, but the industry has resisted spending an estimated $1-billion to retrofit nearly 300,000 existing tank cars.

In Demopolis, Ala., some 40 miles south of the site of the accident, where the rail line runs 300 meters away from the U.S. Jones Elementary School, Mayor Michael Grayson said there hadn’t been an accident in the area in a century of train traffic.

But since last summer, when the oil trains first began humming past, officials discussed what might happen if a bridge just outside of town collapsed, dumping crude into the river.

“Sadly, with this thing, the only thing you can do is try to be prepared,” he said by phone.

Weapons of mass environmental destruction

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 State sides with Quinaults, environmental groups in crude-by-rail case Two projects to bring crude oil shipping facilities to Grays Harbor have been officially delayed, with the state Shorelines Hearings Board ruling that the City of Hoquiam and state Department of Ecology didn’t account for all environmental impacts and hazards when issuing permits.

The decision was outlined in a letter the board sent to the parties involved on Oct. 8. It issued its official opinion on Tuesday.

The Quinault Indian Nation and a coalition of environmental groups — Friends of Grays Harbor, the Grays Harbor Audubon Society, Citizens for a Clean Harbor, the Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club — each filed appeals with the state after the City of Hoquiam and the state Department of Ecology issued a mitigated determination of non-significance (MDNS) for crude-by-rail projects proposed by Westway Terminal Co. and Imperium Renewables.

The MDNS was issued because the co-lead agencies believed the companies’ plans did enough to mitigate potential environmental impacts under the State Environmental Policy Act. By itself, the MDNS doesn’t permit the companies to do anything, but it would have streamlined the permitting process.

Westway and Imperium both have facilities at the Port of Grays Harbor. Under the proposed projects, those facilities would be expanded to add 33.6 million gallons of crude oil storage at Westway and 30.2 million gallons of crude oil storage at Imperium. The City of Hoquiam and Ecology issued shoreline substantial development permits to the companies earlier this year, and several other permits will be required before the facilities are operational. The board’s decision negates the MDNS, and, by extension, the shoreline substantial development permits.

With lawyers on both sides still reviewing the decision, no one is sure what will come next. Paul Queary, a spokesman for Imperium Renewables, said company officials are considering an appeal.

Either company would have until Nov. 22 to challenge the board’s decision.

One thing is certain: the companies aren’t giving up on shipping oil from Grays Harbor.

“They’ve already started gathering the information required to apply for permits again,” Queary.

“That should be wrapped up soon, and hopefully they’ll get those in a few months.”

Westway also plans to move ahead with the project, said spokeswoman Heidi Happonen.

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The two sides of the dispute disagree on what carrying on with the project will require. Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice lawyer who represented the Quinaults in the appeal, said she believes the companies will have to complete a costly and lengthy environmental impact statement(EIS) in order to fill the holes in the permitting process.

However, Hoquiam City Administrator Brian Shay said he doesn’t believe an EIS will be necessary — and the two companies plan to move forward without one.

U.S. Development According to the decision released by the hearings board, the city and Ecology failed to consider the impacts of all crude oil exporters on Grays Harbor. A third company, U.S. Development, is also considering building a crude oil shipping facility at the Port. The company hasn’t yet filed for permits from the city or Ecology, and that’s why the project wasn’t taken into account, Shay said.

“I think the whole idea of having to account for another project that hasn’t even applied for permits is just a really bad precedent for the state to set,” Shay said.

The board’s decision states that the city and Ecology had access to enough information from U.S. Development to account for the third project’s impacts.

“They know its location on Grays Harbor … They know its purpose, which is the same as the Westway and Imperium expansions, is to receive multiple grades of crude-by-rail, store it in terminals, and transfer it to vessels. They know its maximum capacity of proposed liquid storage, along with the daily maximum capacity of liquids it can handle. They know the number of anticipated rail unit trains and vessels visiting the planned new facility. This information is sufficient to merit its inclusion in the consideration of cumulative impacts from all three projects,” the decision reads.

The U.S. Development facility would be located near Bowerman Field in Hoquiam, and the company currently has a lease option from the Port of Grays Harbor for the planning and permitting process. If completed, the facility would have between six and eight tanks with a total storage capacity of between 800,000 and 1 million barrels — between 33.6 million and 42 million gallons — of crude oil.

The board’s decision also raised qualms about the companies’ analysis of “critical environmental issues” — including seismic and tsunami hazards, archaeological and cultural resources, shipping and train impacts and oil spill hazards.

In 2012, 168 vessels traveled in and out of the Port of Grays Harbor. Once the Imperium and Westway projects are completed, the Port could see as many as 688 vessels each year. About 730 trains traveled along the Puget Sound & Pacific rail line to Grays Harbor in 2012, and the line could see about 1,700 trains per year with the two companies shipping crude oil.

The decision states that Westway and Imperium should have completed Rail Transportation Impact Analysis and Vessel Transportation Impact Analysis studies before the city and Ecology issued the MDNS decisions.

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“The Board is left with a firm and deep conviction that the co-leads clearly erred in concluding that there would not be significant impacts to the environment from the increases in rail and vessel traffic prior to the receipt of the (Rail Transportation Impact Analysis) and (Vessel Transportation Impact Analysis),” the decision reads.

Both companies are currently working to complete the analyses.

The companies, the city and Ecology also failed to provide documentation of how they might mitigate the effects of any oil spills, the board found. In the decision, the board encouraged the entities to analyze and address the ways varying types of crude oil could be cleaned up if spilled, as varying types of crude oil behave differently.

Split decision?

While these issues were enough to declare the MDNS invalid, the hearings board did side with the City of Hoquiam and Ecology on a few matters. In their appeal, the coalition of environmental groups asked whether the MDNS was “improper because decision-makers failed to consider alternatives.”

The hearings board ruled that the city and Ecology have no legal obligation to consider alternatives to the crude-by-rail projects.

The board also stated that, at this point in the process, Westway and Imperium don’t need to guarantee financial responsibility should oil spill in Grays Harbor. A spill prevention plan — which would require fiscal accountability — isn’t required under the State Environmental Policy Act until later in the process.

The coalition also asked whether the city and Ecology violated the state’s Ocean Resources Management Act by issuing the MDNS. In the decision, the hearings board explained that the Legislature designed the act to regulate oil extraction in Washington waters. Since Imperium and Westway are merely transporting oil, that law doesn’t apply to this case.

Shay said that while he was disappointed with parts of the decision, he’s thankful for the rulings in the city’s favor.

“There were really mixed results,” Shay said. “I guess if it had been a fight, it would have been a split decision.”

But members of the anti-crude-by-rail camp are calling the decision a clear victory for their side.

Quinault President Fawn Sharp released a statement commending the hearings board.

“Those permits should never have been issued in the first place,” Sharp said. “The shipping terminals would be a clear violation of public safety as well as treaty-protected rights.

The public trust should not be jeopardized in this manner.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Arthur “R.D.” Grundbaum of Friends of Grays Harbor also lauded the decision, referencing recent crude oil train explosions in Alabama and Quebec.

“Crude oil, as we’ve seen twice now, is something that is quite hazardous and explosive,” Grundbaum said. “The most important thing is that the shorelines board recognized that the MDNS was not enough.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

This NWF map simulates a 3, 6 and 12 hour spill from the tar sands oil pipeline based on Enbridge spill response plans, average current speeds and “worse case” discharge estimates.

 First-Ever Footage of Aging Tar Sands Pipelines Beneath Great Lakes October 10, 2013 Watch video HERE This past July, National Wildlife Federation (NWF) conducted a diving expedition to obtain footage of aging oil pipelines strung across one of the most sensitive locations in the Great Lakes, and possibly the world: the Straits of Mackinac.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Footage of these pipelines has never been released to the public until now.

The Straits of Mackinac pipelines, owned by Enbridge Energy, are 60-years-old and considered one of the greatest threats to the Great Lakes because of their age, location and the hazardous products they transport—including tar sands derived oil.

For nearly two years, NWF has been pressing pipeline regulators and Enbridge to release information about the integrity of these pipelines, including inspection videos showing how the pipelines cross the Straits of Mackinac.

These requests have gone largely unanswered from both Enbridge and the Pipeline Hazards Safety Administration (PHMSA), who regulates pipeline operations. Because Enbridge hastily moved forward with plans to increase pressure on the aging pipelines, and has bypassed critical environmental permitting for changes in operation, NWF decided we needed to obtain our own: The footage shows pipelines suspended over the lakebed, some original supports broken away—indicating the presence of corrosion— and some sections of the suspended pipelines covered in large piles of unknown debris. This visual is evidence that our decision makers need to step in and demand a release of information from Enbridge and PHMSA. Heightening our concern around this pipeline and the company that owns it: despite having cleared our dive work with the U.S. Coast Guard, several Congressional members and Homeland Security, our staff and the dive crew had uncomfortable interactions with Enbridge representatives.

As soon as our team set out on the water, we were quickly accompanied by an Enbridge crew that monitored our every move. This monitoring did not stop at the surface: Enbridge also placed a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) into the water to watch our team.

These actions and our video have raised our level of concern for the general operational behavior of this company and their overall safety culture—including the way they treat the concerned public living near their pipelines. If these aging pipelines rupture, the resulting oil slick would cause irreversible damage to fish and wildlife, drinking water, Lake Michigan beaches, Mackinac Island and our economy.

To make matters worse, the recent shutdown of our federal government has left communities and wildlife with an increased risk of oil spills and failed response because pipeline safety and responding agencies have been scaled back or closed all together. The recent oil spill in North Dakota, of approximately 800,000 gallons, is living proof.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 In Canada's Alberta province, oil sands boom is a two-edged sword The oil sands industry has brought good jobs to villages such as Fort Chipewyan. But there is fear about cancer and the environment.

October 21, 2013 FORT CHIPEWYAN, Canada — In the Cree language, the word "Athabasca" means "a place where grass is everywhere." Here in Alberta, the Athabasca River slices through forests of spruce and birch before spilling into a vast freshwater delta and Lake Athabasca.

But 100 miles upstream, the boreal forest has been peeled back by enormous strip mines, where massive shovels pick up 100 tons of earth at a time and dump it into yellow trucks as big as houses.

The tarry bitumen that is extracted is eventually shipped to refineries, many in the United States, to be processed into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. But the leftover polluted slurry remains in mileslong impoundments, some high above the banks of the river. Air cannons sound periodically to keep migratory birds from landing on the toxic ponds.

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Oil sands production, as the procedure is called, is booming in northeastern Alberta. And it is expected to grow far larger if the Obama administration issues a federal permit for the Keystone XL pipeline from the province.

Debate in the U.S. over the pipeline has largely focused on whether the oil sands would contribute to climate change, or spill along the route. But in northeastern Alberta, the effect of the oil sands industry plays out in more complicated ways.

Oil sands are exploited by injecting high-pressure steam into the earth or by strip mining to extract the sticky bitumen, which is then washed away from clay and sand, swiftly heated and diluted with chemicals before being shipped to refineries.

The petroleum industry has funneled billions of dollars into Canada's national, provincial and local economies and employs thousands of people in places with few other jobs. But the oil sands boom may also be polluting the air and water, and is stoking fear that it is damaging the health of those in its arc.

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"From everything I hear from the indigenous peoples, their thinking seems to be 'It's a choice between whether we starve to death or are poisoned to death,'" said Dr. John O'Connor, a general practitioner who has worked here since 1993.

In Fort Chipewyan, a village of 1,100 people on the north shore of Lake Athabasca, cancer and autoimmune diseases such as lupus have taken a heavy toll on its mostly indigenous Cree, Dene and Metis population during the last 20 years. In 2009, the provincial government found that cancer rates here over a 12-year period were 30% higher than normal for such a small community (51 cancers in 47 individuals versus an expected 39 cancers).

Three weeks ago, government scientists told villagers that they had found high levels of mercury, a hazardous substance, in the eggs of migratory birds that nest downstream from oil sands production.

Fishermen say pickerel and northern pike in the lake show bulging eyes and other deformities.

Three studies by independent scientists have shown rising concentrations of pollutants, including carcinogens, in waterways near Alberta's oil sands production.

Industry officials and the Alberta government have long insisted that the chemicals detected in area waterways are naturally occurring, not the result of pollution.

They also say they are taking full safety precautions to protect communities tucked into a vast wilderness. Some of the indigenous people, known as the First Nations, have hunted and fished here for thousands of years.

The oil industry is funding a government-run system to monitor possible pollution. Reclamation efforts, meanwhile, can take years, if not decades.

Of the thousands of acres mined during 40 years of oil sands extraction in Alberta, only 247 acres have been restored to land resembling unmined areas.

"We will be here another 50 to 60 years," said Greg Stringham, vice president for oil sands for the Canadian Assn. of Petroleum Producers. "We're very supportive of looking at the cumulative effect of what we do."

Canada already is the largest exporter of crude to the United States, mostly from oil sands. Officials hope to increase production by 2030 to about 5 million barrels a day from the current 1.9 million barrels. Many of the world's biggest oil companies hold leases to develop oil sands along the Athabasca River and other parts of eastern Alberta. Syncrude, Suncor and Shell already operate upstream from Fort Chipewyan.

The Keystone XL pipeline, the most efficient way to ship oil, is crucial to the effort. Some local residents fear the pipeline would accelerate development of the oil sands, and create additional pollution.

Beginning in the 1990s, says 71-year-old commercial fisherman "Big Ray" Ladouceur, he began catching fish with deformities from Lake Athabasca. The cause is unknown, but three peer-reviewed studies by university researchers since 2009 have sounded warnings about water pollution linked to oil sands development in Alberta.

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One of those studies, which checked the Athabasca River for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a carcinogen and component of bitumen, found them, with higher concentrations closer to mining and processing sites.

A January 2013 study on sediment cores from lakes near Alberta oil sand mines showed "a consistent story of increased contaminants and ecological change," says Joshua Kurek, a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University in Ontario and lead author of the study. "Today our study lakes are very different compared to 50 years ago, and are on a path of unprecedented change."

The government has exempted the oil industry from policies designed to protect wetlands, and it did not penalize the industry when it failed to meet environmental standards for its tailing ponds, according to government reports. Thousands of permits for oil sands extraction were issued last year, but only seven public hearings have been held.

Cal Dallas, Alberta's minister of international and intergovernmental relations in Edmonton, the provincial capital, insisted that oversight is strong. "No one cares about the environment of our province more than the people who live there," he said in an email.

"When we believe our strict environmental standards have been broken," Dallas said, "we hold operators accountable through a variety of compliance actions."

There were about 4,000 possible violations of environmental regulations from 1996 to 2012 related to oil sands extraction; Alberta authorities took enforcement actions in 37 cases, according to a July report, based on provincial records, by the environmental groups Treeline Ecological Research and Global Forest Watch Canada.

Yet with jobs scarce, some indigenous groups have made their peace with industry and the government.

The village at Fort MacKay, 100 miles upstream from Fort Chipewyan, is surrounded by mines and tailing ponds, with more on the way. For years, residents fought each oil sands project, and lost. But by the 1990s, they began to work with the industry to have a say in its expansion.

"It's like sleeping next to a huge elephant," said Jim Boucher, chief of the 560-person Fort McKay First Nation. "At the end of the day, we have to make the best of it."

When the wind blows from the south, Fort MacKay smells of tar. But the village has reaped millions of dollars and is building a new youth center, church and amphitheater. Subdivisions are being built in the hills above the village; the driveways hold Cadillac Escalades and the backyards tepees.

In Fort Chipewyan, where a youth center downtown is named for the oil company Syncrude, there is fear about the effect of oil sands development and resignation about its inevitability.

Alice Rigney, 62, a lifelong resident, wonders whether her breast cancer a few years ago was related to mining pollutants, and she'd like to see the waste ponds cleaned up. But the semi-retired teacher of the Dene language says she's also realistic: The wages the oil company is offering are too good for Canadians to turn down.

"I don't think we can win. I don't even know what winning looks like," Rigney said. As she spoke, she looked out her kitchen window where whitecaps had formed on the lake. "This oil is just too important for the rest of Canada."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Carcinogens emitted from Canada's main fossil fuel hub, study says U.S. researchers say they found a high incidence of blood cancers among men in Alberta's 'Industrial Heartland.'

October 25, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

WASHINGTON — A new study has detected air pollutants, including carcinogens, in areas downwind of Canada's main fossil fuel hub in Alberta at levels rivaling those of major metropolises such as Beijing and Mexico City.

The study by researchers from UC Irvine and the University of Michigan also found a high incidence of blood cancers such as leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among men in the area, compared with the rest of Alberta and Canada.

"When you get cancers that can be caused by the carcinogens we are seeing, that is reason for concern," said Isobel J. Simpson, a lead author of the study and a researcher at UC Irvine's chemistry department.

The Alberta government said the study provides an inaccurate picture of pollution in the so-called Industrial Heartland, a three-county area where oil, chemicals and oil sands crude are processed.

