Legacy - March 2012

Issue 5

March 2012

L e g ac y

“Turning up the HEAT in 2012” by

Wild Game Fish Conservation International http://WGFCI.blogspot.com © 2012 Wild Game Fish Conservation International

WARNING: Read the contents at your own risk

Legacy Wild Game Fish Conservation International Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI): Established in 2011 to advocate for wild game fish, their fragile ecosystems and the cultures and economies that rely on their robust populations.

LEGACY: Complimentary, no-nonsense, monthly publication by conservationists for conservationists LEGACY, the WGFCI Facebook page and the WGFCI website are utilized to educate fellow conservationists, elected officials, business owners and others regarding wild game fish, their contributions to society and the varied issues impacting them and those who rely on their sustainability.

LEGACY features wild game fish conservation projects, fishing adventures, 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. Your “Letters to the Editor” are welcome.

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

Co-editor “Legacy”

Jim Wilcox

Publisher and co-editor “Legacy”

Forward ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Planet Earth................................................................................................................................................................. 6    

First Global Study Reveals Health Risks of Widely Eaten Farm Raised Salmon ................................................... 6 Important health reasons for men and women to eat wild salmon; avoid farm-raised salmon ......................... 10 Five superfoods to the rescue ................................................................................................................................... 11 Harper China delegation includes oil, banking executives .................................................................................... 12



Safeguarding Africa’s fishing waters........................................................................................................................ 13

Africa........................................................................................................................................................................ 13 Australia .................................................................................................................................................................... 14 

Fishers for Conservation Inc website ....................................................................................................................... 14

Canada ...................................................................................................................................................................... 15  Court ruling compels Ottawa to protect killer-whale habitat ................................................................................. 15  Canada failing its oceans, biodiversity panel finds ................................................................................................ 16  Canada PM vows to ensure key oil pipeline is built ................................................................................................ 17  Wolves to be Poisoned Over Tar Sands in Canada from Wildlife Promise .......................................................... 18  Canadians ask: What is “Mainstream”? ................................................................................................................... 19 Alberta ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 20  Keystone XL Pipeline.................................................................................................................................................. 20 British Columbia ........................................................................................................................................................................ 26  Open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots ........................................................................................................................... 26  More than 100 species rely on wild Pacific salmon and their fragile ecosystems............................................... 33  Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines ...................................................................................................................... 34  New liquefied natural gas industry has the potential to attract new businesses and jobs ................................ 40 Nova Scotia ................................................................................................................................................................................ 44  Eastern Shore salmon farm proposal morally indefensible ................................................................................... 44

India ........................................................................................................................................................................... 47 

Fishing in Shimla ........................................................................................................................................................ 47

Ireland........................................................................................................................................................................ 48 

Massive Aran fish farm would create 500 new jobs ................................................................................................ 48

Norway ...................................................................................................................................................................... 49 

2007:'No salmon farms near wild salmon' ................................................................................................................ 49

Russia........................................................................................................................................................................ 50  The Russian Government and the EU Fisheries Commission back NASF‘s campaign to curb Norwegian salmon netting. .................................................................................................................................................................... 50

Scotland .................................................................................................................................................................... 51   

Researchers say cleaner fish will provide 'green' pest control for salmon industry .......................................... 51 Anti-fish farming campaigner to land on Scottish shores ...................................................................................... 52 Salmon cages under tow again ................................................................................................................................. 54

USA ............................................................................................................................................................................ 55  US Senator Maria Cantwell – Engineered Salmon ................................................................................................... 55  Norway's salmon producers eye U.S. as tariff falls................................................................................................. 56  2003: First-Ever U.S. Tests of Farmed Salmon Show High Levels of Cancer-Causing PCBs ............................ 57 Alaska ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 58  Report concludes that Pebble Mine would degrade Bristol Bay fisheries ..................................................................... 58 California .................................................................................................................................................................................... 59  Viewpoints: State has stake in Columbia salmon solution .................................................................................... 59 Washington State ...................................................................................................................................................................... 60  Being Frank: We need to win the battle for salmon recovery ................................................................................ 60 Chehalis River Basin Flood Damage Prevention .................................................................................................................. 62  Report Leaves Lewis County Flood Authority Leaders With Mixed Feelings ...................................................... 67  Local Flood Authority Members Find Credibility in Study ..................................................................................... 68 Jefferson County, Ecology discuss net pens ........................................................................................................................ 69

Venezuela .................................................................................................................................................................. 70 

Farewell, Trawl-Fishing .............................................................................................................................................. 70

Featured artist: ......................................................................................................................................................... 71 

Shallow Waters: Ta'Kaiya Blaney & Aileen De La Cruz (click, watch, listen) ....................................................... 71

2012 NORTHWEST YOUTH CONSERVATION & FLY FISHING ACADEMY............................................................ 72 Wild Game Fish Around Planet Earth...................................................................................................................... 73 Featured Fishing adventures: .................................................................................................................................. 75  

Newfoundland Sports Fishing – Newfoundland, Canada ....................................................................................... 75 Dave and Kim Egdorf's Western Alaska Sport Fishing........................................................................................... 76

Legacy distribution................................................................................................................................................... 77 Our Readers Write .................................................................................................................................................... 78 Conservation Video Library – “Why we fight” ........................................................................................................ 79 Attention Conservation-minded Business Owners ................................................................................................ 80 WGFCI endorsed conservation organizations ........................................................................................................ 80

Legacy Forward As this issue of Legacy was being finalized for global distribution in late February, the twenty day libel/defamation suit by Mainstream Canada / Cermaq against our friend and fellow wild game fish conservationist, Don Staniford, came to an end. It seems as though this multinational, salmon feedlot industry giant cannot stand the truth. Mr. Staniford, like thousands of others around the world, correctly compared the open pen salmon feedlot industry to the tobacco industry – direct and second-hand health hazards, government corruption, corporate greed/arrogance, highly paid legal teams and so very much more.

We now await Judge Adair’s ruling.

WGFCI published a special edition of Legacy (http://issuu.com/steelhead-salmonsociety/docs/legacystanifordspecial) early in February. This issue focused on the court case against Mr. Staniford, some of the potential implications to wild Pacific salmon and their ecosystems and it recognized a few of the businesses that contributed to help offset Don’s mounting legal fees.

The March 2012 issue of Legacy is far reaching as it explores wild fish conservation efforts in countries and on continents that we have not previously featured – Africa, Australia and Venezuela. It features recreational fishing opportunities in Canada, India and the United States of America. And, it features amazing art and conservation efforts by future stewards of our natural resources.

We continue to urge conservationists to speak out and to demonstrate peacefully for wild game fish and their fragile 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” is our responsibility to ensure the future of these precious gifts.

Bruce Treichler

James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

Planet Earth



First Global Study Reveals Health Risks of Widely Eaten Farm Raised Salmon

Science Study Suggests Sharp Restrictions in Consumption Albany, New York — A study published this week in a leading scientific journal found significantly higher levels of cancer-causing and other health-related contaminants in farm raised salmon than in their wild counterparts. The study, published in Science and by far the largest and most comprehensive done to date, concluded that concentrations of several cancer-causing substances in particular are high enough to suggest that consumers should consider severely restricting their consumption of farmed salmon.

The majority of salmon served in restaurants and found on grocery store shelves is farmed rather than wild. In most cases, as detailed in the study, consumption of more than one meal of farmed salmon per month could pose unacceptable cancer risks according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methods for calculating fish consumption advisories.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the U.S.’s largest philanthropies, sponsored the study. Pew has sponsored major research on fisheries including a number of widely reported recent studies on the deterioration of the marine environment.

Whereas earlier studies have analyzed anywhere from 8 to 13 salmon samples from individual salmon farming regions, the current study analyzed fillets from about 700 farmed and wild salmon produced in eight major farmed salmon producing regions around the world and purchased in 16 large cities in North America and Europe. The study’s authors, six U.S. and Canadian researchers representing fields from toxicology to biology to statistics, selected salmon samples to be representative of the salmon typically available to consumers around the world.

The researchers found significantly higher concentrations of contaminants in farmed salmon versus wild. In particular, four substances that have been well studied for their ability to cause cancer — PCBs, dioxins, dieldrin, and toxaphene— were consistently and significantly more concentrated in farmed salmon as a group.

Geographic Differences Among the study’s conclusions, salmon farmed in Europe were generally more contaminated than farmed salmon from North or South America. Farmed salmon purchased for the study from supermarkets in Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Oslo were the most contaminated and

triggered consumption recommendations of one-half to one meal per month — based on U.S. EPA consumption advisories for these contaminants. A meal was considered to be an eight-ounce portion.

Farmed salmon purchased from supermarkets in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Vancouver triggered a recommendation of no more than two meals per month.

There was slightly more variation in fish purchased in North America than those purchased in Europe.

While farmed salmon purchased for the study in New Orleans and Denver were generally least contaminated — triggering a recommendation of about 3 meals per month — farmed salmon purchased in Boston, San Francisco, and Toronto triggered the more stringent consumption recommendations of the European-purchased fish.

"Ultimately, the most important determinant of risk has to do with where the fish is farmed not where it is purchased," said Dr. David Carpenter, an author of the study and Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. "And because it’s a global market, it’s hard to be sure what you’re getting."

According to Carpenter, "Just because Europeans have the most contaminated farmed salmon, this doesn’t mean American consumers shouldn’t be concerned."

With very few exceptions, farmed salmon samples tested significantly exceeded the contaminant levels of wild salmon, which could be consumed at levels as high as 8 meals per month. Even the least contaminated farmed salmon, from Chile and the state of Washington, had significantly higher levels of PCBs, dioxins, and dieldrin than wild salmon.

Contamination Likely Related to Feed The Pew-sponsored study concluded that the contamination problem is likely related to what salmon are being fed when they’re on the farm. While wild salmon eat a diverse buffet from small aquatic organisms like krill to larger fish, farmed salmon are fed a concentrated and high fat mixture of ground up fish and fish oil. And since chemical contaminants a fish is exposed to during its life are stored in its fat, the higher fat "salmon chow" passes along more of these contaminants to the farmed salmon.

The study’s results confirmed this possibility when it found higher contaminant concentrations in salmon feed from Europe than feed from North and South America, a result roughly consistent with contaminant levels in European and American salmon.

Consumption Advisories and Recommendations

Link to above graph: http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/graph1.html

Link to Study Summary: http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/summary.html READ ENTIRE ALBANY.EDU PRESS RELEASE HERE

Green Warriors of the World Unite!

February 3, 2012 Oddekalv & Staniford join forces to fight Norwegian-owned salmon farming

Bergen, Norway & Vancouver, Canada - The Green Warriors of Norway (Norges Miljøvernforbund) and Don Staniford of the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture (GAAIA) are joining forces to fight Norwegian-owned salmon farming all over the world. Don Staniford will be coming to Norway in April to take up position as Global Coordinator of the salmon farming campaign “I am pleased to announce that Don Staniford is coming to Norway to spearhead the global work of the Green Warriors,” said Kurt Oddekalv, leader of Norges Miljøvernforbund. “Once he has finished fighting the Norwegian Government owned company Cermaq in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Don is welcome here in Norway. Cermaq's problems in Canada are coming home to roost.”

READ ENTIRE SALMON FARMING KILLS ARTICLE HERE

ď ś Important health reasons for men and women to eat wild salmon; avoid farmraised salmon

Salmon is recommended for breast cancer in moderation Salmon is a good source of vitamin D, selenium and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, all of which have been associated with lower risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer. Salmon also appears to contain other compounds that may reduce cancer risk; one study identified a salmon protein hydrolysate that inhibited the growth of human breast cancer cells. Consumption of fatty fish or fish oil has been found to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. Eating fatty fish such as salmon has been found to be associated with reduced risks of leukemia, multiple myeloma, and nonHodgkin lymphoma, as well as renal cell, endometrial and prostate cancer.

Generally speaking, the benefits of consuming fatty fish, including salmon, are thought to outweigh the potentially detrimental effects of the toxins from pollution and other sources that tend to accumulate in their adipose tissue. Salmon is considered a low mercury fish. However, depending on its location, salmon can accumulate levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin-like PCBs, polychlorinated

dibenzo-p-dioxins,

dibenzo-p-furans,

chlorinated

pesticides,

mercury

and

methylmercury high enough to be detrimental to human health. Exposure to PCBs has been associated with increased risk of developing breast, prostate, testicular, ovarian and uterine cancers.

Wild salmon from the open ocean have been found to incorporate lower levels of these contaminants than farmed salmon. Wild salmon also have higher omega-3/omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid ratios than farmed salmon. This is because farmed salmon are fed a concentrated mix of fishmeal and fish oil that tends to be high in contaminants. Some of the farmed salmon feed now used is plantbased, partly in response to the contaminant problem and partly because it is less costly than fish oil.

However, substituting vegetable oils in the farmed salmon diet reduces the omega-3/omega-6 fatty acid ratio, giving the fish a less favorable profile for breast cancer prevention. Food coloring is added to the feed because otherwise the salmon would not have the brilliant color of wild salmon. In addition, farmed salmon are treated with antibiotics, pesticides and hormones in the struggle to keep them growing and healthy in the massively crowded conditions of the pens in which they are raised.

Therefore, wild salmon is a better choice than farmed salmon.

ď ś Five superfoods to the rescue February 2, 2012 We know all about trying to avoid foods that aren't good for us, but how do we incorporate more of the foods that are good for us into our diets? Here are five superfoods to try:

1. WILD SALMON Grill it, steam it, bake it, you name it. However you go about cooking it, with salmon you can't go wrong.

The omega-3 fatty acid-rich, lean protein fish is full of vitamin D, B12, niacin, selenium and magnesium.

Omega-3s are thought to aid in everything from reducing inflammation and risk of blood clots, to slowing down the progress of cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer's.

2. GREENS Kale and other leafy greens like spinach have been shown to protect against some cancers.

Research also shows they reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and osteoporosis. Kale and other leafy greens help to keep your mind sharp and to ward off cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

Try shredded young kale, tossed with toasted pine nuts, raisins, feta and a basic vinaigrette punched up with Dijon mustard and a bit of maple syrup.

3. NUTS Almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and chestnuts all provide great benefits to our health.

Although some are healthier than others, these four are high in fibre, which helps lower cholesterol; are rich in omega-3 fatty acids to prevent heart disease; and contain plant nutrients (phytonutrients) with vitamin E and selenium that act as an antioxidant. It's important to stay within the adequate intake of one or two ounces of unsalted nuts per day, as they're high in calories - a one ounce (30-g) serving adds up to 160 to 200 calories.

4. BLUEBERRIES Talk about nature's candy: These small packages of sweetness also pack a nutritional punch. They're rich in antioxidants, which help to slow the aging process and protect us against disease.

Try blueberries sprinkled over your cereal or yogurt, or throw them into the blender with grapes to produce a powerfully antioxidant juice or smoothie.

5. CHOCOLATE That bar of dark chocolate you keep in a desk drawer or kitchen cupboard can do more than just satisfy a sweet tooth. It may also reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease, while also lowering blood pressure.

Results from a recent study put together by the British medical journal BMJ showed participants consuming the highest levels of chocolate decreased the risk of those conditions, up to 37 per cent for cardiovascular disease and 29 per cent for stroke

 Harper China delegation includes oil, banking executives Second trip to the country since becoming prime minister

February 6, 2012

Canadian oil exports will be on the agenda as Prime Minister Stephen Harper leaves for China Monday afternoon. A delegation travelling with Harper, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and other cabinet ministers includes eight mining or oil and gas companies. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) Canadian oil and business executives are well-represented in the delegation travelling to China with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with oil exports expected to be high on the government's agenda.

A delegation assigned to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver includes eight mining or oil and gas companies.

Harper's own delegation includes a wider business focus, with top executives from Air Canada, SNCLavalin and Bombardier, Manulife and Scotiabank.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz will also visit the country.

The delegation left early Monday afternoon and will be in China from Feb. 8 to 11.

China's total investment in Canada used to add up to millions of dollars, but since 2009 has increased to up to $20 billion.

It has come with a shift in this country from relying solely on the United States as the only buyer of Canadian oil and gas — something Harper emphasized repeatedly when U.S. President Barack Obama delayed a decision and then denied a permit to TransCanada for its Keystone XL pipeline.

The pipeline would have sent oil from Alberta through the U.S. to the coast of Texas.

Peter Harder, president of the Canada-China Business Council and a former top official at the Department of Foreign Affairs, said the United States will always be Canada's No. 1 trading partner, but China will be No. 2.

"And the question is how big that No. 2 will be," he said.

China 'big player' in the world China is a big player in the world, no matter the subject, NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière said.

READ ENTIRE GOOGLE ARTICLE HERE

Africa  Safeguarding Africa’s fishing waters Regional action needed to stop illegal trawlers off the coast

Foreign ships, such as this tuna trawler, haul huge quantities of fish out of African waters, but African countries need more capacity to ensure their catches stay within negotiated limits.

Every day hundreds of unlicensed fishing vessels enter African waters and trawl for shrimp, sardines, tuna, and mackerel. According to a study commissioned by the UK’s aid agency, such trawlers are costing Africa some $1 bn every year. But illegal fishing “is not just an African problem,” says Arona Soumare, the West Africa conservation director for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Many countries, even developed states with substantial marine security forces, struggle to keep unlicensed fishing vessels from their waters.

However, Mr. Soumare notes, in comparison to developed countries, “the social and economic impact of such losses on Africa are huge.” The funds that African countries lose to illegal fishing are “a potential source of income” that they “can ill afford to be without.”

In theory, Africa’s fishing waters should be protected under international law. In 1982 the International Law of the Sea set a 200-mile zone off the shores of coastal states within which fishing and other natural resource exploitation cannot take place without a licence. But African countries’ efforts to stop illegal fishing within those limits are hampered by a lack both of expertise and of the vast resources needed for policing such wide maritime areas. Only a few African countries, such as Namibia and South Africa, have the capacity to patrol their waters sufficiently to keep away illegal vessels, says Sloans Chimatiro, senior fisheries adviser at the secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), adopted by African leaders in 2001.

READ ENTIRE UNITED NATIONS ARTICLE HERE

Australia

ď ś Fishers for Conservation Inc website

Canada  Court ruling compels Ottawa to protect killer-whale habitat It’s time for the federal government to respect the law – and get serious about saving killer whales.