"Based on the results of our monitoring, we see no evidence to suggest that people in the Industrial Heartland region are exposed to levels of the chemicals indicated in the paper," said Nikki Booth, spokeswoman for Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, the provincial regulator.

The issue has drawn attention because most of the oil produced in Canada is shipped to the United States.

Three previous studies since 2009 have detected carcinogens in Alberta's rivers and lakes, near where oil sands are mined. The latest study focuses on a site where oil sands are processed, along with other fossil fuels.

The Industrial Heartland, northeast of the provincial capital, Edmonton, is surrounded largely by farmland. The Shell Scotford complex includes a refinery and a facility that processes 225,000 barrels a day of bitumen, a tarry substance that is extracted from northeastern Alberta's oil sands, diluted with chemicals and piped to the United States.

The study released this week is based on air samples taken over two days in 2010 around 10 facilities. Researchers measured volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, organic chemical mixtures created by certain industrial processes and consumption of fossil fuels, among other things.

VOCs contribute to climate change and formation of smog. They also contain cancer-causing substances such as benzene and 1,3-butadiene.

Tests showed that airborne concentrations of 1,3-butadiene were 322 times greater downwind of the industrial area than upwind. Similarly, downwind concentrations of benzene were 51 times greater.

The researchers said the compounds were consistent with emissions from the nearby facilities.

Simpson said funding allowed for only two days of sampling and the population that showed higher cancer rates was small. The researchers recommended better monitoring of air pollution and health, and suggested that facilities reduce emissions of known carcinogens.

"We don't want this to be study after study after study with no action," Simpson said. "There's enough here to recommend reducing carcinogens in this area."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Coal

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 ‘Major failure’ of coal mine pit releases waste water into Athabasca River November 2, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

EDMONTON – The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) is responding to what it calls a “major failure” of a pit at a coal mine near Hinton.

A pit containing coal process and surface water failed at the Obed Mountain Coal Mine on Thursday evening, releasing a large quantity of the process water into the Athabasca River.

“Coal mines typically have a pit where the waste and water – coal dust and water – gather. And that pit, the open pit that contains that mixture, failed,” explained Darin Barter, a spokesperson with AER. “It’s our understanding that the water has entered two tributaries in the Athabasca River.”

Communities in the area have been notified of the failure, but Barter says it doesn’t affect residents’ drinking water.

“Residents may see a noticeable colour change to the river as the sediment moves downstream,” added Robyn Cochrane, a spokesperson with Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development (ASRD).

“Initial water samples are currently being analyzed by independent labs and they’ll be reviewed by Alberta Health Services (AHS) and Environment and Sustainable Resource Development staff.”

Cochrane says the results of the tests will be made public once they’re complete, which she believes could be as soon as Sunday.

Barter says an investigation is underway to determine if Obed Mountain Coal Ltd. was complying with AER requirements.

“In a nutshell, a company is required to operate safely. This is a major failure at a pit so our geotechnical folks are on site right now evaluating the construction, what exactly occurred. And if we determine that they were non-compliant with regulations, we can take serious measures all the way up to closing the mine down,” he said. “If they’re non-compliant, there’s going to be consequences.”

The coal mine is located about 30 kilometres east of Hinton.

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 Billion litres of coal-mine muck leaks into Alberta's Athabasca River November 3, 2013 EDMONTON - Geotechnical engineers remained at the Obed Mountain coal mine Sunday trying to determine how one billion litres of murky water leaked from a containment pond into the Athabasca River.

A barrier gave way on Halloween, allowing liquid containing coal dust, sand and dirt to flow through two creeks into the Athabasca, said Darin Barter, a spokesman for the Alberta Energy Regulator.

“I haven’t seen this happen. Coal mine incidents and pit leak incidents are really rare,” he said. “I was surprised this could happen.”

The Obed Mountain mine, owned by Sherritt International and now undergoing reclamation since operations were suspended last November, is about 30 kilometres northeast of Hinton.

The dirty water travelled 25 kilometres to the Athabasca, forming a muddy plume now floating downstream, Alberta Environment spokeswoman Jessica Potter said.

Department staff and Alberta Health Services were analyzing water samples to determine if anything in the sediment could cause environmental or health problems, she said.

“There’s actually quite a noticeable change of colour (in the river),” she said. “It’s like muddy water … murky, muddy water.”

The leading edge of the plume, which is slowly dissipating, was between Whitecourt and Athabasca on Sunday.

Investigators don’t know how long the plume is because aircraft needed to monitor the situation were unable to fly in the snowy weekend weather.

However, most communities in the area don’t take their drinking water from the river, and municipal water systems are designed to filter out suspended solids anyway, Potter said.

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Ten communities were notified about the release as a precaution, including Whitecourt, Hinton, Athabasca, Yellowhead and Woodland counties, and the Alexis Nakota Sioux and Alexander First Nations.

Generally, mines, oilsands and other energy sites are designed so water from operations as well as surface water from rain or melting snow flows into ponds, Potter said.

They hold the liquid until the sediment settles out and it’s safe to release.

The murky water passed through Whitecourt on Saturday night, Mayor Maryann Chichak said.

“The province and Sherritt Coal have both been very expedient in getting all their departments on board, ensuring any communities downstream were notified,” she said.

“It hasn’t had any impact on our community.”

Sherritt restarted mining at Obed Mountain in 2009 after the facility was shut down by Luscar six years earlier.

An estimated one million cubic metres (or one billion litres) of water containing fine clays, mudstone, sandstone, shale and fine coal flowed out of the breached pond, which is now empty, a Sherritt official said.

That’s roughly 500 times the amount of water in the Kinsmen Sports Centre’s five-metre-deep dive tank.

The materials in the pond are inert and aren’t toxic to humans or fish, the Sherritt official said in an email, asking not to be named because she’s not a company spokesperson.

The mine’s main pond has been inspected and is sound, she said. The company has dispatched an emergency response firm and staff from other operations to help with remediation.

100% Pure Bovine Excrement

Barter said the energy regulator sent engineers to the mine Friday, but couldn’t say how long it will take them to determine what happened.

The regulator approved and licensed the pond, he said, although he didn’t have information immediately available on how many similar structures there are in Alberta or how often they’re inspected.

In 2008, the RCMP deployed laser monitors to help crews successfully stabilize the slumping wall of an ash lagoon at TransAlta’s Keephills power plant, where 1.5 billion litres of toxic ash and water were stored.

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Hydropower and water retention

 Laos dam threatens fishermen’s' livelihoods Project has been damned by environmentalists, who say 30-metre barrier will warp the ecosystem.

Khone Phapheng, Laos - For generations, Kampei Samneang's ancestors have walked on a homemade highwire that spans the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia.

In their search for enough fish to feed their children, they have been the only family that has ever dared to cross the slippery line over to a small island, just centimetres above the roaring waves.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Here, the fish are plentiful. "My father taught me how to do this; he was a very talented fisherman, and my grandfather showed me how to make the net. Now I am showing my children," Kampei said, sitting at the edge of the waterfalls before getting on the highwire.

A homemade fishing net is all he can carry with him. Any more weight, Kampei explained, would likely cause him to fall into the vast rapids underneath. "It's important that I am scared. I have crossed so many times, but if I lose my fear, I will fall and die," said the 50-year-old man, clad in yellow rubber flip-flops.

Other fishermen don't dare to cross and stay closer to the riverbank instead. They admire him for his bravery, Kampei said. "There are many fishermen here, so I have to go to the islands in the middle of the waterfalls to catch enough."

Diversity hotspot Soon, however, the construction of the 30-metre-high, 256-megawatt Don Sahong Dam - scheduled to be completed in 2018 - might leave the fishermen's nets empty. Scientists and environmentalists say the dam will not only affect fisheries within its vicinity, but also put at risk the integrity of the entire Lower Mainstream Mekong River.

It will be better because the dam will make it possible for more fish to swim up and down, and that has been proven by our consultants and experts. - Yeong Chee Neng, director of the Don Sahong project Worldwide, the Mekong River ranks second in fish diversity after the Amazon, with more than 1,000 new plant and fish species discovered in the past decade, according to the World Fish Center. About 60 million people in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are dependent on the Mekong for their livelihoods, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

"The Don Sahong [Dam] ... will block migratory fish, which is 70 percent of Mekong fish, from swimming upstream and down on the only channel that allows the fish to reach the upper part of the Mekong," said Ame Trandem, the Southeast Asia programme director at advocacy group International Rivers.

She said the dam, which will require 95,000 truckloads of riverbed to be removed, will devastate the region's fish and dolphins, the tourism industry, and the hundreds of thousands of fishermen whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong.

Fish migration Chhit Sam Ath, executive director of NGO Forum Cambodia, has advocated against building the Don Sahong and other dams planned on the Lower Mekong.

"If the Don Sahong is built, it will have a huge, negative impact on the fish of the Lower Mekong Basin. We expect a huge difference for the fish migration and the number of fish, because the flow of the river will be blocked," he said.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Mega First Corporation Berhad, the Malaysian company in charge of building the dam, has dismissed these concerns, saying there are other channels the fish can use to migrate. Yeong Chee Neng, director of the Don Sahong project, said the dam would improve local livelihoods and fisheries, as shown by an environmental impact assessment that he said he could not share with the public.

"It will be better because the dam will make it possible for more fish to swim up and down, and that has been proven by our consultants and experts," Chee Neng said. He explained that traditional fish traps will be banned, and that a new fish passage will be built to allow them to bypass the dam.

However, scientists and fisheries experts are concerned over what they say is lack of evidence that fish would migrate through new channels. In an open letter penned in 2007, 34 scientists from universities around the globe warned the damage from building the dam would "far exceed the net returns from the project", and that it was not in the best interest of the region's people.

The extinction of the sensitive Irrawaddy dolphin as well as the critically endangered Giant Mekong Catfish are almost certain, Trandem said - and the Khone Phaphen Falls, now one of the region's major tourist attractions, would likely be left with less water.

Although the $3.8m Xayaburi dam in upper Laos, which is already under construction and will produce 1,285 megawatts, is much bigger, the Don Sahong will cause more damage because of its location at a critical point for fish migration, Trandem said.

'A lot of money' Other possibilities for the dam have not been explored, said Ian Baird, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who helped coordinate the scientists' open letter and has researched the Don Sahong extensively. He said the dam was sited on the Hou Sahong channel because when the project was first planned in the 1990s, researchers were still unaware of the channel's vital role for the ecosystem.

"Once the Malaysian company had invested a lot of money in investigating the project and preparing engineering designs, they learned during the [environmental impact assessment] that the channel was vital for fish migrations.

"But by then [they] didn't want to change their plans, since they had already invested a lot of money," Baird said.

Chee Neng said Mega First had been working on the plans for the dam for more than eight years, and he did not understand critics' complaints.

"If we wouldn't know what we are doing, we wouldn't do it. We wouldn't do anything that is not good for the people. I am a God-fearing person, and I have to answer to my God as well," he said.

As for fishermen such as Kampei, who have lived on their traditional fishing methods for generations, they were unaware of the possible danger to their livelihoods that the dam could bring.

Despite the threat from the dam, Kampei said he expects his children will follow in his footsteps. "If I don't teach my sons how to fish, how will they be able to support for their families?"

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

An interim study has found nearly all private run-of-river power projects are located on streams where they could affect fish. Rates of water flow are of concern, including rapid fluctuation (ramping) that can strand juvenile fish, such as those pictured.

 Most run-of-river B.C. hydro projects can harm fish Study finds all but one of 44 projects is on fish habitat, including salmon, trout and char November 3, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Almost 100 per cent of private run-of-river power projects studied in B.C. are located on streams where they could affect fish, an interim study for the Pacific Salmon Foundation has found.

Foundation president and CEO Brian Riddell said in an interview that while “most people sort of assume” that these hydro projects are located in stretches of river away from fish habitat, the reality is quite different.

Run-of-river projects have the capacity to impact fish living immediately upstream of water intakes, in the middle reaches where water is diverted through pipes to power houses and, finally, in downstream habitat.

Preliminary research of 44 run-of-river projects has found that up to 73 per cent have the potential to impact fish in the upper reaches and closer to 88 per cent in the lower reaches.

“There is only one facility that does not have salmonids present ...” said Riddell, in reference to salmon, trout and char species.

Environmental issues include water temperatures and oxygen levels, sediment movement, rates of water flow including rapid fluctuation (ramping) that can strand juvenile fish, impacts of water intakes and passage through spillways.

The study, which is due to be completed in December, is also looking at the effectiveness of fish mitigation/compensation projects.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The 44 run-of-river projects, mostly in southwestern B.C., including Vancouver Island, also show a huge disparity in the level of monitoring required depending on whether they were approved in the 1980s or present-day.

About 55 per cent of the 44 facilities generate less than 10 megawatts of hydro power.

“There are some sites where we only really got the water licence because they weren’t required to do a lot of the direct monitoring,” said Riddell, noting a more recently built site offered up some 15,000 pages of documents. “I’m not sure blame is involved. There might have been the thinking that, ‘They’re high enough in the (water) system, there won’t be much of an effect.’”

For newer facilities where monitoring is required, no one is fully analyzing those thousands of pages of documents.

“We need a different approach,” said Riddell, a former senior scientist with the federal fisheries department. “It’s not just about monitoring and sending in reports. Someone has to go through them.”

The foundation has hired Vancouver consultants Essa Technologies to study the impact of the run-ofriver sector on salmonids, including at-risk bull trout, at a cost of more than $300,000.

Funding is from Clean Energy B.C. — which spearheaded the study and represents run-of-river operators, the California-based Moore Foundation and B.C.’s Living Rivers Trust Fund.

Paul Kariya, executive director of Clean Energy B.C., said the report is “critical to the credibility of the clean-energy sector” and that “protecting the environment is job one.” Kariya is a former executive director of the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

Gwen Barlee, a run-of-river watchdog with the Wilderness Committee, said she is concerned about the quality of monitoring data supplied by industry under condition of anonymity. “What we don’t know is the most concerning,” she said. “I’d be wondering how fulsome that data is.”

Barlee added that freedom-of-information documents have shown “considerable non-compliance” in the industry, including repeated incidents of juvenile salmonids being left high and dry when water flows drop too quickly.

She noted that conditions are bound to deteriorate as a result of the federal government downsizing its fisheries staff and reducing the threshold for conducting environmental impact assessments on projects that can affect fish.

Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, speaking to Clean Energy B.C.’s annual conference in Vancouver this week, said the clean-energy sector represents more than $4 billion in capital expenditures. The province wants to help streamline the approval process for industry while ensuring that environmental standards are met, he said.

Thomson said there are now almost 70 hydro projects operating in B.C. and three wind power operations, with more than 130 First Nations receiving financial benefits through partnerships with the industry.

Freedom-of-information documents obtained from Thomson’s ministry found 749 non-compliance incidents from a total of 16 hydro plants in southwest B.C. in 2010.

They included 313 incidents related to ramping, 292 of not notifying government officials of problems, 101 to not fulfilling mitigation requirements, and 43 related to not maintaining in-stream flow rates.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Update: Proposed Chehalis River dam, Washington state Jim Wilcox – Wild Game Fish Conservation International November 13, 2013 Slides from today’s policy meeting:

Significant risks at selected dam site

CHTR = Trap and Haul

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Need for Site C Dam exaggerated as public hearings start next month November 7, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Public hearings into the controversial, $8 Billion Site C Dam are set to commence next month, as the Joint Review Panel for the project indicated today that proponent BC Hydro has filled in some key gaps identified in its proposal.

The process will kick off on December 9 in Fort St. John and is scheduled to wrap up by the end of January, with a decision expected mid-year.

Do we really need Site C Dam? BC Hydro maintains the need for the project is strong – a contention that has been challenged repeatedly in these pages.

“The need for the project is there certainly in the long term, it’s long-term planning. It, in fact, may be needed sooner, particularly from a capacity perspective,” Hydro spokesperson Dave Conway told media, citing a growth in demand to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG), mining and other industrial sectors.

Conway also referenced anticipated growth in population and use of electronic devices in defence of the need for a new dam.

But there are some serious holes in Hydro’s story.

BC’s electrical consumption flat First off, despite considerable growth in population and electronic devices over the past decade, BC’s electrical consumption has remained pretty well flat. According to Stats BC, the province was a net exporter of 5,800 Gigawatt hours (GWhrs) of power last year – an excess of about 10% of our actual demand. That figure is trending upward, as BC is awash in private power, while at the same time doing well with conservation.

Hydro predicted a growth in demand by 40% over the next two decades in its recent draft Integrated Resource Plan, but the utility has a long history of overestimating power needs, as independent economist Erik Andersen has detailed in The Common Sense Canadian.

Thirty years ago, when Site C was first proposed, British Columbians were threatened with brownouts if the dam wasn’t constructed. Needless to say, this scary scenario never came close to materializing.