That’s not the view of a bunch of woolly headed environmentalists, but of the Federal Court of Appeal, which has declared that the Minister of Fisheries acted illegally by ignoring provisions of the Species at Risk Act designed to protect critical habitat.

“Ministerial discretion does not legally protect critical habitat within the meaning … of the Species at Risk Act, and it was unlawful for the minister to have cited provisions of the Fisheries Act in the killer whales Protection Statement,” the court found.

Not just wrong-headed or short-sighted – but unlawful.

The ruling, issued on Feb. 9 means the government of Canada has got to start protecting habitat vital to the survival of killer whales on the West Coast. And that means a whole lot of ocean has to be managed differently – with everything from fish farms, to new docks, to tanker traffic seen through a different lens.

“We feel really good about this ruling,” says Gwen Barlee, policy director of the Wilderness Committee, which was one of nine environmental groups that pursued the case with the help of Ecojustice, a non-profit law organization.

“It’s a strong decision, a unanimous decision by three judges, and we are hoping the government will now stop dragging its feet and will start protecting killer whales and all the other endangered species in Canada,” she said.

READ ENTIRE GLOBE AND MAIL ARTICLE HERE

ď ś Canada failing its oceans, biodiversity panel finds February 2, 2012 An expert panel has accused Canada's government of failing to protect ocean biodiversity. (Associated Press)

An expert panel investigating the state of Canadian marine biodiversity has accused the government of failing to protect the country's oceans, leaving marine life threatened and the nation's ocean species at risk.

The panel was commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada in 2009 to review the effects of climate change, fishing and aquaculture on the ability of Canada's oceans to sustain and restore marine populations.

Announcing the panel's findings in Vancouver on Thursday, Prof. Jeffrey Hutchings said the government had failed to meet national and international commitments to sustain marine biodiversity over many years.

"Twenty years after the collapse of the northern cod fishery, we don't have a target for a recovery.

How is that possibly consistent with responsible management of our oceans?

"It doesn't stand up nationally, it doesn't stand up internationally — but that is where we are, 20 years later," he said.

Risk to Chinook salmon The panel found the foundation of Canada's ocean legislation, the 1868 Fisheries Act, outdated and discovered the 1996 Oceans Act, designed to help Canada move towards sustainable ocean management, has not been implemented.

"It leaves huge discretionary powers to the minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who is given no science-based guidelines, targets or principles, " the report said.

"The panel found not lack of knowledge or lack of sound policy, but a consistent, disheartening lack of action on well-established knowledge and best-practice and policies, some of which have been around for years."

Among the species the panel lists at risk of extinction is the Chinook salmon, which it claims is threatened by the effect of climate change on mountain streams, no longer a habitable environment for the juvenile fish.

The report also highlights the potential of fish farming to accelerate the spread of parasites and diseases and undermine wild species by interbreeding.

ď ś Canada PM vows to ensure key oil pipeline is built February 10, 2012 GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Canada's prime minister on Friday made his strongest comments yet in support of a proposed pipeline from oil-rich Alberta to the Pacific coast, saying his government was committed to ensuring the controversial project went ahead.

Enbridge Inc's Northern Gateway pipeline, which is strongly opposed by green groups and some aboriginal bands, would allow Canada to send tankers of crude to China and reduce reliance on the U.S. market.

An independent energy regulator -- which could in theory reject the project -- last month started two years of hearings into the pipeline.

In remarks that appeared to cast some doubt on the regulator's eventual findings, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it had become "increasingly clear that it is in Canada's national interest to diversify our energy markets".

He continued: "To this end, our government is committed to ensuring that Canada has the infrastructure necessary to move our energy resources to those diversified markets."

Harper stepped up talk of oil sales to China in the wake of a U.S. decision last month to block TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast of the United States.

READ ENTIRE REUTERS ARTICLE HERE

 Wolves to be Poisoned Over Tar Sands in Canada from Wildlife Promise February 6, 2012 Late last week, internal documents went public showing Canada is fretting over its sullied reputation for unfettered fossil fuel development, while resorting to poisoning wolves rather than fixing the problem. NWF released a paper today showing tar sands, oil and gas development in Canada is contributing to the decline in caribou herds. Rather than improve environmental practices to protect and restore caribou habitat, Canadian wildlife officials are poisoning wolves with strychninelaced bait. The news comes as Alberta and Canadian officials scramble to address environmental monitoring failures that are wreaking havoc up north.

The highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline proposal would move this Canadian dirty oil through the heartland of the U.S. to export, making the U.S. complicit in causing excruciating wildlife culling.

Strychnine progresses painfully from muscle spasms to convulsions to suffocation over a period of hours. The NWF paper says the poison will also put at risk animals like raptors, wolverines and cougars that eat the poisoned bait or scavenge on the carcasses of poisoned wildlife.

Here’s what Canada’s Minister of Environment Peter Kent said in September: “Culling is an accepted if regrettable scientific practice and means of controlling populations and attempting to balance what civilization has developed. I’ve got to admit, it troubles me that that’s what is necessary to protect this species,” Kent commented. Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute estimates that many thousands of wolves could be destroyed over five years.

Instead of resorting to euphemistic descriptions of a repugnant method of killing, Mr. Kent and Canadian officials should be stopping the habitat destruction in the first place. Destroying and fragmenting caribou habitat to produce one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet means fewer caribou and fewer wolves just to line the pockets of Big Oil.

READ ENTIRE NATIONAL WILDLIFWE FEDERATION ARTICLE HERE

 Canadians ask: What is “Mainstream”?

Wild Salmon People

Alberta  Keystone XL Pipeline

A “Must Watch” video: To The Last Drop: Canada’s Dirty Oil

Agitators in the oilsands debates are working for oil companies January 16, 2012 I've been visiting Canada all my life, but I'm a little worried about my upcoming trip.

In late March I'm supposed to come to Vancouver to give a couple of talks. Youth Action Canada invited me to come, to speak to college students from across the country; I'm also planning to do a benefit for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. But now I read that Joe Oliver, the country's natural resources minister, is condemning "environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block" the Northern Gateway pipeline from the oilsands of Alberta to the Pacific.

I think he's talking about people like me. I've spent much of the last year helping rally opposition to the Key-stone XL pipeline from the oilsands to the Gulf of Mexico. I was arrested outside the White House in August, and emceed the demonstration that brought thousands of people to circle the White House in November. When I come to British Columbia, I'll urge everyone I meet to oppose the Gateway project. In fact, Youth Action is paying me to come. And the money will end up at 350.org, the international climate change campaign, helping fight projects like Gateway around the world.

Since a majority of Canadians, according to the polls, also oppose the pipeline, I'll be in good company. But Oliver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the organizers of the Ethical Oil campaign don't want any out-side voices. As the latter explained on its website, "It's our pipeline. Our country.

Our jobs. And our decision."

READ ENTIRE VANCOUVER SUN ARTICLE HERE

US Senator Maria Cantwell: Tar Sands oil reserves Thank you for contacting me about the Keystone XL project, a proposal by the TransCanada Corporation to construct a 1,661-mile oil pipeline to bring Canadian tar sand oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

Because the pipeline crosses the U.S.-Canada border, TransCanada was required to apply for a permit from the U.S. Department of State, which began a thorough and rigorous review of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project in 2008. The procedure for this review is guided by Executive Order 13337, signed by President Bush on April 30, 2004.

Due to the magnitude of the project and proposed route adjustments, the State Department announced in November 2011 that it could not make a determination regarding the permit application without additional information. The proposed route changes came primarily from stakeholders in Nebraska who raised serious concerns over the use of imminent domain to utilize their private property and the risk of a pipeline spill in the sensitive Sand Hills region which serves as a capstone for the Ogallala Aquifer. This giant underground source of freshwater supplies drinking water to around 3 million and provides nearly one-third of our nation's irrigation groundwater. Nebraskans and others noted that since TransCanada's original Keystone 1 pipeline opened in 2009, it has spilled at least a dozen times, including a 21,000-gallon spill last spring. The State Department estimated that a safe alternative route for the pipeline could be found and reviewed by the first quarter of 2013, a timeline accepted by both the State of Nebraska and TransCanada.

As you may know, the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-78) required President Obama to determine whether the Keystone XL pipeline is in the national interest by February 23, 2012. Due to the short timeline set by Congress, the State Department was forced to reject TransCanada's application because 60 days was not enough time to conduct a legally defensible review of the project. The State Department will likely consider the merits of the proposal when TransCanada reapplies for the permit, which the company says they plan to do.

The number of jobs associated with the Keystone XL proposal has been a source of confusion. In the original permit application, TransCanada provided expected expenses for labor associated with the pipeline. These labor expenses would account for roughly 5,000 to 6,000 jobs for two years. A study from Cornell University estimated fewer jobs from the pipeline, between 2,500 and 4,650 temporary construction jobs.

While I understand the appeal of importing tar sands oil from Canada rather than from hostile countries, it is important to note that the Keystone XL pipeline would not alter our dangerous over dependence on foreign oil. TransCanada projects that the Keystone pipeline would carry about 700,000 barrels of oil per day, accounting for only 3.7 percent of the 19.1 million barrels of oil that the U.S. consumed per day in 2010. This amount is also less than half of the 1.8 million barrels of refined oil that the U.S. exports per day. Because the quantity is relatively small and some of the oil transported through the Keystone pipeline would ultimately be exported to other countries, the Keystone pipeline would not make a noticeable impact on oil prices or our national security.

I believe the United States needs to diversify its domestic energy supply with a mix of both traditional fossil fuels and alternative, renewable fuels. The reality is that the United States only holds 1.6 percent of the world's oil reserves, meaning that we simply do not have enough to impact global supplies or prices significantly -- even with the most aggressive domestic drilling plan. In fact, U.S. crude oil production today is at its highest level since 2003, and oil imports have fallen from 57 percent in 2008 to 45 percent in 2011, but still Washingtonians are burdened by record high gas prices. The solution is to accelerate the use of cheaper alternatives to petroleum, which can also provide competition at the gas pump, as well as produce more efficient vehicles that do not need to be filled up as often.

That is why one of my top priorities as a U.S. Senator has been to work on shifting our nation from our overreliance on fossil fuels to a cleaner, more diverse energy system based on domestically produced and environmentally friendly 21st century technologies. Our nation's continued economic, environmental, and national security depends on finding alternative sources of energy produced right here at home. In Washington State, and across the country, we must seize the opportunity to become a world leader in manufacturing and deploying new energy technologies. I want Americans to be the ones building and exporting the new clean energy technologies and fuels the world will be demanding in the near future.

To that end, I helped author legislation that enacted historic increases in fuel economy standards which will save approximately 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold in model years 2012 through 2016. Additionally, the average consumer will save more than $3,000 in fuel costs over the lifetime of a model year 2016 vehicle. I have strongly supported innovation and development of the biofuels industry in order to bring advanced biofuels to market. These advanced biofuels can be produced from a wide array of non-food feedstocks like cellulosic biomass, including perennial grasses, agricultural and wood waste, and other sources like algae and are economically competitive with petroleum or are likely to be soon. I also authored legislation with Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) which today provides up to $7,500 to consumers who purchase plug-in electric cars, trucks or SUVs. According to Consumer Reports, the cost of running a plug-in electric vehicle is less than a third of running even an efficient gasoline powered car like the Toyota Corolla. A recent Rice University report concluded that the single most effective way to reduce US oil demand and foreign imports would be an aggressive campaign to launch electric vehicles into the automotive fleet. Last September I introduced a bill with Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) that would break oil's monopoly over the U.S. transportation fuel industry by ensuring that most new vehicles in the United States are capable of running on a range of domestically produced alternative fuels starting in 2015. Please be assured I will keep your thoughts in mind should I have the opportunity to consider this issue in the future.

Thank you for your letter expressing your concern regarding the permitting process for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

US Senator Patty Murray – Tar Sands oil reserves As you may know, TransCanada Keystone Pipeline submitted an application in 2008 for a permit with the Department of State to build and operate the XL Project.

This project consists of a 1,700-mile crude oil pipeline that would be used to transport crude oil from Alberta, Canada to the United States Gulf Coast. After extensive review based on the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Department of State announced in November 2011 that it would seek additional information about the pipeline project based on concerns with the current proposed route.

The Department of State expressed concern about environmental impacts, energy security, economic impacts, and foreign policy.

Unfortunately, H.R.3630, the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011 included a provision that would require the State Department to issue a final decision on the Keystone pipeline within 60 days. I did not support the inclusion of this language, and believe that the State Department should not be forced to make a decision based on a congressionally-mandated timeline.

Patty Murray US Senator – Washington State

Our nation is faced with a growing global demand for energy, a heavy reliance on fossil fuels, high energy prices, and environmental concerns regarding energy use. Because of these realities, I believe Congress must adopt a comprehensive energy policy that promotes research and development to keep America at the cutting edge of the clean energy economy, rather than continuing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Throughout my tenure in the United States Senate, I have supported energy and climate policies that benefit consumers, encourage diversification of our nation's energy sources and protect our fragile environment. As a member of both the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committees, I have fought for increased funding for important alternative energy research and development programs in Washington state and across the nation. In order to encourage private sector development of new forms of energy technology, I have consistently supported high fuel standards for vehicles and federal tax incentives to help spur investment in wind, solar, biomass, and other renewable energy sources.

I believe it is vital that Congress works to increase energy independence without sacrificing environmental protections.

Link to above map: http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-akash4/s720x720/384529_326345537400154_192344687466907_1074168_ 1503253723_n.jpg

Keystone XL win shows that 'yes we can' stop the growth of the tar sands January 18, 2012 US President Obama has announced today that the Keystone XL pipeline will not be approved.

This marks an important victory for the broad coalition opposed to the project which would have greatly expanded the amount of crude carried from the Alberta tar sands to heavy oil refineries in Texas.

“This is a victory for Americans who testified in record numbers, and who demanded that science get the hearing usually reserved for big money,” said Bill McKibben, a founder of 350.org who collaborated with concerned citizens on both sides of the border to orchestrate the defeat of the Keystone pipeline.

“Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL shows that yes – when there’s clear and organized opposition – we can stop projects that recklessly expand exports of crude oil from Canada that only increase global dependence on fossil fuels,” said Ben West, Healthy Communities Campaigner campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.

READ ENTIRE WILDERNESS COMMITTEE ARTICLE HERE

Dear President Obama; We thank you for rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

We know that you were under enormous political and industry pressure to approve this terribly destructive project. So we are enormously grateful for your courageous decision to put the health, safety and environment of the American people first.

Your decision inspires us with hope for a cleaner energy future -- one in which the fossil fuel giants do not call all the shots, one in which we save our last wild places, stabilize our climate and sustain our planet. Please continue leading the way there.

Thank you for doing the right thing for America and the planet!

Sincerely,

Bruce Treichler James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

British Columbia  Open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots Editorial comment: WGFCI supports removing open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots from fragile marine ecosystems in British Columbia, Washington state and elsewhere. However, we believe that considerable effort is needed to protect groundwater as well as streams, rivers and lakes from pollution impacts (including escapes) associated with land based salmon feedlots.

02/07/2012

Petition to NAAEC Canada violating Fisheries Act with salmon feedlots Dr. Alexandra Morton, Marine Biologist

Today I joined the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Kwikwasu'tinuxw Haxwa'mis First Nation to file a formal petition today requesting an international investigation into Canada’s failure to protect wild salmon in British Columbia from disease and parasites in industrial fish feedlots. The petition was submitted to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation — an environmental side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement — and seeks enforcement of Canada’s Fisheries Act..Download Farmed salmon NAFTA petition 2-7-12 copy 2.pdf (2118.1K)

Fraser sockeye infected with European salmon feedlot virus?

Mainstream Canada served eviction notice by First Nations

"The Canadian inquiry into the collapse of Fraser River sockeye, the largest salmon-producing river in the world, suggests the primarily Norwegian-owned British Columbia salmon-farming industry exerts trade pressures that exceed Canada's political will to protect wild salmon,” said biologist Alexandra Morton with the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society. “Releasing viruses into native ecosystems is an irrevocable threat to biodiversity, yet Canada seems to have no mechanism to prevent salmon-farm diseases from afflicting wild salmon throughout the entire North Pacific."

Canada has permitted more than 100 industrial salmon feedlots in British Columbia to operate along wild salmon migration routes, exposing ecologically and economically valuable salmon runs to epidemics of disease, parasites, toxic chemicals and concentrated waste. The petition documents Canada’s failure to enforce the Fisheries Act in allowing industrial aquaculture to erode the capacity of ecosystems to support wild salmon. The proliferation of salmon feedlots is linked to dramatic declines in British Columbia’s wild salmon populations and the detection of a lethal salmon virus.

READ DR. ALEXANDRA MORTON’S ENTIRE BLOG POST HERE

WGFCI recommendation to Premier Clark: Remove open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots from British Columbia’s precious marine environments – immediately!

The Honorable Premier Clark You have seen the science regarding the negative impacts of open pen Atlantic salmon farms on wild Pacific salmon, their ecosystems and the cultures and economies that rely on them. You've also read and heard that Atlantic salmon reared in open pen feedlots carry high levels of cancer causing chemical contamination. Additionally, you've read and heard that the ongoing practices at open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots sited in British Columbia, Canada are directly responsible for the deaths of untold thousands of marine mammals and other marine-centered wildlife.

I am writing to respectfully request that: 1. open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots be removed from wild Pacific salmon migration routes in and through British Columbia's precious and sensitive marine ecosystems.

2. a permanent moratorium banning open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots to be sited in wild Pacific salmon migration routes be enacted immediately.

By not taking the above actions, British Columbia and Canada will be responsible for: 1. catastrophic ecosystem collapses which will lead directly to collapsed cultures and economies .

2. promoting and distributing cancer-causing food (farm-raised Atlantic salmon) to domestic and international markets 3. the intentional and collateral killing of untold thousands of marine mammals and other sealife The fine citizens and natural resources of British Columbia and Canada deserve government leadership that protects them from harm; not one that puts them in harm's way as with open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots.

I encourage you and your administration to protect British Columbia's and Canada's citizens and her God-given natural resources from the known and unknown harms associated with open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots.

Thank you, Premier Clark.