LNG a whole different animal That said, the idea of powering the enormously energy-intensive, proposed LNG industry does introduce massive new electrical demands for the province. But this notion is fraught with a litany of problems, such as: The dam isn’t expected to be completed until 2022-2023 at the earliest – which is too late for proposed LNG plants to depend on.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

BC’s taxpayers and ratepayers need to ask themselves whether they want to spend $8 billion (likely far more, given the typical cost overruns of dams in general, not to mention this government’s routine mismanagement of capital projects) on a dam to provide subsidized power to the oil and gas industry. Site C will only compound already skyrocketing power bills for consumers.

The 1,100 Megawatt dam wouldn’t come close to fulfilling the LNG industry’s voracious appetite for power. Hydro has only allocated 3,000 GWhrs – a drop in the bucket for the five plants Natural Gas Minister Rich Coleman wants to see built over the next decade. The reality is these plants will have to power themselves with their own natural gas, so building Site C to supplement them a little makes no sense.

The dam carries considerable environmental and food security trade-offs as it would flood close to 60,000 acres of wildlife habitat and prime farmland in the beautiful Peace River Valley. This at a time when the government is allegedly set to dismantle the Agricultural Land Commission to remove pesky farmland as an obstacle to oil and gas development.

The dam also faces considerable local opposition, led by Treaty 8 First Nations, who staunchly oppose it. They note that over 100 cultural sites would flooded by the dam.

Dam faces strong opposition Local First Nations, environmental groups and landowners are supported by organizations beyond the region too, such as the Vancouver-based Wilderness Committee.

Says the organization’s National Campaign Director Joe Foy on today’s announcement: There’s 100 kilometres of river valley — a huge amount of farmland — that would be flooded. I don’t know if the people in the south have locked on that yet. While that river is still running, we’ve got some fight in us.

The real question Site C is often justified in terms of powering 450,000 homes, which is an unfair characterization, since BC looks to be a net exporter of power for years to come. When the government or crown corporation acknowledges that Site C is really about powering industry, at least they’re being more honest with the public. But in a day and age when we produce just 40% of our own food in BC, when power bills are going through the roof, when we’re running sizeable deficits and racking up debt for future generations, the question is this: Should taxpayers shell out billions to destroy a massive amount of quality agricultural and forest land – all to provide highly-subsidized power to the oil and gas industry?

This is the question that needs to be front and centre at these public hearing beginning next month.

The panel is currently accepting applications to speak at the hearings.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Liquefied Natural Gas

Lelu Island, near Prince Rupert, BC, is seen March 8, 2013

 B.C. hints at carbon offsets to counter LNG plants' emissions November 11, 2013 VICTORIA -- Like the underground shale gas that Premier Christy Clark says will pave the way to a debt-free future, British Columbia appears caught between a rock and a hard place in balancing its hunger for a burgeoning liquefied natural gas industry and meeting its ambitious 2007 greenhouse gas pollution-reduction targets.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

If there is a definitive plan in place, the government isn't laying it out yet: Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman says the Liberals' LNG economic plan, which includes a tax structure developed with industry consultation, should be complete within the next 30 days. It won't be introduced to the legislature until next year.

Environment Minister Mary Polak says similar LNG environmental negotiations are underway, of which she indicates the options are limited and is refusing to fully elaborate.

But a process of elimination indicates B.C. will rely heavily on carbon offsets to meet its environmental goals.

That means even if the actual pollution dumped into the atmosphere increases, rather than declines, B.C. will still be able to say the targets have been met because of the discounts offered by requiring industry to financially support environmentally-friendly initiatives to fight global warming.

Still, even if the offsets enable B.C. to claim it has met its pollution targets -- targets trumpeted at the time as being among the most stringent in North America -- the emissions levels Canada must report to the United Nations will tell a different story.

Those numbers are reported without the discounts of offsets and they are numbers environmentalists predict will rival the emissions of neighbouring Alberta's oil sands industry. Even without the introduction of LNG plants, environmentalists argue, B.C. is already on its way to missing its legislated targets.

"There are only two ways to reduce emissions, you either actually reduce them or you find means of mitigation and many times that's through offsets," said Polak.

"We know many B.C. companies are carbon neutral -- Harbour Air for example -- but it's not because they have no emissions. It's because they purchase offsets."

Besides offsets, the government could reach the targets by taking its foot off the pedal on its ambitious LNG development goals.

That's clearly not going to happen: Clark's Liberal government says it wants to build the cleanest LNG industry in the world and continues to repeat election-campaign statements that B.C.'s natural gas will scrub clean China's coal-darkened skies.

In the beginning, the Liberals pledged three LNG plants: Now, the proposal is for five to seven.

The government could back away from the targets committing it to cut greenhouse gas emissions 33 per cent by 2020 -- targets created under a different Liberal government, before Clark's aggressive push towards a liquefied natural gas industry and all the extra emissions it is bound to create.

The government has refused to say it will do that, but it has left the door open.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

A government official, on background, says the targets are just that: targets. If they aren't met, government will simply try harder to meet them next time. Much like balanced budget legislation, the official says, there are no penalties for not meeting the goal.

Environmentalists and noted climate scientists, including Green Party MLA Andrew Weaver and Simon Fraser University's Mark Jaccard, who both consulted for the Liberals on the climate targets law in 2007, have already repeatedly said the province isn't going to meet its pollution reduction targets.

"It's certainly our goal," says Coleman without committing to actually doing it.

"There may be some challenges around that," he says in an interview shortly after returning from Asia where he toured an LNG plant in Malaysia and met with executives from Petronas, the Malaysian energy company planning a $36 billion LNG investment near Prince Rupert.

"We're going to have the highest environmental standards that there are and we're going to have the cleanest industry that there is in the world as well."

A third option to require the industry to explore other emission reduction techniques that could involve storing carbon emissions underground is appealing, but the technology is in its infancy and no one expects B.C. can rely on it in the short-term.

"You could potentially require certain technologies be employed," says Polak. "You could require certain purchase of offsets, but all of that is subject to negotiations, discussions, in much the same way as having the discussions now with taxation policy."

So that leaves offsets as the most likely way to allow British Columbia to meet or at least reach for its emission goals.

The challenge is not small.

A recent report by Clean Energy Canada, an affiliate of Tides Canada, warned that without B.C. government policy leadership, LNG produced in B.C. could emit more than three-times the carbon produced at other plants around the world.

The B.C. government has not stated publicly what it expects its greenhouse gas emissions to be from the proposed LNG plants. But Clean Energy Canada examined a similar LNG plant under construction in Australia and concluded that B.C. LNG facilities can expect to emit about one tonne of carbon pollution for every tonne of LNG produced.

Clean Energy Canada estimates that will work out to 36 million tonnes of carbon pollution for the initially-proposed three LNG plants in the Kitimat area.

Prof. James Tansey is a business professor at the University of B.C. who is also the chief executive officer and founder of Vancouver-based Offsetters, a global carbon-management company that helps organizations and individuals understand, reduce and offset their climate impact.

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Tansey says the carbon pollution debate in B.C. is focused on legitimate concerns about increased provincial emissions.

But like the government, he notes a global move towards natural gas ultimately reduces GHG emissions worldwide.

Tansey says natural gas is a cleaner energy than oil and coal and has the potential to reduce GHG emissions by 27 per cent.

He says he expects the government to introduce regulations that will require the natural gas companies to purchase the offsets as a cost of doing business in B.C. "The companies will have to do it," said Tansey. "People don't like offsets in general, but it's really the only way to say those millions of tonnes of extra emissions from running the LNG facilities can be addressed. If you don't do that, then they're going to appear as a black mark on the carbon accounts of the province."

Offsets may allow B.C. to meet its targets or at least approach them while still reaping the economic benefits of LNG development.

But the actual pollution numbers -- without adjustments due to offsets -- must be reported to provincial, federal and international climate-change monitoring agencies.

Environment Canada's national inventory submission last April to the United Nations Framework convention on climate change measured a decline of almost six per cent in B.C.'s GHG emissions since 2007, when the province passed its targets law.

The inventory measured B.C.'s carbon dioxide emissions at 59.1 million tonnes in 2011 -- the most recent numbers -- down from 62.6 million tonnes in 2007. The target for 2020 is about 20.6 million tonnes.

The Environment Canada report stated Canada's total GHG emissions for 2011 were measured at 702 million tonnes, while Alberta's GHG emissions were 242 million tonnes.

Matt Horne, a climate change expert with the Pembina Institute, said he's certain B.C.'s LNG dreams will increase the province's GHG emissions well beyond Environment Canada's most current totals.

"I don't know where they are going to go with the targets," he said.

"I haven't seen any credible projections of how the province is going to meet those targets in particular around the idea of three to five LNG plants being developed. You can't square that circle."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Wind  Wind Power Without the Blades October 15, 2013

Noise from wind turbine blades, inadvertent bat and bird kills and even the way wind turbines look have made installing them anything but a breeze. New York design firm Atelier DNA has an alternative concept that ditches blades in favor of stalks.

Resembling thin cattails, the Windstalks generate electricity when the wind sets them waving. The designers came up with the idea for the planned city Masdar, a 2.3-square-mile, automobile-free area being built outside of Abu Dhabi.

Atelier DNA’s "Windstalk project came in second in the Land Art Generator competition a contest sponsored by Madsar to identify the best work of art that generates renewable energy from a pool of international submissions.

Each base is slightly different, and is sloped so that rain will funnel into the areas between the concrete to help plants grow wild. These bases form a sort of public park space and serve a technological purpose. Each one contains a torque generator that converts the kinetic energy from the stalk into energy using shock absorber cylinders similar to the kind being developed by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Levant Power.

Wind isn’t constant, though, so Nunez-Ameni says two large chambers below the whole site will work like a battery to store energy. The idea is based on existing hydroelectric pumped storage systems. Water in the upper chamber will flow through turbines to the lower chamber, releasing stored energy until the wind starts up again.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Forest Management

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

ď ś Scientists Oppose Logging Bills in Congress November 2, 2013 More than 200 biologists, ecologists and other scientists are urging Congress to defeat legislation they say would destroy critical wildlife habitat by setting aside U.S. environmental laws to speed logging of burned trees at Yosemite National Park and other national forests and wilderness areas across the West.

The experts say two measures pushed by pro-logging interests ignore a growing scientific consensus that the burned landscape plays a critical role in forest regeneration and is home to many birds, bats and other species found nowhere else.

"We urge you to consider what the science is telling us: that post-fire habitat created by fire, including patches of severe fire, are ecological treasures rather than ecological catastrophes, and that post-fire logging does far more harm than good to the nation's public lands," they wrote in a letter mailed to members of Congress Friday.

One bill, authored by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., would make logging a requirement on some public forestland, speed timber sales and discourage legal challenges.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The House approved the legislation 244-173 in September and sent it to the Senate, where it awaits consideration by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The White House has threatened a veto, saying it would jeopardize endangered species, increase lawsuits and block creation of national monuments.

Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said wildfires burned 9.3 million acres in the U.S. last year, while the Forest Service only harvested timber from about 200,000 acres.

Hastings' bill includes an amendment by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., which he also introduced as separate legislation specific to lands burned by this year's Rim Fire at Yosemite National Park, neighboring wilderness and national forests in the Sierra Nevada.

"We have no time to waste in the aftermath of the Yosemite Rim Fire," McClintock said at a subcommittee hearing in October. "By the time the formal environmental review of salvage operations has been completed in a year, what was once forestland will have already begun converting to brush land, and by the following year, reforestation will become infinitely more difficult and expensive."

The Rim Fire started in August and grew to become one of the largest wildfires in California history. It burned 400 square miles and destroyed 11 residences, three commercial properties and 98 outbuildings. It cost $127 million to fight.

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee remain optimistic the Senate will take up Hastings' bill before the end of the year, said Mallory Micetich, the committee's deputy press secretary.

"We have a lot of hazardous fuel buildup, and it will help alleviate some of the threat of catastrophic wildfires," she said.

The scientists see it differently.

"Just about the worst thing you can do to these forests after a fire is salvage-log them," said Dominick DellaSala, the lead author of the letter. "It's worse than the fire itself because it sets back the recovery that begins the minute the fire is out."

DellaSala, chief scientist at the conservation group Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., was on a team of scientists that produced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's final recovery plan for the spotted owl in 2008.

Many who signed the opposition letter have done research in the field and several played roles with the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service in developing logging policies for the threatened northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.

"Though it may seem at first glance that a post-fire landscape is a catastrophe ecologically," they wrote, "numerous scientific studies tell us that even in patches where forest fires burned most intensely, the resulting post-fire community is one of the most ecologically important and biodiverse habitat types in western conifer forests.

"Moreover, it is the least protected of all forest types and is often as rare, or rarer, than old-growth forest due to damaging forest practices encouraged by post-fire logging policies."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Cathedral Grove, Canada’s Most Famous Old-Growth Forest, Under Threat as Island Timberlands Moves to Log Adjacent Old-Growth Mountainside The planned logging will have numerous detrimental effects November 1, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Port Alberni, Vancouver Island – Cathedral Grove, Canada’s most famous old-growth forest, is under threat as one of the province’s largest logging companies, Island Timberlands, began falling a new logging road right-of-way last week towards a stand of old-growth Douglas-fir trees on the mountainside above Cathedral Grove. Cathedral Grove is in the 300 hectare MacMillan Provincial Park, an area smaller than Vancouver’s Stanley Park, located along the Cameron River at the base of Mount Horne where the planned logging would occur.

Last week conservationists with the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance came across the new road construction activities. Fallers had cleared several hundred metres of a new logging road through a second-growth forest, heading towards a stand of old-growth Douglas firs where the planned logging will take place on Mount Horne. Earlier in March, survey tape marked “Falling Boundary” and “Road Location” was found in the planned cutblock that comes as close as 300 meters from the park boundary. An aerial overflight by Ancient Forest Alliance activists this past Tuesday confirmed the existence of new road construction activities headed towards the grove. See The planned logging will have numerous detrimental effects, including: fragmenting the continuous forest cover and wildlife habitat on the slope above Cathedral Grove; destroying some of the last remaining 1% of BC’s old-growth coastal Douglas-fir trees; destroying the wintering habitat of blacktailed deer in an area previously designated to sustain them; increasing siltation of the Cameron River (which runs through Cathedral Grove) during the heavy winter rains as soil washes down from the new clearcut and logging road; and destroying part of the Mount Horne Loop Trail, a popular hiking and mushroom-picking trail that the cutblock overlaps - Island Timberlands has now closed access to the trail.

The flagged cutblock by Island Timberlands is estimated to be about 40 hectares and lies on the southwest facing slope of Mt. Horne on the ridge above the park and highway that millions of tourists visit annually. The logging would take place in an area formerly designated as an Ungulate Winter Range to protect the old-growth winter habitat of black-tailed deer – a designation that was removed when the BC Liberal government deregulated the lands in 2004 by removing them from their Tree Farm Licence.

Island Timberlands’ resumption of logging activities adjacent to Cathedral Grove appears to perfectly coincide timing-wise – either by sheer coincidence or by callous intention - with last week’s solidarity rally in Cathedral Grove involving half a dozen community conservation groups. The increased cooperation between diverse conservation groups has been prompted by heightened concerns about Island Timberlands’ widespread escalation of old-growth logging in many areas around Port Alberni recently.

Island Timberlands is currently engaged in multiple logging incursions into other highly endangered old-growth forests besides Mount Horne. This includes recent logging and/or road-building at McLaughlin Ridge, Juniper Ridge, Labour Day Lake, and the Cameron Valley Firebreak in the Port Alberni area; plans to log the Stillwater Bluffs near Powell River and the Day Road Forest near Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast; and plans to log old-growth forests at Basil Creek and the Green Valley on Cortes Island.

Until recently much of these lands under threat were regulated to the stronger standards found on public lands. However, in 2004, the BC Liberal government removed 88,000 hectares of Weyerhaeuser’s private forest lands, now owned by Island Timberlands, from their Tree Farm Licences, thereby removing the old-growth, riparian, scenic, wildlife, and endangered species habitat protections, and the restrictions on raw log exports, on those lands. Alberni-Pacific Rim Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Scott Fraser has repeatedly worked to hold the BC government to account to remedy the situation by getting Island Timberlands to hold-off from logging these hotspots until a political solution can be implemented.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Island Timberlands (IT) is the second largest private land owner in BC, owning 258,000 hectares of private land mainly on Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, and Haida Gwaii. Conservationists are calling on Island Timberlands to immediately back-off from its logging plans in old-growth and high conservation value forests until these lands can be protected either through purchase or through regulation.

Conservationists are also calling for a provincial plan to protect the province’s old-growth forests, to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, and to end the export of raw, unprocessed logs to foreign mills. For private lands, conservationists are calling on the BC Liberal government to re-establish and bolster the former BC park acquisition fund (eliminated after the 2008 provincial budget). A dedicated provincial fund of $40 million per year (about 0.1% of the $40 billion annual provincial budget), raising $400 million over 10 years, would go a long way towards purchasing and protecting old-growth forests and other endangered ecosystems on private lands across the province. The fund would be similar to the existing park acquisition funds of various regional districts in BC, such as the $3 million/year Land Acquisition Fund of the Capital Regional District around Greater Victoria, which are augmented by the fundraising efforts of private citizens and land trusts.

BC’s old-growth forests are vital to support endangered species, tourism, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and many First Nations cultures whose unceded lands these are. About 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests have already been logged on BC’s southern coast, including over 90% of the valley-bottom ancient forests where the largest trees grow, and 99% of the oldgrowth coastal Douglas fir trees. See maps and stats at: http://www.ancientforestalliance.org/oldgrowth-maps.php QUOTES: “On October 19, MLA Scott Fraser and myself met with Island Timberlands’ CEO Darshan Sihota, and asked him if he was intending to save any old-growth Douglas-fir forests – his reply was that it was his legal right to log it ALL. So despite the BC government’s scientists formerly designating these vital wildlife habitats for protection when they were still within the Tree Farm Licence, Island Timberlands sees nothing wrong with harvesting the old growth forests across all their lands. This even includes the mountainside above Cathedral Grove, Canada’s most famous old-growth forest,” stated Jane Morden, coordinator of the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance.

“Cathedral Grove is BC’s iconic old-growth forest that people around the world love – it’s like the redwoods of Canada. The fact that a company can just move to log the mountainside above Canada’s most famous old-growth forest – assisted by the BC government’s previous deregulation of those lands and their current failure to take responsibility – underscores the brutal collusion between the BC Liberal government and the largest companies to liquidate our ancient forest heritage,” stated Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “Island Timberlands needs to back off from Cathedral Grove and other endangered old-growth forests, while the BC Liberal government must take responsibility for allowing this destruction to happen. They broke it, now they have to fix it, either by purchasing or re-regulating these lands.”

“This is not about a company just wanting the right to log its own private lands unfettered, as the government and industry PR-spin suggests. These corporate private lands were previously regulated to public land standards for over half a century in exchange for the BC government’s granting of free Crown land logging rights to the companies back then – what has happened is that the regulations on private lands were removed recently, while the companies were still allowed to keep their Crown land logging rights,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance photographer and campaigner.

“Cathedral Grove is the mascot of old-growth forests in Canada. If we can’t ensure its ecological integrity because of the BC government’s inaction – or complicity – it really gives a black eye to BC’s environmental reputation in the international community,” stated Annette Tanner, chair of the MidIsland Wilderness Committee, who has led the fight for the ecological integrity of Cathedral Grove for over a decade.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 State seeks public input on timber land plan November 7, 2013 FORKS — The state (Washington) Department of Natural Resources is taking public comment on the revised draft environmental impact statement for the Olympic Experimental State Forest land plan and has set a public meeting in Forks later this month.

Public comment will taken until 5 p.m. Dec. 16 The Forks meeting will be from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Nov. 19 in the DNR Region Office Conference Room at 411 Tillicum Lane.

The revised plan examines the potential significant impacts to the environment from two management alternatives being considered for the 250,000 acres of state trust lands on the west side of the North Olympic Peninsula in Clallam and Jefferson counties.

DNR officials will answer questions and provide information about the revised draft, which outlines the choice under consideration: no change in present management practices or a change to a “forest estate” model.

The agency now designs timber sales one watershed at a time, using maps, databases and other tools.

Under the “landscape” alternative, the agency would design timber sales across state trust lands using a computer model that recommends actions and projects how forested landscape will change over time.

The draft plan says the impact of both the alternatives on the Northern spotted owl is low.

It also examines possible climate change.

The revised draft replaces one published in 2010. Changes were made based on analysis and a review of the comments received, DNR said.

Foresters and managers can use the plan to prepare management proposals for specific sites.

DNR manages trust forests to earn revenue for the state’s public schools and other trust beneficiaries while providing habitat for fish and wildlife.

The revised draft statement may be viewed at http://1.usa.gov/16OUua5.

Another meeting is planned in Olympia on Nov. 21.

Comments can be emailed to DNR’s SEPA Center at SEPAcenter@dnr.wa.gov.

Comments also can be sent to the state Department of Natural Resources SEPA Center at 1111 Washington St. S.E., MS: 47015, Olympia, WA 98504-7015.

The phone number is 360-902-1739; fax number is 360-902-1789.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Government action/inaction and wild game fish

 I Don’t Pay Attention to Politics…

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 GMO: Government-enabled, greed-driven, corporate crime against humanity Watch this life-changing video HERE

“Genetic Roulette – The Gamble of Our Lives” Alexandra Morton: “Watch this - not only is it important to your life and your child's life - it describes what we face, the way those of us who stand up to the salmon farming industry are treated, the power of these agribusinesses, but also how to fix it..... it is in our hands”

Editorial Comment:  Atlantic salmon raised in open pen feedlots for human consumption are fed genetically engineered (GE) animal and plant material along with PCB-laden forage fish.  Proposed GE Atlantic salmon are themselves GMO that will be fed GMO products.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

ď ś After Washington GMO label battle, both sides eye national fight November 8, 2013 (Reuters) - Both sides of the costly and highstakes GMO labeling battle in Washington state say they see an even bigger national fight ahead despite the apparent defeat of the mandatory labeling measure by Washington state voters this week.

The measure died 47.05 percent to 52.95 percent, according to results updated Thursday night by the Washington Secretary of State's office as results continued to trickle in. The likely loss followed a similar defeat last year in California when a ballot initiative there also failed to pass.

"It is pretty well beyond any doubt," said Secretary of State elections division spokesman David Ammons of the apparent defeat of the labeling proposal. Results will be certified on December 4 and are unlikely to change much, he added.

The measures in Washington and California had early strong support in polls. That support ebbed as food and agricultural industry players poured millions of dollars into advertising campaigns spelling out what the industry groups said were deep flaws in the proposed laws. A consortium that includes General Mills, Nestle USA, PepsiCo, Monsanto,; and other corporate giants, contributed roughly $22 million to kill the labeling law.

Despite the Washington loss, proponents pushing for labeling on food made from genetically modified crops cite progress in 20 other U.S. states, particularly in Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire. They say they will also turn up the pressure on federal lawmakers and regulators.

The 2016 presidential election is a prime target for more ballot initiative efforts due to higher voter turnout, they say.

"We'll keep bringing the fight until they give in," said David Bronner, who has contributed more than $2 million to the labeling effort through a California organic soap company he owns. "The commitment of our movement... is huge and growing."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Opponents of labeling say they do not want to Watch “Genetic Roulette – The Gamble of Our Lives” HERE keep waging a multi-million-dollar, state-bystate fight against mandatory GMO labeling.

Any labeling should be voluntary and follow standards set at the federal level as state-bystate labeling could create costly problems for food manufacturing and distribution channels, they say.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, (GMA) which represents more than 300 food companies, is funding efforts in 25 states to defeat labeling measures. The group is pushing for a "federal solution that will protect consumers by ensuring that the FDA, America's leading food safety authority, sets national standards for the safety and labeling of products made with GMO ingredients," GMA CEO Pamela Bailey said in a statement.

Officials at Monsanto, which spent more than $5 million to kill the Washington measure, say labeling supporters are trying to create the false impression that biotech foods are harmful.

"We absolutely support the consumer's right to know," said Robb Fraley, chief technology officer at Monsanto, the world's largest seed company. "But we can't support misleading labels that infer there is something unsafe about biotech products."

Monsanto has developed an array of biotech corn, soybeans and other crops that have been genetically altered to repel pests and tolerate direct spraying of herbicides. Those crops are used in a vast array of food products.

The companies say the crops are safe and many scientific studies back those claims. But there are also studies showing links to human and animal health problems, and environmental damage.

Proponents of labeling fear the food and biotech agriculture companies will seek a federal ban to preempt more state labeling efforts. But they continue to express confidence in long-term victory.

"There is growing consumer outrage and backlash," said Dave Murphy, executive director of Food Democracy Now, a consumer group that support labeling. "We are going to wear them down. We are going to win."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Salmon Farming: Is it Killing Canada’s Salmon Industry?

November 7, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

MUNCIE, Indiana – We’ve talked about the cozy relationships between industry and our federal government. Lobby groups for corporate America spend millions of dollars lobbying Washington and Hoosier to make sure politicians are catering to their best interest. America isn’t the only country who suffers from this influence as the video we found uncovers that Canada’s salmon farming industry is killing off their own natural salmon populations.

In fact, our cozy relationships go beyond lobbying groups since we have politicians appointing industry professionals to regulatory agencies, and then they move from regulatory agency into elected officials offices as staffers then back into industry. We even see them meeting with government leaders from around the globe to negotiate secret trade agreements.

It’s so bad in Washington, they call it the ‘revolving door’ inside the Beltway in D.C. According to OpenSecrets, “It’s through a door—a revolving door that shuffles former federal employees into jobs as lobbyists, consultants and strategists just as the door pulls former hired guns into government careers. While officials in the executive branch, Congress and senior congressional staffers spin in and out of the private and public sectors, so too does privilege, power, access and, of course, money.”

We’re not sure where the revolving door enters in Canada, but when it comes to the salmon industry, Canada can get very defensive. However, it appears their government chose Big Industry farms over the natural salmon returning from the ocean to inland waterways. We’re pretty sure business is secondary to ensuring our environment is preserved so it can support our natural habitat. When our natural habitat is dying within its own system – it’s a red flag.

It should be in the best interest of government and the people it serves to protect our environment and look at the obvious red flags, but we’re learning that is not a fiscal priority. This is why Muncie Voice appreciates the work of our environmental activists who draw attention to the injustices and raise awareness of their neighbors. The level of apathy to our own destruction of our environment goes beyond shameful into the category of foolishness.

We pretend to be religious people, but when our natural environment – earth and its ecological systems – cry out for our help, we bury our heads in the sand – denial – we ignore the obvious warning signs.

Until a significant group of people begin moving behind a subject, no change will occur. In fact, we are convinced that Big Industry and government leaders they own rely on our apathy.

Back to the specific case in Canada, diseases from the farm raised salmon are infecting salmon returning from the ocean by the thousands in Canada. The infected salmon are too weak to make their pilgrimage up the streams to spawning locations. When activists test the dying salmon along the streams, they are discovering a common disease and scientists who work for the government and outside the government are tracing it back to the salmon farms.

Needless to say, it’s not good for Big Industry or government. Check out the video to see the similarities of how Canada handles their situation and what we witness in the USA. Why should you care? If you watch the video, you’ll find where some of the salmon were tested for these diseases. Be informed.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Still

Fishing for government action on the Cohen Commission’s salmon recommendations? – So are we!

Sign Watershed Watch Salmon Society petition HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Grays Harbor Salmon Management Policy Public Workshop Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife seeks public input

Editorial Comment – Key public recommendations: 

Highest priority: wild salmon and steelhead conservation and restoration



Manage harvests for maximum financial gains for Washington citizens



Increase fisheries enforcement

Ron Warren: Washington Fish and Wildlife

Dave Hamilton and other Chehalis basin. wild salmon conservationists

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The True Cost of Scottish Salmon Boycott Scottish Farmed Salmon – watch video HERE

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Science Matters: One year after Cohen report, salmon still face an upstream battle As the days get cooler and shorter, millions of salmon are making the arduous journey up the rivers and streams of British Columbia to the spawning grounds where they were born. Waiting for this rich pulse of life from the Pacific Ocean are bears, gulls, wolves, eagles, ospreys, crows, pine martins and dozens of other species. Communities and businesses wait, too. It’s fitting that this time of year also marks the first anniversary of the final report of the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River.

The record decline in sockeye returning to the Fraser River in 2009 provided the initial push for a federal judicial inquiry. Now, four years later, the offspring of those salmon are returning to spawning grounds in dismally low numbers – so low that sockeye salmon fishery closures are widespread.

What happened to Justice Bruce Cohen’s 75 carefully crafted recommendations to rebuild Pacific salmon? What will happen to the industry and communities that depend on them?

The Cohen Commission took three years, 2,145 exhibits, 892 public submissions and 138 days of hearings with 180 witnesses to create its report. The David Suzuki Foundation worked with lawyers at Ecojustice to provide research and testimony to help ensure the inquiry looked into problems within the current management system. With optimism that the federal government was taking the decline of wild salmon seriously, this independent and thorough review created a blueprint for action. What had become a contentious and polarizing issue had a direction forward.

That clear direction, however, has been followed with near silence and little effort from the government. Although politicians say they’re reviewing the report and taking actions “consistent with the recommendations,” the few steps they have taken, such as providing grants for research projects, miss the mark and don’t address the significant issues and opportunities raised by Justice Cohen.

The government’s own Wild Salmon Policy, released in 2005, provides a strong template for salmon conservation and formed a key plank of Cohen’s recommendations. It’s time to bring this policy to life with a cost-itemized plan for determining tasks, delegated responsibility for carrying them out and defined timelines. The government hasn’t even appointed a champion to navigate the complex social, economic, ecological and political world of wild Pacific salmon.

The commission concluded that climate change is one of most troubling stressors for the fish. Salmon are sensitive to water temperature changes and Fraser River waters are projected to warm. Canada must do its part to address climate change if fisheries management is to have any influence on the future of these amazing creatures and all those that depend on them.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Impacts from open net-pen salmon farming also came under the inquiry’s scrutiny. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans continues to both promote and regulate the salmon farming industry. Justice Cohen recommended DFO separate these conflicting mandates and end its responsibility to promote farmed salmon. DFO should return to what it did well: gathering relevant scientific data, applying it and making it available to the public.

Justice Cohen called for a freeze on fish farm expansion in the Discovery Islands, along an important salmon migratory route, and removal of farms if impacts aren’t addressed by 2020. The commission interviewed British Columbians and received a clear message: don’t risk the future of wild salmon and their important contribution to the fabric of First Nations culture, coastal communities and the whole of Canadian life.

A year has passed, the testimony is in, the evidence heard and $26 million spent. It’s time for action to rebuild wild Pacific salmon runs, so this iconic fish can be shared and enjoyed for generations to come. The fate of wild salmon is too important to be left to languish in government offices. We can’t go on setting up inquiries to review problems and then ignore their recommendations.

This is a serious report with a clear blueprint to address problems. It deserves a serious response. As the salmon struggle to make their miraculous journey up B.C.’s wild rivers, we have to tell Prime Minster Stephen Harper and Fisheries Minister Gail Shea it’s time for the government to get moving too.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org

Cohen Commission: Final Report

Final Report

Volume 1: The Sockeye Fishery

Volume 2: Causes of the Decline

Volume 3: Recommendations - Summary - Process

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Comment: One year later, nothing has improved for wild salmon October 31, 2013 British Columbia’s wild salmon are still waiting.

Editorial Comment:

One year ago today, the highly anticipated final report of the Cohen Commission was released.

The commission, which cost $26.4 million and took more than two years, was struck to investigate the decline of Fraser River sockeye salmon stocks. Its findings were expected to provide better understanding of the issues that affect migrating salmon and provide recommendations on how to effectively manage them.

Canada’s shameful lack of action regarding Justice Cohen’s recommendations is further evidence of this government’s complete and utter disregard for public health, wild ecosystems, cultures, communities and economies.

It’s incumbent on each of us to support the farmed Atlantic salmon boycott. Joe Public needs to Not buy Atlantic salmon

The report, entitled The Uncertain Future of Fraser River Sockeye, painted a grim picture for B.C.’s wild salmon and called on the federal government to fund and publish a “wild salmon policy implementation plan.”

Since then, no plan has been published, and no other action has been taken to protect and conserve wild salmon on Canada’s Pacific coast. At best, this is a horrendous waste of taxpayer dollars, and at worst, it’s a total abandonment of B.C.’s most iconic species — and the ecosystems, cultures and economies that depend on it.

The federal government’s inaction on Cohen was preceded by the passing of Budget Bill C-38, which gutted fish-habitat protection laws. The bill eliminated one-third of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s habitat staff in B.C. It dropped the law that required major projects to undergo both a federal and provincial environmental assessment, paving the way for pipelines, coal mines and other industrial projects that jeopardize habitats for salmon and other species.

Bill C-38 is one of the biggest regressions in environmental protection in Canadian history.

All this has come at a time when Pacific salmon stocks are not nearly as resilient as they have been in the past. With most runs depleted and some gone altogether, salmon are poorly suited to withstand the institutionalized neglect they now face from federal lawmakers.

As population and development have exploded in B.C. over the past century, a number of factors have affected salmon.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Clearcut logging has decimated watersheds up and down the coast. This and other industrial activities, including mining, urban sprawl and some hydroelectric projects, have had a serious impact on the rivers, estuaries and marine environments upon which salmon depend.

Compounding all of this is climate change, a catastrophic shift to which salmon are extremely sensitive, and which our federal government has refused to take seriously, a point of national embarrassment for Canadians.

Finally, salmon farms, which feature open-net pens that expose migrating salmon to such hazards as fecal waste and viral outbreaks, have further impacted wild salmon stocks.