Sincerely, Bruce Treichler James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

Scientists seek to learn whether fish farms kill fish February 5, 2012 A group of leading fisheries scientists have come up with a proposal to answer some of the most pressing and difficult environmental questions on the West Coast: Are fish farms killing wild salmon?

And if so, how many?

Debate on the environmental impact of fish farms has raged in British Columbia for over a decade.

Environmentalists blame aquaculture for causing a collapse in wild salmon populations by spreading sea lice and disease, but there has never been any hard scientific evidence to prove those claims.

Now David Welch, who has done groundbreaking work tracking fish at sea with acoustic transmitters, has put together a team of some of the brightest fisheries researchers in Canada to solve the mystery.

Dr. Welch testified last year to the Cohen Commission, explaining how his acoustical tracking work had shown that salmon smolts, in their first year at sea, were vanishing in Queen Charlotte Strait, just past the northern tip of Vancouver Island.

Because fish farms are clustered in a bottleneck in Discovery Passage on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, Dr. Welch’s research raised suspicions that wild salmon might be picking up diseases and/or lice as they migrated past the farms, then dying some weeks later in Queen Charlotte Sound.

In December, Dr. Welch filed a supplemental report with the Cohen Commission, saying a new analysis shows his data is even stronger than he first thought. So many fish died north of the farms, he stated, that it could explain the Fraser River’s catastrophic sockeye collapse in 2009, when only one million fish returned to spawn, instead of 10 million.

“This level of higher mortality would be sufficient to fully explain the 10-fold decline in Fraser sockeye survival seen since 1990,” states Dr. Welch.

He cautions that “this new result remains a correlation, not proof that the fish farms caused the reduced survival,” but he proposes a way to find out.

Working with several prominent researchers – including Scott Hinch of the University of British Columbia and Kristi Miller of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans – he proposes to tag thousands of salmon smolts with acoustic transmitters and to track them up the coast, past the fish farms and deep into Queen Charlotte Sound.

The researchers would use control groups, including fish held in pens near fish farms, as well as fish released in pristine areas where they cannot come into contact with farms.

“Whether fish farming caused the widespread decline of southern British Columbia salmon stocks is hotly debated, and it is unlikely that evidence reported at the Cohen Judicial Inquiry can resolve the controversy,” Dr. Welch writes in an overview of his proposal. “[But] if fish farms reduce survival by disease transfer, parasite load, or some unknown agent, then there should be a measurable decline in survival of the exposed smolts relative to controls.”

READ ENTIRE AND MAIL ARTICLE HERE

The Cohen Commission: Following traces January 27, 2012 The mystery of the disappearing wild salmon may be closer to being solved due to the reconvened Cohen Commission and the extraordinary three days of hearings held in December, 2011. As earlier testimony revealed, many environmental factors affect the survival of wild salmon.

Evidence now confirms that government policy supports the salmon farming industry, and that the industry has been willing to exploit this advantage to win regulatory concessions for its economic gain - in the words of one Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) official, the industry seemed "to dictate" policy. These concessions may have involved relaxed importation, inspection and quarantine of Atlantic salmon eggs, and inadequate supervision of fish health.

Summary statements written by Gregory McDade and Lisa Glowaki, two of the lawyers representing Dr. Alexandra Morton at the inquiry, describe how DFO failed to pursue evidence suggesting that ISAv might be in wild salmon, despite an independent 2004 test that suggested all Cultus Lake sockeye were infected. "Instead it buried the results completely for seven years," notes the summary, and "decided to not test any further wild salmon. This reaction is not consistent with the scientific method or a precautionary approach - rather it shows action of a political nature - denial and suppression of an inconvenient fact. In legal terms, it is known as willful blindness, also characterized in some circumstances as gross negligence." This opinion is reinforced by DFO's failure to submit any ISAv documentation to the Commission.

McDade and Glowaki suggest that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) was also implicated in this scheme of "willful blindness." It had no interest in the well-being of wild salmon per se; its mandate was to monitor diseases and promote the economic value of food products. Fish diseases were inconveniences that complicated this commercial objective.

ISAv was a reportable infection that would have alerted trade partners and the international community to risk, thereby incurring trade damage.

"Safe trade" is the subject of testimony given by Dr. Kim Klotins, a senior CFIA official, to Krista Robertson, a lawyer acting for First Nations: Robertson: "But is it also part of the mandate of the CFIA to ensure that... trade interests of Canadian companies or companies operating in Canada such as Norwegian fish farm companies, are not harmed by any kind of finding or allegation of disease?"

Dr. Klotins: "So if, let's say, we do find ISA in B.C. and all of a sudden markets are closed, our role [CFIA] is then to try to renegotiate or negotiate market access to those countries. Now what it will be is a matter of they'll let us know what the requirements are. We'll let them know what we can do and whether we can meet that market access. If we can't meet it, then there will be no trade basically."

In other words, the discovery of ISAv in BC wild or farmed salmon could be an economic disaster that could even end trade in fish products. The CFIA didn't want to find ISAv, and the evidence suggests it took active measures to confiscate fish samples that may have indicated ISAv was here. DFO - which supported the salmon farming industry - didn't want to find ISAv either, and took active measures to hide findings and suppress research that may have exposed it. And the salmon farming industry certainly didn't want to discover ISAv in its brood stock or net-pens - such a discovery would have had devastating environmental, market and public relations ramifications.

READ ENTIRE COURIER-ISLANDER ARTICLE HERE

Salmon Politics and the Egg Trade January 24, 2012 The source of the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv) now being found in BC's wild salmon is almost certainly from imported Atlantic salmon eggs, the international trade that has provided coastal salmon farms with most of their stock. The salmon farming industry, of course, is still denying that ISAv is here, although evidence given at the Cohen Commission's extraordinary three days of hearings on December 15th, 16th and 19th essentially obliterates that defence.

Of four labs testing for ISAv in wild fish samples, the only one seemingly unable to find it is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's facility in Moncton, New Brunswick, a lab whose detection capability is known by experts to be notoriously insensitive and inconsistent - an inaccuracy compounded by attempting to use degraded tissue samples. Research tests by a reputable lab in 2004 found 100 percent infection in Cultus Lake sockeye - inexplicably never pursued by federal agencies responsible for the health of wild salmon. Testimony from Dr. Kristi Miller showing genomic markers in archaic samples of BC wild salmon indicates that ISAv has been here since 1986.

Documents presented at the Cohen Commission suggest that the arrival of ISAv coincides with the early importation of Atlantic salmon eggs to West Coast salmon farms. Supporting this connection is a recorded litany of warnings from experts in BC's Ministry of Environment (MOE) and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), all alarmed about the inherent danger of importing exotic diseases to the West Coast ecology through Atlantic salmon eggs. This evidence is worth noting.

1982: representatives of Canada's government meet with Norwegian and Canadian business interests to consider "alternative approaches to inspection and certification of salmon culture facilities" for the importation of Atlantic salmon material from Norway.

READ ENTIRE THE CANADIAN ARTICLE HERE

Editorial Comment: As Wild Game Fish Conservation International and others heard during the special Cohen Commission Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) hearings in December:  Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has not tested wild Pacific salmon.  CFIA has not tested for the ISA virus  CFIA uses less sensitive sampling equipment, software and techniques  CFIA discredits certified infectious salmon disease scientists who confirmed the presence of ISAv, ISA and Heart Skeletal Muscle Inflammation (HSMI) in wild and farmed Pacific salmon

No ISA in BC salmon January 18, 2012 Re: Ray Grigg's The Cohen Commission and ISAv Evidence, Friday Jan. 13 Courier-Islander.

I would like to address the recent article on Jan. 13, about the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) response to suspected cases of infectious salmon anaemia (ISA).

The CFIA is a science-based organization that is committed to protecting the health of wild and farmed fish.

We take reports of all reportable diseases, including ISA, very seriously. This is why we will be undertaking an extensive surveillance program in British Columbia. This activity will be evidence based, transparent and rigorous.

Similarly, science will guide our response to the survey's result.

I want to be very clear, that to date no trace of ISA has been detected in B.C. salmon.

The CFIA remains committed to keeping Canadians and stakeholders informed of our work surrounding this critical Canadian resource.

Dr. Ian Alexander Executive Director Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Marine Harvest pleads guilty in Port Hardy court January 18, 2012

Follow-up Comments: Anissa Reed: “Charges were stayed against Marine Harvest in the case of the pink salmon they killed.

How many wild fish meet their early demise at the hand of these salmon farms?

Salmon are sacred to this coast, the land, the people.”

Dr. Alexandra Morton: “Interestingly Marine Harvest chose to plead guilty rather than face a 4-day trial.

A lot of facts were lost and it was made to sound like wild fish in salmon farms was a rare occurrence. However, as Anissa said we made history - the first time the salmon farming industry has been found guilty as charged.”

Robert Mountain “Yes a victory nonetheless. But the fed lawyer made it sound like it was a minor ISOLATED incident, when we know that all 29 farms are killing and destroying our salmon. The true and WHOLE story still needs to be told about how much damage they are doing to our wild resources. That is why they pled guilty to get off easy and not have to tell how many herring and salmon the are really killing, a win that will set precedence for when we catch them killing more herring and salmon, Gilakasla.”