On the matter of the salmon farming industry, our provincial government has also displayed shocking irresponsibility when it comes to protecting wild salmon. Internal documents I received through a freedom-of-information request last spring show a disturbing relationship between the Ministry of Agriculture and salmon-farming corporations. Provincial aquaculture scientists — whose job it is to manage and protect the marine environment and its resources — sought direction from corporations when releasing information about disease outbreaks.

In one instance, a ministry spokesperson asked if Alberta was an “important market” for farmed salmon before doing an interview on disease outbreaks with an Edmonton radio station.

In May 2012, the B.C. minister of agriculture attempted (and failed, thankfully) to pass a bill that would have made it illegal for media or the public to report on disease outbreaks on salmon farms.

This prioritization of business interests over the health of our marine ecosystems is a heartbreaking example of the environmental recklessness that is entrenched in our governments.

We deserve better than this. A year since the Cohen Commission was released, it’s time we start demanding action to protect wild salmon.

At both the provincial and federal level, our governments are laser-focused on one thing: the exploitation and export of fossil fuels. The fallacy of infinite growth based on finite resources seems not to have dawned on them. Our leaders need to ask themselves where the west coast of Canada would be without salmon. What will happen if they disappear?

There are no coastal species as important in this province as wild salmon. Complex food chains, indigenous cultures and local economies have evolved around them. Their importance is well understood and cannot be understated.

Launching the Cohen Commission was a positive step by the federal government, but it wasn’t acted upon; its recommendations have been systematically ignored.

On the one-year anniversary of the Cohen Commission, we should be ashamed and outraged. Wild salmon are the lifeblood of this coast — they deserve action and protection, not empty gestures and political theatre.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Is DFO protecting wild salmon?

November 2, 2013

After participating in the Cohen Inquiry into the decline of sockeye, and scanning over reams of confidential documents, I witnessed many communications shenanigans instigated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

After all the games that were unveiled by the Inquiry, especially in regards to their "clients" - the open-net salmon farming industry - we need evidence on this continued moratorium on open-net salmon farms.

B.C.'s production of farmed salmon, according to Stats Canada, has increased dramatically since 2003. With this supposed moratorium, although new farms are disallowed, how is the public to know if production remains the same at individual farms? Production at individual farms can easily be expanded, increasing disease and pathogen risks to wild fish.

DFO isn't exactly forthright with providing useful data to the public at the individual farm level. For example, many heard from DFO that transparency would be their motto in reporting disease and pathogen outbreaks on farms. However, it's been almost three years since publicly available disease data from the industry have been reported by government.

Excuse me if I question the minister of fisheries' assertions about a moratorium and other actions, before I see farm-level production data that indicates no more fish are being produced by farms in B.C. Stan Proboszcz Fisheries Biologist, Watershed Watch Salmon Society Vancouver

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Alexandra Morton: “The more I deal with the salmon farming industry in Canada, the more it looks like the driving force is Norway.

Governments have come and gone, the public have asked in no uncertain terms to get the industry away from the wild salmon migration routes and no one in government ever does anything.

Last July I co-published that a Norwegian salmon virus arrived in BC in 2007 and apparently that is fine with government, they appear ready to allow it to spread... just like in Norway.

I don't understand the hold Norway has over these countries, but the Viking spirit seems alive and in a plundering mood.

I don't think Norwegians understand the impact a couple of their companies are having on the reputation of their country.”

 Scottish

watchdog labelled ‘lapdog’ after agreeing to keep fish farm deaths

secret October 20, 2013 Scotland’s environment watchdog has bowed to pressure from the salmon farming industry to keep the number of fish killed by diseases secret, according to internal correspondence seen by the Sunday Herald.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) agreed to delete information on millions of fish deaths from a public database on fish farming launched this month because the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Association (SSPO) argued it would be commercially damaging.

An anti-fish-farm campaigner has accused Sepa of acting like the industry’s “lapdog”. Because the database also omits crucial information on sea lice, it is no more than “spin”, he claimed.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

In February the Sunday Herald revealed that the number of farmed salmon killed by diseases had leapt to over 8.5 million in 2012. This compared to 6.8 million deaths in 2011 and 5.5 million in 2010, and was blamed mostly on the spread of amoebic gill disease.

A few days after the report appeared, SSPO’s chairman, Phil Thomas, wrote to Sepa’s chief executive, James Curran. He accused Sepa of “fundamentally poor regulatory practice”, arguing that it had “no justifiable need” to collect and make available information on the numbers of fish mortalities.

“You were potentially placing information in the public domain which could be used to the commercial detriment or competitive market disadvantage of the companies submitting the data,” Thomas wrote.

“You were in fact providing competitor companies both within and out with the UK with significant market and business information.

In reply, Curran said he understood SSPO’s concerns. He promised that in future it would be made clear that for most fish farms supplying information on the number of deaths was voluntary.

He added: “Although numbers of mortalities do appear in the current version of Scotland’s aquaculture database which is being launched to partner organisations soon, it is our intention to make a small change to ensure that these data on the numbers of mortalities are not included in the version released to the public.”

The long-delayed database was published on 1 October by the Scottish government. Although it includes the weight of fish that have died, it omits the numbers – which critics say masks the scale of the problem when the fish are small.

“Shame on Sepa for morphing into the salmon farming industry's lapdog,” said Don Staniford, a veteran campaigner who is now director of a new environmental group, Protect Wild Scotland. “Surely Sepa’s statutory duty is to protect the Scottish environment not cravenly kowtow to the Norwegianowned salmon farming industry?”

The correspondence between Sepa and the SSPO was released to Staniford under freedom of information law. He pointed out that the new database also ignored vital data on the sea lice that often infest caged salmon and threaten wild fish.

“The Scottish government is promoting a false salmon farming economy based on spin and deception instead of a healthy local economy based upon Scotland’s wild salmon,” he contended.

Guy Linley-Adams, solicitor to the Salmon and Trout Association (Scotland), argued that the lack of weekly site-specific sea lice data was an “obvious gap” in the database. “It is looking increasingly silly of the Scottish government to refuse to require that data to be published,” he said.

Sepa’s fish farming specialist, Douglas Sinclair, pointed out that there was “no legal requirement” for fish farms to report numbers of deaths. There was, however, an “extraordinary wealth of current and historic data” available on fish farming, he said.

According to SSPO’s chief executive, Scott Landsburgh, Sepa had agreed to only collect the information the law required. The industry had volunteered to publish other statistics, which had been agreed by the Scottish government and MSPs and implemented.

The Scottish government argued that Scotland’s farmed fish were internationally recognised as having a high health status. “They are maintained by a regular inspection programme that includes the evaluation of mortality and sea lice numbers,” said a government spokesman.

The government’s latest survey of Scotland’s fish farms showed that 22 companies produced 162,223 tonnes of Atlantic salmon at 257 sites in 2012. The industry forecasts, however, that after rising for the last four years production will fall six per cent to 152,507 tonnes in 2013.

The letter from the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation can be downloaded here (112KB pdf) and the reply from Scottish Environment Protection Agency here (60KB pdf).

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Salmond and the salmon farmers October 26, 2013 The article by Rob Edwards shows yet again the Scottish Government is far too close to the mostly Norwegianowned fish farm industry (Public denied info on full scale of salmon deaths, News, October 20).

Editorial Comment: Many believe that the Canadian government is also too close to the mostly Norwegian-owned open pen salmon feedlot industry.

It looks like the interaction between Alex Salmond and the Chinese government is a two-way exchange. Mr Salmond helps his Norwegian buddies bust the ban on direct export of salmon from Norway to China by allowing the import of salmon ova from Norway to Scotland, where they are grown on then flogged to the Chinese in tartan-tinted packs. In return, the Chinese seem to have taught the First Minister and his quangos the art of information suppression.

If Sepa is not going to collect and publish detailed data on salmon mortalities and sea lice infestations at salmon farms in Scotland, it is no longer fit for purpose. A government that gets so close to an industry to allow this to happen is also not fit for purpose. Ministers must make salmon farmers fully and openly accountable for their actions.

John F Robins, Save Our Seals Fund

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 When is the dirty salmon farming industry going to be properly regulated?

October 22, 2013 Salmon farming is not just a dirty industry which does not routinely move its cages as it was supposed to do and which causes demonstrable benthic pollution. This pollution arises from: 

faecal agglomerations



excess feed debris



the leaching into coastal waters of the surplus chemical drenches delivered in token attempts to control the sea lice infestations that characterize life in the cages for the millions of fish that live and die in them.

More than all of this – despite all of this – the so-called aquaculture industry is a very powerful one.

It has just demonstrated its awesome muscle.

The grandly titled but feeble and supremely unassertive Scottish Environment Protection Agency [SEPA] has just agreed to stop publication of information it had only started to make available to the public – who badly need to have it.

So what is the information? Why do we need to have it? Who did SEPA agree with that they should cease publication of it? Why did they do so?

The information This was in a reported data on the numbers of salmon dying in the salmon cages from the diseases endemic to the industry. These are mainly gill diseases and most commonly, amoebic gill disease.

The indefatigable Rob Edwards, Environment Editor at the Sunday Herald, revealed back in February this year the scale of the number of farmed salmon dying from these diseases, revealed in the data SEPA had made public. 

In 2010 5.5 million salmon died.



In 2011 it was 6.8 million salmon – a rise of 23.6% on 2010.



In 2012 it was 8.5 million salmon – a increased rate of rise at 25% on 2011.

The information need Without this information – and without the information on sea lice infestations which the industry also seeks, largely successfully, to suppress and which have demonstrably harmed the wild salmon fisheries on the west coast – the general public has no idea what we mean when we describe this industry as a dirty one.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Worse, it is, by default, virtually licensed to be dirty by the spineless SEPA, by local authority planners and by the Scottish Government, which offers an industry proven to cause serious environmental damage an inexplicable degree of protection from scrutiny.

Aquaculture has been a growth industry – because it has been licensed to grow, often against well researched and sound objections from environmental campaigners.

It contributes to Scotland’s Gross Domestic Product [GDP] – which is a measure of economic performance most useful for supporting or confining state borrowing.

It does not contribute as strongly to Scotland’s wealth since most of the salmon farmers are extraterritorial, with their profits shipped out to shareholders elsewhere and not spent in Scotland.

The public whose votes periodically express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with local authority and government performance, need to have such information in order to judge fairly the necessary watchfulness of those they elect to protect them and their environment.

Who pushed SEPA to censor this information on salmon deaths by disease?

According to Rob Edwards’ piece this Sunday, 13th October 2013, on documents he has seen, the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation [SSPO] wrote to SEPA shortly after Edwards reported SEPA’s disease morts figures in February.

In highly accusatory tone, they went on instant attack, charging SEPA with ‘potentially placing information in the public domain which could be used to the commercial detriment or competitive market disadvantage of the companies submitting the data’.

SEPA meekly accepted the reprimand [?] from the errant industry whose salmon had died in their millions. He accepted that such information need only be submitted on a voluntary basis – meaning that SEPA is no longer even seeking to know how many farmed salmon are annually dying of diseases endemic to the intensely crowded life in the cages.

More than that, SEPA’s CEO, James Curran, told the salmon farmers that the figures on disease morts had now been removed from public visibility and that from now on SEPA will ‘make a small change to ensure that these data are not included in the version released to the public.

SEPA published its ‘small change’ database on 1st October and Edwards notes that it includes the weight but not the number of disease morts – on the inevitably incomplete data voluntarily submitted.

Unsurprisingly, the published database omitted data on the sea lice that regularly infest the caged salmon and threaten the sustainability of the wild salmon fisheries.

Edwards quotes the Salmon & Trout Association Scotland’s solicitor, Guy Linley Adams, as saying that sea lice infestation data is something the Scottish Government can no longer defend failing to make a regular required reporting and publication matter.

The mystery destinations of salmon morts The other issue arising from the number of disease morts, is what actually happens to the bodies?

The 8.5 million dying in 2012 is one hell of a lot of salmon. 6.8 million in 2011 and 5,5 million the year before are not numbers you can chuck behind the hedge.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

The disgraceful reality here, as Ewan Kennedy, a former solicitor and doughty campaigner with the saveseilsound campaign, discovered in his researches [on which we published here on 17th February 2013], is that there appears to be no body statutorily required to regulate and oversee such disposals.

So no one does it. And no one knows – officially anyway – what actually happens to these annual millions of dead salmon.

Earlier in the year, when he published the figures on farmed salmon disease morts – here in Where have all the dead fish gone? – Rob Edwards rang around a number of local authorities to find out what they knew about the destination of the morts. Most could tell him nothing about it.

It is known that they are not supposed to go to landfill – but no one can be sure that they do not.

They may be incinerated – but no one knows if they are.

From his investigations then on this matter, Edwards said in his personal blog [and which we quoted in the article linked above] that he had been told that some tens of thousands of morts from an outbreak of disease at a farm or farms in the Western Isles had allegedly been sent to the fishmeal processing plant at Bressay in Shetland.

If this were indeed the case it would be a flagrant breach of European legislation.

The appearance of BSE in cattle was scientifically attributed to the feeding to herbivorous cattle of the processed meat from dead and diseased members of their own kind. The appearance of the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease, was a result of diseased beef products getting into the food chain.

It is clearly the potential consequence of feeding processed diseased salmon morts back to living salmon that lies behind the EU legislation in question.

We still do not know what happens to these millions of salmon dying annually from disease in the cages.

We do not know if the Scottish Government or SEPA have even asked the question.

SEPA has now agreed with those whose largely unchecked industry produces such deaths, that we should no longer even know the numbers of salmon dying from these diseases – which the salmon farmers may voluntarily report privately to SPEA – or not. And we will not know the farms where salmon deaths by disease may very regularly occur.

How can any of this be said to be acceptable environmental responsibility in government?

Editorial Comment:  100% Pure Bovine Excrement!  Scotland’s alleged open pen salmon feedlot industry practices associated with reporting and disposing of dead feedlot salmon is shameful, unethical and irresponsible as they place public safety and environmental health directly in harm’s way.  Who’s to say that these dead and dying feedlot salmon are not processed for human consumption?  The managers at markets and restaurants must transition away from open pen feedlot salmon before their customers are impacted by decisions to offer feedlot salmon

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Scientists feel muzzled by Conservative government, union says October 21, 2013 Many federal scientists say they fear they would be punished by the Conservative government if they exposed a decision made by their department that could harm the public.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Large numbers also told Environics Research last June that they are aware of actual cases in which political interference with their scientific work has compromised the health and safety of Canadians or environmental sustainability. And nearly half of those who took part in the survey said they knew of cases in which the government suppressed scientific information.

MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY David Suzuki slams Harper science policy in Washington speech In addition, the poll results suggest that 24 per cent of government scientists have been asked to exclude or alter technical information in federal documents. Liberal science critic Ted Hsu, who is also a physicist, said any political interference in scientific papers would be alarming.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which represents 55,000 professional civil servants, engaged Environics to survey 15,398 government scientists in 40 departments and agencies. The results released on Monday suggest a broad consensus among the scientists that they are being muzzled to the detriment of the public.

“According to the survey, 90 per cent of federal scientists do not feel they can speak freely about their work to the media,” Gary Corbett, the president of PIPSC, told a news conference. “But it is even more troubling that, faced with a departmental decision or action that could harm public health, safety or the environment, nearly as many scientists – 86 per cent – do not believe they could share their concerns with the media or public without censure or retaliation.”

About 26 per cent of the government’s scientists – 4,069 of them – took part in the poll. Derek Leebosh, the vice-president of public affairs for Environics, said that is a “robust” response compared to other surveys of this nature. The results are expected to reflect the opinions of all federal scientists accurately within 1.6 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

When asked about the survey, Greg Rickford, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an e-mail that the government has made record investments in science. “As such, Canada is ranked number one in the G7 for our support for research and development in our colleges, universities and other institutes,” Mr. Rickford wrote. But he did not address the allegations that scientists are being muzzled.

A government source pointed out that in 2012, Environment Canada scientists conducted 1,300 interviews, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada issued nearly 1,000 scientific publications, and Natural Resources published nearly 500. “Those are concrete facts of Canadian scientists sharing their information with the public,” the source said.

But Environment Canada conducts many interviews about the weather. And reporters’ requests to talk to scientists about other topics are often refused. While federal scientists have occasionally chafed at the restrictions governments have placed upon them in speaking to the media, they say they were relatively free to conduct interviews until the Conservatives changed the communications policy in 2007.

The poll also suggests that 60 per cent of the scientists at Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans believe the government is not incorporating the best climate-change science into its policies.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Right now our Governor, Jay Inslee has a unique opportunity to protect the Bering Sea ecosystem.

Send him a message today asking him to make sure the North Pacific Fishery Management Council acts to protect this beautiful and important ecosystem.

The United States catches more fish in Alaska’s Bering Sea than anywhere else. In fact it is one of the most important ecosystems on Earth.

This wonderful place includes the largest under water canyons in the world, filled with coral and sponge communities that provide fish and other marine life a safe place to live, feed, and spawn. Right now, these deep sea communities — which have taken hundreds of years to form — are being uprooted and destroyed by heavy industrial fishing gear.

All around the world human impacts on the oceans have been felt by the creatures that call them home. The majority of large fish have been fished out of the sea, and creatures like sea turtles and sharks are dying in large numbers tangled in the nets.

Help us show Governor Jay Inslee that Washingtonians want a clean and healthy ocean ecosystem that is able to sustain life for centuries to come by sending him a message today.

This whole problem may seem daunting, and believe me I feel the same way, but I am excited about the opportunity Washington State residents have to help address this problem. Our governor Jay Inslee is in a unique position to influence the governing body that is set to decide the fate of the Bering Sea ecosystem in Alaska, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Governor Inslee plays an important role by nominating the Washington state representatives to the council, and his voice carries weight for all of us.

Often referred to as the ‘Grand Canyons of the Sea’, the Bering Sea canyons support a diverse ecosystem that is home to one of the most productive global fisheries teeming with fish, crab, fur seals, endangered sea lions, orcas and humpback whales. It’s a truly remarkable ecosystem that begins with fragile corals and sponges on the seafloor. Unlike the Grand Canyon, however, these canyons are in serious danger.

Help us protect the Bering Sea canyons today by sending a message to Governor Inslee asking him to urge the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to protect this beautiful place.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

“Greenwashing”: Corporate, Government and Non Government Organization

Editorial Comment:  We at Wild Game Fish Conservation International and our colleagues around planet earth strive to protect wild game fish and their sensitive ecosystems from those who willfully and blatantly destroy them through irresponsible practices utilized to maximize profit, no matter the risks to public safety and environmental health.  This article, supported by a statistically-weak, industryfunded survey is further evidence of governmentenabled, corporate “greenwashing” to persuade educated readers to believe that support is growing for the export of Alberta’s tarsands bitumen via pipelines, rail and supertankers.  Nothing could be further from the truth!

Industry Minister James Moore says 'the mood is changing' in B.C. regarding proposals for delivering oilsands crude to the West Coast for shipping.

 This dangerous corporate propaganda is an insult to human intelligence.

 Support for pipelines on the rise in B.C., industry minister says Moore points to fallout from provincial election October 18, 2013 There is a shift in the B.C. public's attitude toward proposals to bring oilsands crude to Asia-bound tankers on the West Coast, according to the province's senior minister in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet.

"The mood is changing," Industry Minister James Moore said in an interview.

Moore said it's partly fallout from the May election, when Premier Christy Clark pulled off a comeback win after a policy reversal in mid-campaign by NDP leader Adrian Dix. Dix, already opposed to Enbridge Inc.'s $6.5-billion bid to build the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, announced opposition to Kinder Morgan's $5.4-billion plan to twin its existing pipeline to Burnaby.

Moore said Dix's decision played a key role in the public mood shift he senses.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"It is driven by the public's reaction to the NDP ... being against any kind of development in British Columbia," said Moore, ignoring the NDP's support for liquefied natural gas exports.

"They're opposed to every single project that has anything to do with getting natural resource products to the global market. That reflexive anti-development, anti-job NDP message was rejected in the provincial election."

He pointed to Clark's recent rapprochement with Alberta Premier Alison Redford on pipelines and safety measures announced in Wednesday's federal throne speech. He said they reflect the "legitimate hopes by the public that if these projects are going to go forward, they're going to have to meet strict and firm expectations of environmental stewardship and job creation."

The throne speech cited a June promise to enshrine a polluter-pay system in law, and included a vow to bring in higher safety standards for pipeline operators and companies operating offshore, increase liability insurance requirements, and create a "world-class tanker safety system in Canada."

Polls have provided mixed indications of the public mood in B.C., though an online national survey done last month for CTV by Ipsos posed a question that the firm doesn't believe has been asked before.

Ipsos senior vice-president John Wright said the results may lend credibility to Moore's point. Ipsos asked if respondents were "concerned that if Canada's government can't find a way to proceed with some of the oil and gas pipelines that have been proposed, our economy could be hurt in a way that impacts my family's financial security."

Six in 10 (or 60 per cent) of the 1,035 respondents agreed, with Albertans (72 per cent) naturally leading the way.

Of the 125 B.C. respondents, 52 per cent agreed and 47 per cent disagreed - essentially a statistical tie given the small B.C. sample size.

But it shows there's a sizable minority and perhaps a majority of people in B.C. concerned about the cutting of development, according to Wright, whose firm (Ipsos) does polling for Enbridge.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 More oil trains expected in Washington under proposals October 27, 2013 SEATTLE (AP) - Hundreds of trains carrying crude oil could soon be chugging across the Northwest, bringing potential jobs and revenues but raising concerns about oil spills, increased train and vessel traffic and other issues.

With five refineries, Washington has long received crude oil from Alaska and elsewhere by ship, barges or pipelines. But ports and refiners are increasingly turning to trains to take advantage of a boom in oil from North Dakota's Bakken region.

Three terminals - in Anacortes, Tacoma and Clatskanie, Ore. - are already receiving crude oil by trains. Other facilities are proposed at the ports of Grays Harbor and Vancouver, and at refineries.

Together, the 10 projects would be capable of moving nearly 800,000 barrels per day, said Eric de Place, policy director at Sightline Institute. "It's a lot of oil that we're talking about moving by train in Washington. It raises new questions about how the state can handle a spill."

The Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council is reviewing a proposal by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. for a terminal at the Port of Vancouver to handle up to 380,000 barrels a day of crude oil. Oil arriving by train would be unloaded, stored temporarily and then loaded onto marine vessels to be shipped to refineries on the West Coast.

"We are committed to building and operating in a safe and environmentally responsible manner," said Kelly Flint, senior vice-president of Savage. He said the project would not only benefit the local community but move the country ahead in energy independence.

Public hearings are scheduled Monday and Tuesday in Vancouver. The council will make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say. Construction could begin by late 2014.

Critics say shipping oil by train is risky and could cause environmental harm from leaking oil tanker cars or derailments.

"It's very dangerous to move this stuff by rail," said Sierra Club spokesman Eddie Scher, pointing to the fiery train disaster in Quebec. In July, 47 people were killed when an unattended train rolled away and derailed in the town of Lac-Megantic and several of its oil cars exploded.

The Association of American Railroads says 99.9977 percent of all shipments of hazardous materials, including crude oil, get to their destination without a leak caused by accidents.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

BNSF Railway is committed to safety and preventing accidents, said spokeswoman Roxanne Butler.

BNSF has invested millions in its infrastructure and trained employees across its network to respond to hazmat incidents, she said. It frequently inspects tracks, uses technology to detect potential equipment failure and maintains special emergency response equipment along routes, she added.

Butler said BNSF currently handles 600,000 barrels of crude oil a day across its entire network. Most of that oil heads to other parts of the country; in the Pacific Northwest, "we average over one train per day to this area," she said in an email.

An oil train typically has about 100 rail cars and each car can hold about 28,000 gallons.

As the transportation of oil shifts from ships and pipelines to trains, officials say they have to change how they prepare for potential oil spills.

"We're monitoring the way that the movement of oil is changing. And we have to think about what changes we need," said Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, manager of Ecology's spills preparedness section.

She said the state has been focused on oil coming into the state on ships and pipelines but will need to refocus attention to planning for a crude oil spill in the inland areas.

"The scale of the oil by rail is completely unprecedented and the state is not prepared to deal with a spill," said Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director for Columbia Riverkeeper.

Environmentalists and others have challenged oil shipping terminals proposed at the Port of Grays Harbor by Westway Terminal Co. and Imperium Terminal Services. They say the projects will bring tens of millions of crude oil through the area each year, increasing train and barge traffic and the risk of oil spills.

The groups won a victory this month when a state hearings board said it would reverse permits issued by Hoquiam and the state to Westway and Imperium. The groups had argued that the agencies failed to do a more complete environmental review.

Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice attorney representing the groups, said the board identified serious flaws in the permitting and environmental review.

Svend Brandt-Erichsen, an attorney with Marten Law representing Westway, said the decision would create delays but that it wouldn't be hard to get the information needed. "There's not a whole lot of new substantial requirements that will come out of this," he said.

Meanwhile, refiners BP in Blaine and Phillips 66 in Ferndale have received approval from the Northwest Clean Air Agency to build facilities to handle crude oil by rail. To comply with its current air operating permit, the refineries won't be allowed to increase the amount of oil it can process, an agency spokeswoman said.

Company spokesman Rich Johnson said Phillips 66 is building a rail offloading facility capable of handling 30,000 barrels per day of crude oil. "The refinery has received all necessary permits for the project and expects the rail offloading facility to be in operation in the fourth quarter of 2014," he said in an email.

The Shell Puget Sound refinery in Anacortes is also exploring bringing crude oil by rail to replace some supply currently brought in by ship, the company said in materials it submitted to Skagit County planners over the summer.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Crude-by-rail isn’t a safety concern, railroad officials say October 17, 2013 Puget Sound and Pacific Railroad officials on Tuesday night said Harborites shouldn’t be worried about the safety of crude-by-rail projects — at least on the rail shipping end.

In a City Hall meeting of the downtown improvement group Our Aberdeen, Gregory Johnson and Michael Dickerson, lobbed questions at railroad officials Don Seil and Patrick Kerr. Questions covered the railroad’s safety record, the condition of the rail line and the company’s plans to prevent crude oil-related catastrophes, including oil spills.

“The railroad is prepared for all kinds of emergencies, that’s all part of our safety plan,” Kerr said.

“We have a contractor in the area if there’s any kind of a spill. And if it’s a smaller spill, our employees are trained to deal with that.”

The conversation quickly turned to the July 6 crude oil explosion in Quebec and the safety of the rail cars used to transport oil, known as DOT 111 cars.

Kerr explained that the railroad doesn’t own the cars that run on the line — they’re rented by the companies shipping goods. But Puget Sound and Pacific only runs trains with cars that meet federal guidelines and railroad employees inspect the car, he said.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

“Every tank car is under specific safety regulations by the federal government. We don’t develop the federal guidelines, but we do have to determine them.”

Railroads in the state are regulated by several agencies: the Federal Railroad Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission and the Washington State Department of Transportation. Speil explained that nearly every aspect of rail shipping, from train speeds to car capacity, is monitored by some government regulation.

The Puget Sound and Pacific is a class two railroad, meaning trains may only travel 25 mph. But Seil said his company maintains the tracks as if it were a class 3 railroad, which can withstand speeds of 40 mph.

Several of the questions were based on the idea that the railroad is an aging piece of infrastructure not capable of withstanding crude oil transportation — including questions about why the railroad hasn’t started using more modern materials.

Johnson and Dickerson asked the rail officials why Puget Sound and Pacific continues to use wooden railroad ties instead of concrete and steel ties. Seil explained that while concrete and metal are better in some cases, Grays Harbor’s climate makes wood much more practical.

“Concrete disintegrates more easily in wet weather,” Seil said. “And wooden ties are much more functional for this kind of short line operation.”

“It really does not affect the safety of the rail line,” he added.

Puget Sound and Pacific transports about 36,000 car loads of freight each year — 16,000 more a year than in 2009. The company spent about $14 million on capital improvements between 2008 and 2012, and Seil said the company prides itself in using local contractors, such as Rognlin’s Inc., Quigg Brothers Inc. and Vessey & Sons.

About 80 percent of Puget Sound and Pacific’s 34 employees live on Grays Harbor.

The remainder live in neighbouring communities, such as Shelton and Olympia, the company said.

The railroad includes about 135 miles of rail. Currently, the company mainly transports automobiles — 11 of which can fit in each rail car — and agricultural products, serving 17 customers at the Port of Grays Harbor.

“The railroad drew people to the area, that’s why it grew,” Seil said. “We need to make sure to have that same dedication to make sure we still have these jobs.”

The conversation also covered rail changes that could improve downtown Aberdeen. Citizens wanted to know what a “quiet zone” is, and how Aberdeen could become one.

Seil explained that this isn’t something that’s determined by railroads — it’s dependent on whether the local government is prepared to make signal upgrades that would allow train drivers not to blow their whistles when approaching an intersection. The process is regulated by the federal government.

The moderators also asked if a pedestrian walkway could be attached to the railroad bridge spanning the Wishkah River. The officials said this won’t happen, as it would bring people too close to the trains and compromise the safety of the bridge.

“The bridge is balanced and it’s movable, it was engineered a certain way,” Kerr said. “It wouldn’t work to just tack on stairs or a walkway. It would really have an adverse effect.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 American Gold Seafoods (Washington State) Washington Fish Growers Association virtual tour

OUR BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY The objective of our business is to provide a high quality product and reliable service for our customers. The four cornerstones of our sustainable farming operation are our employees, the environment, our local community and the welfare of our fish stocks. We hope you will enjoy visiting our web site and meeting our awesome aquaculture family.

OUR TEAM Team members play an important role in any business. Here at American Gold Seafoods our business is our people. Many of American Gold Seafoods team members have been with the company for over 20 years.

We try to bring our passion for life to you through our product and the care that is taken both in the raising of our Salmon and the waters they are grown in.

OUR COMPANY American Gold Seafoods is a U.S. operated Salmon Aquaculture Company.

AQUACULTURE AND FARMED SALMON PRODUCTION

It's Part of the Global Environmentally Sustainable Solution

With our hatcheries and ocean pens all located along the coast of Washington State, we have the unique ability to closely track the growth and assure a "fresh from the sea" quality of our salmon

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

ď ś Salmon Farming in Washington State August 17, 2005, Senator Dan Swecker: Owner, Swecker Salmon Farm Salmon farming in Washington State has gone through many changes in the last 10 years. One the most significant has been the consolidation of the salmon net pen industry under a single company.

Recently, Washington owned Smoki Foods in Seattle purchased all of these assets and formed a new company called American Gold Seafoods. This includes the saltwater net pens at Port Angeles.

Until now the salmon farming industry has remained separate from the salmon fishing industry.

Smoki Foods will be marketing both farm raised and commercially caught or wild salmon. This will allow them to market each product based on their availability and attractiveness to the market place and consumer wishes.

Farmed salmon is available fresh - year round at a very reasonable price. Wild salmon is heavily promoted for its natural wild taste. It is considered a premium product by many, but is available fresh only in season at higher prices. Each of these products occupies a different niche in the seafood marketplace.

The federal government now requires that seafood be labeled according to its country of origin and whether it is farmed or commercially caught. Smoki has already used the Produced in Washington label to increase sales to companies like Costco. This will help both the farmed salmon industry and commercial fisherman here in our state.

A number of criticisms have been alleged by aquaculture opponents about the quality and sustainability of salmon farming. These have included sea lice exposure to wild stocks, toxic contaminants, impacts on the environment and impacts of escapes on wild salmon among others. All of these potential claims have been studied by government agencies and have been determined to be without merit. Never-the-less, the anti-aquaculture forces continue to shout the sky is falling.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

They point to isolated studies that do not apply to Washington farmed salmon or have been discredited by subsequent peer reviewed scientific research. One example is the allegation that PCB contaminates are far higher in farmed fish. In fact, later studies proved that these levels are nearly identical in most Washington salmon and in a few cases are significantly higher in wild fish. These antagonists do consumers a serious disservice by turning them away from healthy nutritious food options. Salmon is high in Omega-3’s and a much better choice than most other protein alternative available in the supermarket.

Washington has been a leader in developing regulations to insure that salmon farming is conducted in a safe and sustainable manner. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency announced nationwide standards for discharges from aquaculture facilities. Washington provided much of the research and public policy that EPA used to develop their standards. As a result, Washington fish growers are already in compliance.

Our industry has developed a Code of Conduct to insure that Washington Grown Salmon meet the highest quality levels in the industry. This Code of Conduct can be viewed on the web at http://www.wfga.net/conduct.asp . Other controversial issues alleged by opponents can be studied at http://www.salmonoftheamericas.com/ .

Recently, The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Salmon of the Americas (SOTA) announced plans to develop a comprehensive quality assurance program for farmed salmon. The program will be managed under the auspices of FMI's Safe Quality Food Certification Program. This initiative will be a first of its kind for salmon produced anywhere in the world.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing segment of agriculture today. The industry here in Washington has been a leader in food safety, environmental sustainability and the development of new technology.

Consumers can purchase salmon produced here at home with confidence that they are getting healthy food for their families at a reasonable cost. Purchasing salmon Produced in Washington continues to support local jobs and the local economy. Working with both farmed and wild products is a smart marketing strategy and a real step forward for both farmers and fishermen.

Related article: Puget Sound salmon farm kills entire stock after virus found (5/26/2012) “The virus, or IHN virus, does not affect humans. It occurs naturally in wild sockeye salmon and can be carried by other fish, such as herring, which sometimes pass through fish net pens.

John Kerwin, fish health supervisor for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the virus is a big concern.