 More than 100 species rely on wild Pacific salmon and their fragile ecosystems By: Kwanwah'tala Galis Editorial Comment: Wild Game Fish Conservation International truly appreciates the work done by Kwanwah'tala Galis to identify species that rely on sustained populations of healthy wild Pacific salmon and their fragile ecosystems. Below is his list of these species.

Harlequin Duck • Osprey • Bald Eagle • Caspian Tern • Black Bear • Grizzly Bear • Northern River Otter • Killer Whale • Cope's Giant Salamander • Pacific Giant Salamander • Pacific Coast Aquatic Garter Snake • Redthroated Loon • Pied-billed Grebe • Clark's Grebe • American White Pelican • Brandt's Cormorant • Doublecrested Cormorant • Pelagic Cormorant • Great Blue Heron • Black-crowned Night-heron • Turkey Vulture • California Condor • Common Goldeneye • Barrow's Goldeneye • Common Merganser • Red breasted Merganser • Golden Eagle • Bonaparte's Gull • Heermann's Gull • Ring-billed Gull • California Gull • Herring Gull • Thayer's Gull • Western Gull • Glaucous-winged Gull • Glaucous Gull • Common Tern • Arctic Tern • Forster's Tern • Elegant Tern • Common Murre • Marbled Kwanwah'tala Galis Murrelet • Rhinoceros Auklet • Tufted Puffin • Belted Kingfisher • American Dipper • Steller's Jay • Black-billed Magpie • American Crow • Northwestern Crow • Common Raven • Virginia Opossum • Water Shrew • Coyote • Gray Wolf • Raccoon • Mink • Bobcat • Northern Fur Seal • Northern (Steller) Sea Lion • California Sea Lion • Harbor Seal • Pacific White-sided Dolphin • Gyrfalcon • Peregrine Falcon • Killdeer • Spotted Sandpiper • Snowy Owl • Willow Flycatcher • Tree Swallow • Violet-green Swallow • Northern Rough-winged Swallow • Bank Swallow • Cliff Swallow • Barn Swallow • Harbor Porpoise • Dall's Porpoise • Snapping Turtle • Western Pond Turtle • Western Terrestrial Garter Snake • Common Garter Snake • Pacific Loon • Common Loon • Yellowbilled Loon • Horned Grebe • Red-necked Grebe • Western Grebe • Sooty Shearwater • Brown Pelican • Great Egret • Snowy Egret • Green Heron • Trumpeter Swan • Mallard • Green-winged Teal • Canvasback • Greater Scaup • Surf Scoter • White-winged Scoter • Hooded Merganser • Red-tailed Hawk • Greater Yellowlegs • Franklin's Gull • Mew Gull • Black-legged Kittiwake • Pigeon Guillemot • Ancient Murrelet • Gray Jay • Winter Wren • American Robin • Varied Thrush • Spotted Towhee • Song Sparrow • Masked Shrew • Vagrant Shrew • Montane Shrew • Fog Shrew • Pacific Shrew • Pacific Water Shrew • Trowbridge's Shrew • Douglas' Squirrel • Deer Mouse • Red Fox • Gray Fox • Ringtail • American Marten • Fisher • Long-tailed Weasel • Wolverine • Striped Skunk • Mountain Lion • White-tailed Deer • Black-tailed Deer • Minke Whale • Sperm Whale • Humpback Whale • Northern Rightwhale Dolphin • Humans

 Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines “The Most Destructive Project on Earth”

Video: CBC Showdown: Sierra Club vs “Ethical Oil” – One of them is a Ridiculous Radical

Wild Game Fish Conservation International Opposes Enbridge-owned Northern Gateway Pipelines Olympia, Washington (January 22, 2012) - Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI) denounces the proposed Enbridge-owned Northern Gateway Pipelines project on environmental, cultural and economic grounds.

According to Bruce Treichler, WGFCI co-founder, “the Northern Gateway Pipelines project will have a negative impact on environmentally-sensitive river and stream ecosystems located between the tar sands fields near Edmonton, Alberta and the upper reaches of Douglas Channel at Kitimat, British Columbia. The region’s First Nation communities rely on these productive landscapes to support their unique cultures. Additionally, the fish, wildlife including the famous Kermode Bear and other natural resources in these ecosystems contribute billions of dollars and hundreds of jobs throughout this natural resources-rich region on an annual basis.”

Jim Wilcox, WGFCI co-founder, states “as proposed, the Northern Gateway Pipelines project will deliver 550,000 barrels of crude oil daily from the tar sands fields via a 36” diameter pipeline to tankers berthed in Kitimat. Once loaded, these jumbo tankers (up to 340 feet long with a draft of 23 feet) will navigate from the terminal at Kitimat via the challenging Douglas Channel with its treacherous coastlines, many islands, strong currents and often hazardous weather. They will then encounter dangerous conditions in the open North Pacific Ocean on their way to service ever-expanding Asian markets. Additional tankers berthed at Kitimat will offload 220,000 barrels daily of condensate via a 20” pipeline connected to the tar sands fields.”

Wilcox adds, “as with the river systems traversed by the Northern Gateway Pipelines project, the marine waters used to transport crude oil between Kitimat and Asian markets support diverse ecosystems, varied cultures and global economies.”

The massive Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the historic rupture at British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico are but two reminders of the adverse and long lasting impacts associated with crude oil spills, leaks and ruptures to sensitive ecosystems, cultures and economies.

Clearly, the risks associated with the proposed Northern Gateway Pipelines project and its marine-based transportation systems are many; they are long lasting; they are costly and they are irreversible. The long term lifestyle risks for many certainly outweigh any potential short term monetary gains for a few.

WGFCI and our associates encourage the protection of this very special region and the many valuable benefits it provides year in and year out.

City opposes pipeline project February 14, 2012 12:52 PM The city of Terrace now opposes the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project after a 5 - 2 vote during tonight's Feb. 13 council meeting.

First, council voted to clear its former neutral position, paving the way to decide its stance anew.

Then, each council member took a turn expressing their views, concerns, and the implications of a municipal body taking a stance. After, a majority voted to oppose the project 5 - 2.

Councillors James Cordeiro, who initiated the vote, Stacey Tyers, Marilyn Davies, Bruce Bidgood and Lynne Christiansen voted to oppose the project.

"I believe Terrace is open for business," said Bidgood during the meeting. "It's just not for sale at any price."

Councillor Brian Downie and mayor Dave Pernarowski were defeated in their votes to stay neutral.

"I'm concerned how this affects investments in the community," said Downie, adding that despite this he too has concerns about risks associated with the project. But Downie added that waiting until a formal review process to be complete means concern can be tempered with expert opinion.

He urged council to defer taking a stand until after evidence was heard from the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel, the body tasked to assess project-related environmental information.

The motion put forth by Cordeiro involved declaring support for two 2010 UBCM motions which read, "B140 Opposing the shipping of tar sand oil in pipelines across northern BC for loading onto crude oil tankers and; B139 opposing any expansion of bulk crude oil tanker traffic in Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound, British Columbia."

"When I looked at the resolution I was wondering whether these resolutions were really even relevant," said Downie. "However, I understand the motivation."

"It's important as leaders in this community that we take a stand one way or the other," said councillor Tyers, expressing opposition. "Just because ... city councils in the province have not taken a stand doesn't mean we stop being a progressive leader."

"We all know I'm a free enterpriser," said Davies. "(But) I just don't see what's in it for us."

"The environmental risk for me is just way too high," said Christiansen.

Pernarowski joined Downie in urging council to wait until a later date to take a stand, saying any official declaration at this point is premature.

However, he did note that personally, he has concerns about the project.

"I'm opposed, but as a municipal body representing this community... it puts us in a precarious position," he said.

It is unclear what, if any, repercussions this stance will have on the city's economic arm, the Terrace Economic Development Authority.

Canada doesn’t know how to protect its interests February 4, 2012

Chinese President Hu Jintao is escorted by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police regiment during a 2005 visit. Canada’s investment policies are good for China, but Canada?

“We are sitting ducks.”

That’s the way Anthony Campbell, the former head of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat of the Privy Council Office, put it to me the other day. We were talking about Beijing’s designs on Canada’s energy resources, Beijing’s adroit cunning in enfeebling Canadian foreign policy, and how Canadians have been rendered unable to cope with the drama as it unfolds.

The Chinese Year of the Dragon began inauspiciously with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Industry Minister Joe Oliver riffing on a clever talking-points stratagem dreamed up by neophyte Conservative war-room hangabouts. It featured American billionaire socialists infiltrating into Canada to ambuscade the construction of Canada’s last-hope economic lifeline, to China.

Most Canadians had probably never even heard of the Enbridge project, which is a plan to build a huge bitumen tube from Alberta’s oilsands to saltwater on the northern British Columbia coast. Still, whatever Ottawa was shouting about, it seemed to contain enough resemblance to a kernel of truth.

So it worked for a while.

But what Harper and Oliver inadvertently opened up was a nasty and troubling question that nobody in Ottawa is particularly happy to hear people asking. Just what legally constitutes a foreign activity in Canada that is detrimental to this country’s national security interests these days, anyway?

As it turns out, Canada is practically incapable of answering that question with any enforceable coherence. When it comes to the recent and rapid-succession maneuvers that have given Chinese state-owned entities the spigot key at critical flow points in Canada’s oil and gas industry, mysteries abound. But it is now clear that slowly but surely, Canada’s regulatory defences have been almost completely hollowed out.