"Any first time it occurs, you don't fully understand the impact to wild fish," Kerwin told the newspaper. "We know it can impact (farm) fish. If we move fast, we can try to minimize the amplification."

Seattle-based American Gold Seafoods plans to remove more than a million pounds of Atlantic salmon from infected net pens in Rich Passage off the southern tip of Bainbridge Island. In April, the company noticed that fish were dying off at a fast rate. Test results this month confirmed the virus.

American Gold Seafoods, affiliated with Icicle Seafoods of Seattle, operates two hatcheries near Rochester, Wash., and has 120 pens off Bainbridge Island, Port Angeles, Cypress Island and Hope Island in Puget Sound.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Mining and wild game fish

 Taseko shares fall after review offers critical view of B.C. mine proposal November 1, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

VANCOUVER - Shares of Taseko Mines Ltd. fell Friday as First Nations groups called on Ottawa to reject the company's New Prosperity mine proposal in British Columbia after a new study raised environmental concerns.

Taseko shares were down 33 cents at $2.23 in trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The First Nations Summit, which represents dozens of B.C. aboriginal groups within the treaty process, called on Ottawa to reject the project following the report by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

It said Taseko has underestimated the volume of water that would leave a tailings storage facility and there was "considerable uncertainty" regarding Taseko's contingency plan for water treatment.

"Clearly this report should provide the federal government the necessary evidence to immediately reject, yet again, Taseko's Prosperity Mine proposal", said summit executive Grand Chief Edward John in a news release.

The project received provincial approval in 2010, but Ottawa rejected the original plan, which would have drained a lake of cultural significance to First Nations for use as a tailings pond.

Taseko submitted a revised plan for the project in the Chilcotin region of B.C. and said it would save Fish Lake and prevent contamination from groundwater seepage from a tailings pond that it would instead locate several kilometres away.

The company said it will challenge the report's findings regarding water quality.

"The risks are modest and the social and economic benefits are enormous," the company said in a statement Friday.

"With any major project there will be different views and some trade-offs, but we are confident the federal government can and will approve this project."

The final decision on whether the project will receive an environmental certificate to proceed is up to federal Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq.

B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett said mines can't be built without causing significant environmental issues, and he believes the question is whether those issues outweigh any economic benefits.

He hoped Ottawa overrides review panel findings that the mine will pollute a lake sacred to First Nations and development will trample aboriginal interests in the area 550 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.

Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip said the project is the wrong development in the wrong place and urged Ottawa to close the file on it.

The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs is warning of a court challenge if New Prosperity is allowed to proceed.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 My Turn: Impact, science of mining near Bristol Bay are clear October 16, 2013 Anyone who has ever visited Bristol Bay and the wild lands of southwest Alaska that compose its watershed knows how unique this place is. The streams and rivers that feed the bay support one of the last great wild salmon runs in the world — more than half of all sockeye salmon harvested in the world come from these waters.

Bristol Bay’s fishery supports 14,000 jobs for fishermen and women. A recent economic analysis has found that the 2010 sockeye harvest had a wholesale value of nearly $400 million, and as those salmon and the dollars they bring make their way through the economy, they generated $1.5 billion, making it the most valuable fishery anywhere.

The salmon don’t just create thousands of jobs, and feed diners from coast to coast; they support subsistence cultures of Native Alaskans who have survived on their bounty for over 4,000 years. A healthy salmon population supports a complex food web consisting of more than 40 species of wildlife from beluga whales and bears to bald eagles and rainbow trout. And this life-giving ecosystem is what is at stake if an open pit mining operation is allowed to move forward and destabilize the region. Until last month, Canadian mining company Northern Dynasty and its partner, London-based Anglo American, planned to press on with their plans to develop just such a mine. But in the face of increasing opposition from commercial and recreational fisherman, Alaska Native communities, chefs, jewelers and investors as well as increasing scientific evidence of the dangers, Anglo American – the larger of the two companies – abandoned its stake in the partnership.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Anglo American realized what we here in Bristol Bay have known for a long time: industrial-size mines like Pebble cannot coexist with wild salmon in this region. Earlier this year the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft assessment of mining’s likely impact on the region, and the science was truly scary: even if only 60% of the nearly 11 billion ton deposit is exploited, over 90 miles of streams and 4,800 acres of wetlands that wild salmon depend on for spawning would be severely and permanently damaged. This damage would not result from a catastrophe such as the failure of dam holding back mining waste; it would result from the normal construction and operation of the mine.

Normal operation of this kind of mine would generate billions of tons of mine waste that would be held behind earthen dams in perpetuity, all the while producing and leaking acidic pollution into this fragile wetland ecosystem. The EPA report concludes it would be nearly impossible to prevent the contaminated waste from seeping into underground water systems and salmon streams. When the mining operations are complete, and the mining companies and their jobs have packed up and moved on, Bristol Bay will be left with a catastrophic threat behind those dams, and toxic material seeping out from under them.

Gina McCarthy, the new Administrator at the EPA came to Alaska to see this area for herself, and hear from Alaskans on this defining issue. “I need to understand impacts,” she said, “I need to understand the science.”

The science is clear. The impacts of mining in this region are clear. We urge Administrator McCarthy to act on the scientific assessment conducted by the EPA and permanently protect the communities, fish and wildlife that depend on the Bristol Bay watershed by prohibiting the disposal of mine waste therein Bristol Bay. We cannot rely on the economic decisions of mining companies to develop or not develop the Pebble deposit.

The EPA has only used its authority under the section 404c of the Clean Water Act thirteen times since its inception forty years ago. Let’s not mess with Bristol Bay. Make it number fourteen.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Wild fish management

 $5-million study hopes to study mortality of B.C. salmon International effort will investigate why there has been wide fluctuations in returns of various species October 17, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Salmon are dying young in the Salish Sea — and now a $5-million international study hopes to find out why.

The Pacific Salmon Commission and the Southern Fund Committee announced Thursday that the funding over five years will support the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, an effort by Canada and the U.S. “to improve understanding of the causes of salmon and steelhead mortality” in the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Strait.

Equal recipients of the funding are the Vancouver-based Pacific Salmon Foundation and Seattlebased Long Live the Kings.

PSF president Brian Riddell said in an interview that the hope is to find out why there has been such wide fluctuations in the returns of various species of salmon over the years.

One theory is that juvenile salmon are dying in the first few months after they migrate downstream into the Strait of Georgia, but it’s unknown whether natural predators, human development, or some other combination of factors including climate change are to blame.

“Mortality continues throughout (the salmon’s) life, but the real high rates seem to be occurring quite early on,” Riddell said.

While this new infusion of money won’t specifically address the impact of port expansion, Riddell said it would be a good time for such collaborative research to be conducted.

“Port Metro Vancouver is aware of what’s going on, has shown some interest,” but has so far not committed to becoming part of the greater research effort, he said.

The Pacific Salmon Commission is the international body formed by Canada and the U.S. in 1985 to oversee implementation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. The Southern Fund Committee, comprised of three U.S. and three Canadian members, was established separately in 1999 by the two countries to administer the Southern Boundary Restoration and Enhancement Fund.

The two organizations said in a news release said that recent catches of coho, chinook and steelhead in the Salish Sea have been at historic lows, sockeye have had huge variability in returns, and pink salmon have consistently returned at historically high levels.

Riddell noted that coho returns in the Strait of Georgia were healthy in 2013, unlike past years.

Open pen salmon feedlots KILL Remove these weapons of mass destruction from our oceans

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Scientists say new fisheries law “guts” protection for habitat November 1, 2013 OTTAWA — Three of Canada’s leading fish scientists say Canada’s rewritten Fisheries Act protect the fish species that people eat, while dropping protection for huge numbers of other fish.

In particular it does not protect endangered fish species, Jeffrey Hutchings and John Post write in an international science journal called Fisheries.

Until this year, the federal Fisheries Act banned development that would damage fish habitat. The new version bans work that would damage the habitat of fish species that are part of a commercial, sport or aboriginal fishery, as well as the smaller fish that they eat.

In other words, if humans don’t fish in a given place, the habitat isn’t protected there.

Conspicuously absent is protection for most species at risk — because people don’t catch and eat them.

Hutchings and Post estimate that 80 per cent of the 71 fish species at risk in Canada will no longer have habitat covered by the new law, although the old law did protect them.

“Under the revised FA (Fisheries Act), fish that inhabit lakes, rivers, and streams that are not regularly visited by humans do not warrant protection,” they write. This means a vast area of Canadian wilderness will fall outside the law.

So would some small bodies of water near Ottawa — such as the many small creeks in the city and surrounding farm country. These don’t have a human fishery, but Hutchings says they are vital to the health of larger rivers, “like capillaries feeding into large arteries.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Hutchings says creeks in Newfoundland where he studies brook trout are untouched by humans, and therefore unprotected too.

“You don’t have to go north of 60 (i.e. far north) to find aquatic habitat where fish simply won’t be protected because there are no fisheries,” he said in an interview.

Hutchings teaches at Dalhousie University and Post is at the University ofCalgary. Freshwater scientist David Schindler, past winner of the Gerhard Herzberg medal as Canada’s top scientist, calls them “two of Canada’s most eminent fisheries scientists” and says their analysis “is right on.”

Hutchings and Post say destroying fish habitat is now easy and legal: “By applying the ‘no humans, no fishery’ criterion, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will have an easy time expediting applications for fish habitat destruction resulting from all manner of development.”

They conclude that Canada has 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which brings “a responsibility to be internationally respected stewards of this vast environment. Politically motivated abrogation of the country’s national and international responsibilities to protect fish and fish habitat suggests to us that Canada might no longer be up to the task.”

Their article is titled Gutting Canada’s Fisheries Act: No Fishery, No Fish Habitat Protection.

Schindler, at the University of Alberta, says the law currently has a “vague” section protecting fish that are part of the food chain in a fishery. The problem, he says, is that we don’t always know what those are.

In the 1980s and 1990s Schindler did experiments simulating acid rain to see why trout were dying in many lakes. It identified previously unknown parts of the food chain.

“No one could have predicted that in our acid experiments, wiping out one minnow and one crustacean would put lake trout on the road to extirpation,” he said. “It (the new law) is senseless.”

He added the new law could protect invasive Asian carp.

A spokeswoman for Fisheries and Oceans says the law was changed under the federal Economic Action Plan to “protect our environment, while streamlining administrative processes.”

She confirmed that the new act has little protection for endangered species, but said these are covered under the Species At Risk Act. She said provincial laws on pollution and environmental protection will help protect fish. In addition, the department says “Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s highest priority will now be the protection of recreational, commercial and Aboriginal fisheries and the fish habitat on which they depend.”

“DFO will continue to conduct reviews of projects that pose risk of serious harm to fisheries and the habitat that supports them, while allowing low risk projects to proceed without a time-consuming and costly departmental review or intervention.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Spawning fails in Gaula. Census of spawning beds only shows half of a sustainable level

 Looking in vain for salmon in Gaula Counts of spawning beds in one of Norway's best salmon rivers Gaula in Sør-Trøndelag, shows that it looks bleak for the future population.

Recruitment of wild salmon to Gaula fails. After a summer of bad salmon, it now also black out for spawning.

November 10, 2013 Original article translated from Norwegian to English

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Also dead salmon is a good sign - Measurements of last year was bad, so we're very excited about how the situation is this year, says

Secretary of Gaula fish management, Torstein Rognes, 30 meters above the famous salmon river.

Shortly glimpsed five pits.

- It should have been spawning, but it has therefore not been, says Rognes.

They see not many dead salmon, something that would have been a good sign, for it would indicate that matches the spawning grounds have been good.

READ: Concerned about the livelihood of grilse The number of spawning beds halved After an hour of counting spawning beds, it's time to recap. And Rognes must recognize that he manages increasingly less mature fish in the river say.

- We saw 147 spawning beds on this stretch. It is only half the average for the past ten years, he says.

Counts of spawning beds are made from a helicopter.

In the mid-2000s there were thousands of spawning beds along the same route, but Rognes stressed that it was particularly high.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory drop an anchor into the Pacific Ocean as part of their salmon research. The anchor is attached to a receiver (yellow device held by scientist at right) that detects salmon movements in the ocean.

 Tracking young salmon's first moves in the ocean November 8, 2013 Basic ocean conditions such as current directions and water temperature play a huge role in determining the behavior of young migrating salmon as they move from rivers and hit ocean waters for the first time, according to new research. The findings inform restoration policies and practices focused on boosting endangered salmon species in the Pacific Northwest.

The findings, from ecologists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, focus on a perilous period in the life of salmon. After their birth infresh water, salmon migrate to the ocean, where they must quickly adapt to an environment unlike anything they've experienced before – deep water full of new predators, with strong currents and competition from all sides.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

How the fish fare during their first few weeks in the ocean has a profound impact on species' ability to survive into adulthood.

The results show that young salmon scatter in all directions as they first enter the ocean, which is contrary to previous assumptions that most salmon head north immediately after leaving the Columbia River.

"It's becoming clear that the first few weeks after salmon enter the ocean from their freshwater homes is a crucial time," said Geoff McMichael, the PNNL scientist who led the study, which was published recently in Animal Biotelemetry.

"Much of their health and the success of their subsequent runs upstream to start the next generation are dictated by those first few weeks in the ocean. Conditions such as watertemperature, food availability and the number of predators are critical. Everything we can learn about salmon behavior during this critical time could help managers restore their stocks more effectively," added McMichael.

The team found that much of the fish's initial behavior and chance of survival were determined by factors beyond anyone's control, such as the movement of ocean currents. Under certain conditions, for instance when the ocean is unusually warm, Pacific hake – a fish that McMichael calls a "voracious predator" – are more likely to come closer to the mouth of the river and feast on salmon.

"There is really great real-time data available to inform us about conditions in the ocean, and that information is key for predicting how salmon will fare as they enter the ocean at any given time," said McMichael. "Perhaps we can take advantage of that data to determine optimal conditions for releasing hatchery-raised salmon, for instance, and when to hold back."

The study provides a snapshot of salmon behavior at a crucial time, after a migration from their freshwater birthplaces to the ocean, a journey often hundreds of miles long. Depending on the species and their age, the fish generally travel anywhere from 20 to 60 miles a day, carried by the current as they navigate much of the journey backwards – tail first.

Previous studies had indicated that as they exit the Columbia River, most salmon head north up the coast of Washington state, essentially turning right as they exited the Columbia. But the new study showed that while many salmon, especially the youngest, head north, many others head straight out to the ocean, and many others head south. This indicates that the number of salmon safely reaching the ocean may have been undercounted in previous studies, since researchers focused their monitoring efforts toward the north, McMichael said.

The study also showed that the length of time that fish stay in the transition zone between the mouth of the river and the ocean varies greatly as well. Steelhead are more likely to bolt straight into the ocean within a few hours, while the youngest Chinook salmon, less than a year old, are likely to go back and forth a bit for a few days before committing to ocean life.

A surprising finding was that the biggest, strongest, fastest fish in the study – steelhead were also most likely to become lunch for a predator. The team did not examine why. One possibility is those fish are more vulnerable to birds like terns and cormorants, since steelhead swim closer to the surface than Chinook salmon.

To do the study, McMichael's team used an elaborate fish-tagging system known as the Juvenile Salmon Acoustic Telemetry System that he and others have developed over the last 10 years.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Ecologists implanted tiny, battery-powered tags smaller than a pencil eraser into more than 8,159 fish migrating down the Columbia, the nation's fourth-largest river, and released those fish at one of four sites anywhere from about 140 to 245 miles upstream from the ocean. As the fish swam, the acoustic tags inside them emitted tiny, unique beeps that were picked up by underwater receivers that collect and store the data.

The team set up several arrays of receivers along the Columbia, at its mouth, and also in the ocean.

There, 20 detectors were dropped near the ocean floor, each about 1.5 miles from the next, about nine miles from the mouth of the Columbia. Ultimately, 1,701 of the original fish, or about 21 percent, were subsequently detected as they entered the ocean. Most of the rest of the fish likely went undetected through gaps in the sparse detection system.

The tags the team used are battery-powered "active" tags that emit signals every few seconds for at least 30 days. The closer to the detector that a fish swims, the more likely it is to be detected; depending on the noisiness of the environment, the signals can be detected up to 250 meters away in the ocean. That's much further and provides much more information than "passive" tags, where fish must swim within a few feet of a detector.

The latest study would have been difficult to do with a passive tag, since such systems detect just a tiny fraction of the fish compared to the JSATS system. Passive systems also require an extensive infrastructure which would be nearly impossible to establish over such a large part of the ocean as the current study, where sparse equipment detected fish around much of the perimeter surrounding approximately 100 square miles of water.

The PNNL tags are also much smaller than other active tags, allowing the team to monitor much smaller, younger fish. Altogether, the study produced several hundred million pieces of data about the behavior of newly arriving salmon into the ocean.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Ongoing Conservation Projects

 New project gives ‘snapshot’ of CA’s wild salmon populations September 30, 2013 California’s salmon serve as an indicator of the health of watershed and coastal ecosystems.

But since peaking in the early 20th century, wild populations have been in decline with seven out of 10 of California’s coastal salmon and steelhead species now federally threatened or endangered.

One of the first steps in fish recovery is simply figuring out how many are left and where they are — which is the goal of a new project by the The Nature Conservancy.

“Salmon Snapshots” compiles data provided by state and private agencies to centralize salmon information and offer a summary of population numbers and restoration efforts across the state.

“The snapshots demonstrate how important steelhead and salmon are to so many people,” said Kevin Shaffer, environmental program manager at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “These reports provide useful and accessible information that will allow the public to both track the progress of conservation and to appreciate the great diversity of places where these fish and people exist together.”

According to the data, Lagunitas Creek in Marin County boasts some of the highest populations of steelhead salmon in the Bay Area with more than 546 wild, adult fish. Meanwhile, Redwood Creek, also in Marin County is home to only eight adult coho salmon.

The Russian River is one of the few places in the Bay Area that is home to populations of steelhead, coho and chinook salmon. In addition, the river serves as the ecosystem for one of the highest populations of chinook salmon numbering at 3,172 adults.

Population figures in the snapshots are accompanied by the number of each species needed at a particular watershed in order to meet the National Marine Fisheries Service recovery target plan and be de-listed from the federal endangered and threatened species list.

The full report includes information for most creeks and rivers in the Bay Area and can be accessed here.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 A River Returns (with video) October 23, 2013 Sunlight streaked through the leafy canopy painting the Elwha River and surrounding forest in dappled light. Two men in chest waders splashed through the swift-moving current, kicking up mushroom clouds of silt. Their eyes scanned the shallows as they make their way downstream.

John McMillan, a fish biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Jeff Duda, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, are here looking for steelhead and salmon nests, or redds, where fish have laid eggs. The signs are subtle but unmistakable to their trained eyes — a depression in the river bottom and disturbed gravel.

McMillan and Duda are just two of the many scientists from federal and state agencies and the local Native American tribe, who are studying the dramatic changes taking place on this river.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Two massive hydroelectric dams are in the process of being removed. And these scientists are trying to understand how the largest dam removal project in the nation’s history is impacting fish.

“We’re trying to see how fast these fish recolonize after the dams have been removed,” McMillan said.

The Elwha River in western Washington State was once home to one of the biggest salmon runs in the continental United States. But in the early 1900s two dams were built on this pristine river, which today lies mostly within the protected confines of Olympic National Park. The dams provided power to the nearby town of Port Angeles and helped the frontier community grow and thrive.

But the dams were built without fish ladders and had devastating consequences for fish; salmon returning from the ocean to spawn were cut off from their natal waters. Only the lower five miles of the 45-mile river were accessible to them. Over time the dams starved those five miles of the sediment salmon need for building their nests. The diminished and degraded habitat decimated fish populations in a river once known for producing 100-pound salmon.

The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, which has relied on the river for sustenance and its spiritual traditions for thousands of years, has been fighting for nearly 100 years to have the dams removed. In the early 1990s, Congress finally authorized dam removal as a way to help restore the river and its salmon runs. But it would take another two decades to secure funding for the $300 million project.

Dam removal began in 2011 and will connect the headwaters of the Elwha with the mouth of the river.

The project is expected to be completed by 2014. One of the major challenges in removing the dams was figuring out how to deal with all the sediment stored behind the dams – enough sediment to fill 11 NFL football stadiums. To deal with the sediment, construction crews are taking the dams down gradually, piece by piece, rather than dynamiting them. Even so, the river is swollen with sediment.

And the physical shape of the river is changing as the river deposits sediment along its banks.

“This place is changing every day,” Duda said. “Every time I come out there’s something new, something different.”

In five to 10 years, the sediment is expected to make its way downstream and the river will run clear once again. But for now, salmon returning to the river face some harsh conditions. Sediment can clog their gills and make it difficult to find food.

“It’s almost like you’re tearing off a Band-Aid,” Duda said. “You have to go through a little bit of pain in order to get to that final state of healing.”

On this day, McMillan and Duda walked the main channel of the Elwha River between the lower dam and the upper dam. The swift-flowing river, suffused with fine sediment from dam removal, ran a milky gray. McMillan fixed a keen eye on the clearer water near shore.

“They dug here! These are digs!”

“So you think this [is a nest] right here?” Duda said.

“This is a redd clearly,” McMillan replied. “It’s the first redd we’ve found by a steelhead in the mainstem Elwha River."

There's still a long way to go, but McMillan and Duda are hopeful that salmon and steelhead will thrive here once again.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Conservation-minded businesses – please support these fine businesses

 Jim and Donna Teeny: Jim Teeny Incorporated Note: Be sure to mark your calendar for November 20th at 7:00 PM. The Olympia Chapter of Trout Unlimited will host Jim and Donna Teeny’s, alwayspopular, family-friendly “Fly Fishing for Large Steelhead and Salmon” program. Admission is free to the public.

This exciting and interesting program will be held at the North Olympia Fire Department – 5046 Boston Harbor Rd NE, Olympia, Washington Come by and say hi to Jim and Donna to learn from the ones who have been there and done that

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Kim Malcom’s Riverman Guide Service – since 1969 Kim Malcom – Owner, Operator Licensed and Insured Guide Quality Float Trips – Western Washington Rivers – Steelhead, Salmon, Trout

K Kiim mM Maallccoom m’’ss

Riverman Guide Service ((336600)) 445566--88442244

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

  Anissa Reed Designs

Anissa Reed Designs

CCeelleebbrraattiinngg tthhee C Cooaasstt tthhrroouugghh A Arrtt aanndd D Deessiiggnn U n i q u e G i f t s a n d G r e e t i n g C a r d s Unique Gifts and Greeting Cards

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Cabo Sails

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The Bozeman Angler

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Attention Conservation-minded Business Owners Many businesses around planet earth rely on healthy populations of wild game fish.

This is true for fishing guide/charter services, resort and hotel owners, fishing tackle and boat retail stores, clothing stores, eco/photo tours, grocery stores, gas stations and many more. In fact, wild game fish are the backbone of a multi-billion dollar per year industry on a global scale.

This is why we at Wild Game Fish Conservation International offer complimentary space in each issue of “LEGACY” for business owners who rely on wild game fish populations to sustain your business. An article with one or more photos about your business and how it relies on wild game fish may be submitted for publication to LEGACY PUBLISHER. Please include your business website and contact information to be published with your business article. Selected submissions will be published each month.

Healthy wild game fish populations provide family wage jobs and balanced ecosystems while ensuring cultural values. They also provide a unique, natural resourcesbased lifestyle for those fortunate to have these magnificent creatures in our lives.

Conservationists working together with the business community effectively protect and restore planet earth’s wild game fish for this and future generations to enjoy and appreciate. This is our LEGACY. WGFCI endorsed conservation organizations:

 American Rivers  LightHawk  Native Fish Society  Salmon and Trout Restoration Association of Conception Bay Central, Inc  Save Our Salmon  Sierra Club – Cascade Chapter  Sportsman’s Alliance For Alaska  Steelhead Society of British Columbia  Wild Salmon First  Wild Salmon Forever

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Featured Artists:

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 The Wilds: “AYO!” Watch, Listen, Learn HERE

Holly Arntzen: “Friends and salmon aficionados, we giveth you Video #2: AYO!... written specially for the 40 Million Salmon Can't Be Wrong stage show; this is the world premiere!

AYO! is an expression heard amongst many coastal First Nations: when fishers see a salmon leaping, they call AYO! We first heard it last spring from Candace Weir on Haida Gwaii, when she was teaching it to young children. Then Roy Henry Vickers initiated writing it as a song for the show.

The song carries a very old...and a very new message: it's a rockin' prayer that we take action, bring back the dust in the wind and make it possible for the fish to come back.”

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Dan Wallace: Commissioned engraving – strict attention to detail

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Diane Michelin: "FALL FASHION" Original watercolor, “10 X 14”, Available via Fly Fishing Fine Art

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Gary Haggquist – Visual Artist

This painting was commissioned by a resident of Lindel Beach which is located at the southern end of Cultus Lake. This is the view from their property looking north. You can see the distinctive shape of Mt. Cheam poking up in the distance. Inquire about this work

ARTIST STATEMENT

The

natural world has long been my wellspring of inspiration. Memories of

exploring the forests of my youth can still flood my senses with the sounds and smells of those wild places on the edge of suburbia. Like many of us however, traveling down the intersecting avenues and returning to the comfort of my home every night, the wild remained very much “other worldly." A longing for a deeper connection with nature later took me, through job experiences and personal trips, to many remote areas of B.C. and Manitoba. These years after art school were ones of soul searching and of gathering experience along the path to finding my voice as an artist.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Diane Michelin: "Skeena, ma belle" Fly Fishing Fine Art

Welcome to Fly Fishing Fine Art, including edition prints and commissions in fly fishing and Canadian watercolor artist Diane Michelin.

original paintings, limited angling themes, by

Diane is anxious to capture the essence of fly fishing and record those memories that bring us back to the river. Her art is currently on display in museums, fly shops, lodges and private collections.

Browse through the gallery, and contact Diane Michelin directly to discuss your purchase of fly fishing fine art.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Featured Conservationist

 Bud Logan, Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada

One driven Campbell River senior with a passion for the environment November 6, 2013

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Bud Logan is River's biggest fan.

probably

Campbell

And bugs don't bug him but garbage does.

The artist, environmentalist, writer, amateur entomologist, innovator and volunteer, has lived here since 1961. Born in Chilliwack, his father was of Scottish/Cree descent and his mother was from England, where she met his father during the war years.

And now in his senior years, Logan has never been busier just being named president of the recently incorporated society, Island Forest Stewards.

"I have been involved with a great group of Islanders who are driven to clean up the Island," said Logan. "Illegal dumping has become a very serious problem on our Island and this group has taken it upon themselves to clean up the mess.

I have an incredible board of directors to work with. I have also just been asked to represent TrashOut (an app that deals with illegal dumping around the world) as their Country Manager for Canada, this is a volunteer position.

In addition to illegal dumping, open pen fish farms that dot our coast are another issue that Logan is deeply involved in.

"These farms are doing irreparable damage to our wild salmon stocks," he said.

"It shames me to think that our federal government has given the right to pollute our waters and destroy our wild stocks of fish to multinational companies from Norway and then give these companies the right to be their own watchdogs.

Then there is the issue of pipelines and tankers, this is another one that has my complete attention."

l am pleased to say that I accepted as TrashOut is a great tool that we use daily in our reporting of trash sites on the Island.

"Now that I.F.S. (Society of Island Forest Stewards) has been incorporated as society, we can pursue funding to purchase a mini excavator, trailer and truck to tow it with. With these tools, we can clean the whole island, wouldn't that be grand."

An accomplished artist, Logan is currently painting a four foot by four foot painting at the Impressions Custom Framing Art Gallery on Shoppers Row. "I will be there from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. most days," he said. "You can watch this painting evolve over a four to six week time frame and when it is done, l will select one lucky winner. To have a chance to be that winner, all you have to do is come on down and meet me and put your name in the box.

Donations are requested but not necessary. You can just put your name in the box if that's what you would like to do. This is a fund raiser for the I.F.S. so come on down and help our society out."

In addition to illegal dumping, open pen fish farms that dot our coast are another issue that Logan is deeply involved in.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

"These farms are doing irreparable damage to our wild salmon stocks," he said. "It shames me to think that our federal government has given the right to pollute our waters and destroy our wild stocks of fish to multinational companies from Norway and then give these companies the right to be their own watchdogs. Then there is the issue of pipelines and tankers, this is another one that has my complete attention."

In addition to creating art and watching over our environment, Logan also works on his website, www.askbud.ca, enjoys wildlife photography, hiking in the mountains and canoeing.

"I love to write as well and am writing a cookbook geared to men and have been writing a biography for a few years," he said. "I find it hard to write about myself and just recently l was asked by another writer if he could write my story, this would work for me."

He is also interested in bugs. "I am very intrigued by bugs and am an amateur entomology enthusiast to the extreme."

Logan recognizes that the Island is becoming a centre for web based companies along with many other tech based industries and these companies are looking for young educated people to work for them, "So get educated," he said. "The Island is also fast becoming a mecca for tourists who are looking for wilderness adventures. This is becoming big business here on the island so if you have any ideas about wildness adventures, now is the time to pursue them."

Logan said he has not gotten to where he is without great influences in his life.

"A teacher in Grade 8, Bill Mountain, he was such a motivator to me," said Logan. "My Auntie Anna, Canada's Ambassador in Mongolia who is an inspiration to all who meet her, (Courier-Islander Editor) Neil Cameron who showed me how to write from the heart, but the biggest influence has been from my wife of 29 years, Georgina, she has taught me compassion, patience, understanding."

"I love everything here, Campbell River has always treated me well and l have a real sense of belonging," said Logan. "The people here are a friendly bunch who always give from the heart. This makes me proud of my town, when l call out for volunteers. They always show up and give so much.

We live on the most beautiful Island in the world. Our town is vibrant and exciting, and the people are great, what more could a guy want."

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Featured Fishing Photos:

 Sara Stevenson: 40” white sturgeon – released back to Willamette River

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Alexandra Morton: The wild Pacific salmon lifecycle continues - naturally

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Gary Haggquist: Canoeing on Cultus Lake The misty, dramatic light really highlights the tall old growth Firs

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Antonio Amaral: Wahoo Royal Charlotte Bank, Canavieiras, Brazil

Photo credit: Antonio Amaral

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Amber

Serbin, Releasing a buck chinook salmon, Chilliwack River, British Columbia, Canada

Photo credit: Blake Osatchuk

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Nutthawud Tunbooncharean: Giant Snakehead (channa micropeltes) Mustad Asia and Oceania Field Tester representing Thailand

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Martine Canada

Bouchard: Du Gouffre River in Saint-Urbain, Charlevoix, Quebec,

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Double Island Fishing Charters: Coronation Trout Photo credit: Double Island Point Fishing Charters.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Bryanna Zimmerman: Wild coho (silver) salmon

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 Trevor Nearing: Triple… Steelhead fishin’ With Brett Nearing of Reel Time Fishing on the Clearwater River

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!



Gašper Konkolič: Fly Fishing Guiding Slovenia: Autumn at Sava River

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

 And then there is this

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Recommended Reading

 Alexandra Morton: “Listening to Whales”

Watch orcas up close HERE

In Listening to Whales, Alexandra Morton shares spellbinding stories about her career in whale and dolphin research and what she has learned from and about these magnificent mammals. In the late 1970s, while working at Marineland in California, Alexandra pioneered the recording of orca sounds by dropping a hydrophone into the tank of two killer whales.

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Video Library – conservation of wild game fish Aquaculture Piscine Reovirus in British Columbia: (14.36) Salmon Confidential: (69:15) The Fish Farm Fight; (6:51) Salmon Wars: Salmon Farms, Wild Fish and the Future of Communities (6:07) The Facts on Fish Farms (60:00+) “Algae culture fish farm” (6:40) Vegetarian Fish? A New Solution for Aquaculture (7:32) Everyone Loves Wild Salmon – Don’t They? - Alexandra Morton (2:53) Atlantic salmon feedlots - impacts to Pacific salmon (13:53) Farmed Salmon Exposed (22:59) Salmon farm diseases and sockeye (13:53) Shame Below the Waves (12:37) Occupy Vancouver, BC - Dr. Alexandra Morton (6:18) Farming the Seas (Steve Cowen) (55:53) Farming the Seas (PBS) (26:45) Cohen Commission – Introduction (9:52) Deadly virus found in wild Pacific salmon (1:57) A tribute by Dr. Alexandra Morton (5:35) Green Interview with Dr. Alexandra Morton (6:06) Closed containment salmon farms (8:15) Don Staniford on 'Secrets of Salmon Farming' (7:50) Greed of Feed: what’s feeding our cheap farmed salmon (10:37) Land-based, Closed-containment Aquaculture (3:14) Hydropower Undamming Elwha (26:46) Salmon: Running the Gauntlet - Snake River dams (50:08) Mining Pebble Mine: “No Means No” (1:15) Locals Oppose Proposed Pebble Mine (7:23) Oil: Extraction and transportation Tar Sands Oil Extraction: The Dirty Truth (11:39) Tar Sands: Oil Industry Above the Law? (1:42) SPOIL – Protecting BC’s Great Bear Rainforest from oil tanker spills (44:00) H2oil - A documentary about the Canadian tar sand oil (3:20) From Tar Sands to Tankers – the Battle to Stop Enbridge (14:58) Risking it All - Oil on our Coast (13:16) To The Last Drop: Canada’s Dirty Oil (22:31) Seafood safety Is your favorite seafood toxic? (6:06)

Legacy – December 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Game Fish!

Final Thoughts:

 Truth