Two thousand protest Enbridge oilsands pipeline in Prince Rupert February 5, 2012 First Nations see the pipeline as a threat to their traditional territories, the foundation of culture and livelihood The Prince Rupert police estimate that 2,000 people protested against the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline in Prince Rupert yesterday, in a rally that took over the city.

No oil pipeline here: Enbridge Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel finds 100% opposition in Smithers “It was an incredible day," Prince Rupert city councillor Jen Rice said.

“We may associate negative feelings and negative emotions with this project, but the irony of it is that it actually brings people together.”

According to the CBC, Hartley Bay councillor Cameron Hill has said in the past that he is willing to die to stop the Enbridge project.

“Because I don’t know any other life," he explained. "This is the life I have and been brought up in.

This is what I want my kids to enjoy. And I want them to have the life that I have had, which I consider to be the best life ever.”

The Enbridge pipeline would impact the traditional territory and livelihood of many of the First Nations who adamantly oppose the project.

Enbridge off the hook for cleanup costs January 29, 2012 Although the chances of a massive oil tanker spill off the coast of northern B.C. are slim, documents reveal that Enbridge would not have to pay the clean-up costs for an ocean spill related to its $5.5 billion Northern Gateway pipeline project.

Still, maritime law experts argue that even though the oil giant can’t be forced to pay for a tanker spill, the law is clear about who would have to pay and there’s a hefty chunk of change set aside to cover just such a disaster.

“When you are talking about oil from ships, it is the most regulated area of marine activity,” explained Gary Wharton, a maritime law expert at Vancouver’s Bernard & Partners.

Last week, in Kitimat, public hearings began into the planned Northern Gate-way project, a twin pipeline system that would ferry oil and condensate between Edmonton and the West Coast.

Thousands of Canadians have allegedly signed up to speak about the project during public hearings in the coming months.

Environmental groups, First Nations and political parties such as the NDP have blasted Northern Gateway for the environmental risk it poses.

Despite the fact that the system runs 1,177 km through mountain ranges and across fish-bearing creeks (which Enbridge would be responsible for in the event of a spill), opponents are mostly concerned about the possibility of a tanker spill in the narrow channels off B.C.’s coast.

Enbridge has said an oil spill has the potential to occur once in 350 years, based on 220 doublehulled, tug-escorted tankers travelling to and from B.C. each year.

But the company pointed out in its project application that the ship owner, not Enbridge, is strictly liable for damage from oil spills.

“Whether or not the ship owner is at fault for the oil spill or negligence causing the oil spill, the ship owner would be responsible for oil spill costs,” Enbridge wrote in its application.

Environmentalists have voiced concern that it might be hard to hold an inter-nationally registered ship owner accountable for a massive spill in B.C. Maritime law experts, however, say a number of rock-solid insurance policies have been set up to protect the public from bearing the full brunt of clean-up costs.

READ ENTIRE COAST REPORTER ARTICLE HERE

Pictured above: “British Pioneer”, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) – class petroleum tanker is similar in size and function to tankers planned to transport crude oil from the Enbridge-owned Northern Gateway Pipelines terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia to expanding Asian markets.

Clark softens approach to sustainability as part of B.C.'s new energy strategy

ď ś New liquefied natural gas industry has the potential to attract new businesses and jobs

Liquefied natural gas terminals such as the proposed Kitimat, B.C., project pictured above, which a group of companies is proposing to be online by 2015, could provide a welcome outlet for Canadian volumes. Premier Christy Clark is making over her predecessors approach to energy self sufficiency to help make way for a significant expansion in the production of liquefied natural gas.

Editorial Comment: Wild Game Fish Conservation International expects natural disasters to occur in Douglas Channel given the hundreds of additional trips involving very large tankers loaded with crude oil, liquefied natural gas and condensate.

Adding to the concerns regarding the tanker and associated tugboat traffic are concerns regarding this region’s marine mammals and other marine-centered wildlife Lastly, Douglas Channel is known for its extreme weather conditions and tidal changes.

Together these concerns combine into a recipe for catastrophic disaster.

Premier Christy Clark announced a new provincial energy strategy Friday that moves away from BC Hydro's self-sufficiency targets in favour of a new liquefied natural gas industry that has the potential to attract new businesses, new jobs and an estimated $20 billion in new investments to the province.

Clark chose to make the announcement at the B.C. Institute of Technology, surrounded by student apprentices in the energy field.

READ ENTIRE VANCOUVER SUN ARTICLE HERE

Clark, Harper, Enbridge Taking Suicidal Risks With BC's Future January 13, 2012

Today, because events are moving so quickly, a twofer for you.

First, Premier Clark is in one hell of a jam and it’s scarcely improved with a man who I bet left the inner staff of Attila the Hun to join with Madam Photo-op by name of Ken Boessenkool, who amongst other clients worked as lobbyist for Enbridge for two years! What the hell reason could she give for this kind of move?

This woman is out of control. She’s in a political hotbox like President Gerry Ford was when he took over the mess Nixon left him. In fact she’s in a box Houdini couldn’t have escaped.

She’s trying to distance herself from the disgraceful reign of Gordon Campbell and now finds herself in the midst of the worst environmental fight probably in history. The proposed Enbridge Pipeline and resultant tanker traffic is straight from the Gordon Campbell/Fraser Institute playbook and it isn’t working out quite like the Liberal advisors had expected. In fact, Clark is facing, and knows she’s facing a political storm that makes Bill Vander Zalm’s troubles look like a kid’s fight in a sand box.

The trouble is, the public is onto them. It's becoming clearer and clearer that a rupture or spill is inevitable and that the word “risk” has been replaced by “certainty”. Clark has this problem: the project only has the support of the “right” and the pretty far right at that. This problem wasn’t seen by the likes of Patrick Kinsella and other handlers – it’s called believing your own bullshit.

The NDP, and, of course the Greens have staked out the “no bloody way” voters and you might think well, so what’s the problem?

It’s called The Conservative Party and John Cummins. Without them, Clark might have been able to hold all the non NDP vote and been able to hold on. I doubt that because the government is in deep doo doo on so many fronts. With the Conservatives in the picture it’s Adrian Dix’s dream come true.

Not only is their enemy divided but he has a good chance with the voter who perhaps doesn’t like anybody very much but tends to vote right rather than left If Ms. Clark were surrounded by happy campers, perhaps the Libs could hang on. The cold fact is that she only had one caucus member who supported her leadership and because he was given a cabinet seat – and then screwed up – she has a nest of adders in her caucus, many of whom will be looking at their own ridings and grasping at the life saver as they jump ship.

The pipeline/tanker issue has Clark buried. She knows it’s a terrible idea for the province and the people but can’t say so because she’ll lose her supporters.

She can’t say yes without jeopardizing her election chances.

She’s apparently without sufficient courage to say "no" and say "to hell with the right", inside or outside the party, run on that stance then say, “Mr. Dix, we both agree on the pipeline/tanker issue now lets get down to the issue of which party should run this province."

She doesn’t have the jam to do that so even the faint chance of a May 2013 victory is all but gone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Secondly, let us get some things straight for the times ahead – there will be leaks and spills from the pipeline and tankers no matter how much trouble Enbridge goes to avoid them. We’re being asked to

commit environmental suicide - by Enbridge, the federal government and, by strong inference, Premier Clark.

My old and perhaps late friend, Bud Smith, says we cannot demand perfection. The trouble is, that is precisely what is demanded from Enbridge and its tanker clients because anything less will permanently damage the world’s last great rainforest - it cannot be remedied.

The route Enbridge’s pipelines would travel is for the most part inaccessible except by helicopter, meaning that even if there were measures to fix an oil spill (there aren’t) there is no way it could be handled (see map below).

The proposed pipeline crosses several mountain ranges and nearly 1000 rivers and streams, including at least three major ones where hundreds of thousands of salmon spawn. This is a region which caribou, grizzly bears, other species of bear, including the rare Spirit Bear, deer and moose inhabit. It is, in short, an ecological treasure.

But let’s play along with Enbridge and let’s say that there is only a one in 100 chance of a leakage.

Look at the map and see where that 1 in 100 is going to strike…are you going to gamble away our wilderness on these odds?

Forget about the environment for a moment and look at it as a cost-benefit analysis. Given that the leakage will come in a wilderness which will likely be only reachable by helicopter making any equipment for a clean-up out of the question, is the financial gain to BC worth this likely consequence?

This is a critical question, for the record is clear – you simply cannot clean up an oil spillage wherever it may occur.

The fact is, except for a few low paying white collar jobs there is no gain for BC. We are letting Enbridge use our wilderness to transfer Alberta’s toxic gunk to Kitimat to be shipped down our highly sensitive coast line to Asia and America. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

I don’t want to deal with economics here but simply the wilderness of the province of British Columbia.

We must understand that Enbridge has an unbelievably bad track record. Since 2002 their American subsidiaries alone racked up 170 leaks, and the company itself had a staggering 610 leaks from 1999-2008, including a 2007 explosion in Minnesota that killed two men and brought it $2.4 million in fines - this in addition to a 2003 gas pipeline explosion that killed 7 in Ontario. More recently there is the Kalamazoo River spill in July 2010 which will never be cleaned up.

I leave it thusly: Is there any set of circumstances, other than an assurance of God Himself, under which you would approve any pipeline going through our precious wilderness?

Germany shows a greener way January 18, 2012 The debate over the Northern Gateway pipeline is missing the point.

Sure, it is a three-pronged ecological disaster: the oilsands themselves, the pipeline and then the tanker traffic.

They equate this with all the jobs that will be created and the money made, but the main point is that it is not sustainable. We have to develop renewable power.

Germany started to revamp its energy system in 2000, and the critics said they would never make one per cent of their power with renewable. But in one decade, renewable energy is 20 per cent of their energy use and they are on track to be at 35 per cent by 2020.

In this process, they have created a quarter of a million jobs, and this has given rise to a $50-billion renewable energy business in Germany. And they have exceeded the greenhouse gas emissions target in the Kyoto protocol by 50 per cent.

Balance that against the pipeline project's non-sustainable jobs and profits.

Nova Scotia  Eastern Shore salmon farm proposal morally indefensible

West River Sheet Harbour is backdropped by a newly constructed lime doser that helps normalize the river's acid levels.

That fresh water systems in much of Nova Scotia have suffered devastating damage from acid rain is well known: We just don’t talk about it much anymore. Innumerable lakes have been ruined and 14 Atlantic Coast rivers have completely lost their Atlantic salmon, while 20 more have seen salmon runs reduced by up to 90 per cent.

Sweden and Norway have been similarly impacted. Norway spends somewhere north of $20 million a year successfully treating its priceless rivers, and has pioneered watershed liming. Sweden has done likewise.

Canada has done absolutely nothing to mitigate this environmental disaster.

Frustrated, angry and disillusioned, the 100 per cent volunteer Nova Scotia Salmon Association, with support from the Atlantic Salmon Federation and Northern Pulp, took on a huge fundraising effort to install Norwegian technology on an acidified Nova Scotia river as a demonstration project.

After seven years of liming, $600,000 in raised funds, and 18,000 hours of volunteer labour, the pH of West River Sheet Harbour has been normalized, and juvenile Atlantic salmon populations boosted by 300 per cent — so far. Trout are also on the rebound. All good …

Except the governments of Nova Scotia and Canada now propose to license a marine salmon farm near the Sheet Harbour estuary. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the presence of marine cages would utterly sabotage the dedicated work of the NGOs and their volunteers. Why? •Unnaturally high infestations of sea lice: In Norway, the salmon runs in 35 rivers were devastated when marine salmon farms were located in adjoining fiords. Blooms of parasitic sea lice traced to the farms decimated wild salmon smolts as they migrated to sea.

In western Scotland, following the expansion of salmon aquaculture in the sea lochs, wild salmon stocks have been in freefall. Salmon farms have been deliberately kept away from the east coast (where wild stocks are improving).

In Ireland, west coast rivers have been similarly impacted and sea lice from salmon farms have been independently verified as the major factor.

In Newfoundland, the only seriously ailing salmon stream on the whole island has a salmon farm near its estuary.

In the inner Bay of Fundy, we have completely lost the salmon runs to 33 rivers coincident with the growth of salmon aquaculture in the outer bay.

In British Columbia, a clear connection has been made between salmon farms, sea lice, and declining runs of pink and coho salmon in those rivers where farms have been sited.

Is anybody seeing a pattern here yet?

Sea lice are becoming resistant to available insecticides and the industry is panicked. Even as its PR machine makes outlandish claims of environmental sustainability, serious charges have been laid in connection with extensive shellfish poisoning in New Brunswick and Maine, allegedly as the result of illegal insecticide use on farmed fish. (Nothing has been proved.)

An industry spokesperson has been quoted as saying Nova Scotia is seeing rapid expansion of salmon aquaculture because the industry is only lightly regulated here. The company proposing to expand on the Eastern Shore is headquartered in Scotland. But Scottish Environment Minister Stewart Stevenson is now speaking openly about banning salmon farms close to salmon rivers.

In Norway, the head of the Directorate for Nature Management has publicly suggested the sea lice situation has become so severe that marine-based salmon aquaculture should be cut in half to protect wild fish.

•Disease: Salmon farms worldwide have been implicated in the spread of fatal diseases such as furunculosis and infectious salmon anemia (ISA) among wild salmon.

•Escapes: Global losses of (vastly inferior) genetically manipulated salmon from marine pens now outnumber wild fish populations many times over. Interbreeding results in mass spawning failure and contributes to the decline in wild fish. Some European rivers (and at least one in New Brunswick) host more aquaculture escapes than wild fish.

So why are we repeating others’ mistakes? Are we really prepared to sacrifice a major natural resource for 20 low-paying jobs and profits for a foreign company?

That Canadian governments should insipidly ignore an environmental disaster of global proportions is shameful. That those same governments should propose to risk wrecking the efforts of volunteers — to do the job they should have done — is morally indefensible.

The public meeting on the proposed salmon aquaculture sites is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 6, at 6 p.m. at the Sheet Harbour legion.

Jim Gourlay is a past-president of the Nova Scotia Salmon Association and a recipient of the Nova Scotia Lieutenant-Governor’s Conservation Award for his work on behalf of wild Atlantic salmon.

Group opposed to Eastern Shore salmon farms fishing for support Three proposed Eastern Shore open-pen salmon farms are raising concerns similar to those expressed recently about aquaculture plans in Shelburne County.

A website called Save the Eastern Shore is alerting local residents about a proposal by Snow Island Salmon Inc. to operate finfish licences in Shoal Bay, Spry Bay and Beaver Harbour, all in Halifax County.

Snow Island is identified on the website as a subsidiary of Scotland’s Loch Duart, which operates two open-pen salmon farms in Ship Harbour.

The provincial Fisheries and Aquaculture Department will host an open house and public meeting on the Snow Island proposal at Branch 58 of the Royal Canadian Legion in Sheet Harbour on Feb. 6 from 6 to 9 p.m.

The salmon farm plan includes three 18-hectare sites.

Save The Eastern Shore is urging concerned citizens to write the provincial government to tell it what a big mistake it is to continue the expansion of open-pen salmon farms in Nova Scotia waters.

The group also wants a moratorium on the expansion of finfish farms in the province.

Save the Eastern Shore’s concerns mirror those of residents and traditional fisherman in Shelburne County who oppose an application by a subsidiary of Cooke Aquaculture of New Brunswick to build open-pen farms in Jordan Bay, near Shelburne Harbour.

Critics of that plan, undergoing a federal environmental assessment, allege the farms and the potential use of pesticides to control sea lice threaten lucrative natural lobster fisheries.

Robert Taylor, Snow Island’s business development manager, members of Save the Eastern Shore and provincial government officials could not be reached for comment on the Eastern Shore proposal.

India ď ś Fishing in Shimla In Shimla, fishing is a very popular recreational sport. Since Shimla has many shallow streams scattered all over, it provides ample of opportunities for many to try the angling sport in Simla. In fact, Shimla is often known as "Angler's Paradise" as it is one of those very few places that allows tourists to indulge in fishing in India. There are many popular spots for indulging in fishing in Shimla. Read on further to know about these hotspots.

Shimla is known for its treasure of the world's best sport fish. The streams and shallow waters make this place the perfect location for fishing. One can indulge in fishing in the upstreams of Rohru situated in the Pabbar valley. There is a trout hatchery in Chirgaon where one can go fishing for trouts. The best sport fish in the world, Rainbow and Brown trouts are found here aplenty. Other good spots for fishing are Tikri, Sandsu, Dhamvari, Seema and Mandil. All these spots are within 20 kilometers of Rohru.

The Sangla Valley in Shimla is also well known for flourishing in trout population. One can go for fishing in Baspa River in Sangla. The Uhl River near Barot is also a popular point to go fishing.

Places located near this spot that are popular fishing spots are Puran hatchery, Luhandi and Tikkar.

So get set with your fishing gear and flaunt your prized catch to everyone!

Ireland  Massive Aran fish farm would create 500 new jobs November 3, 2011

Up to 500 new jobs will be created if a multi-million euro proposal to set up the biggest fish farm in Ireland off the Aran Islands gets the go ahead.

Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM) is currently exploring the possibility of creating a deep sea salmon fish farm and have already started a consultative process which involves talking to fishermen in Galway, Ros a Mhil and the Aran Islands.

Details of the proposal, which could be worth over €14 million to the locality, were released yesterday morning on Raidio na Gaeltachta’s Athmhaidin programme.

Yesterday, a BIM spokeswoman stressed that the story had broken prematurely and before they had a chance to meet and talk to the islanders, especially those living on Inis Óirr, which would be the closed landmass to the proposed fish farm.

In a new departure for a semi-state body, BIM have applied for an Environmental Impact Study licence for the farm which would produce 15,000 tonnes of organic fish making it the biggest fish farm in the country. Nationally only 13,000 tonnes of fish are farmed annually.

Research to date on the ambitious project has been carried out by the Marine Institute in Rinville in association with BIM, who have put the annual worth of the farm at €104 million.

Marine Minister Simon Coveney described the project as ‘a major jobs initiative in the aquaculture sector which has the potential to create very significant sustainable jobs in vulnerable coastal communities’.

Norway ď ś 2007:'No salmon farms near wild salmon' A spokesman for Marine Harvest said: This is John Fredriksen's private view August 28, 2007 John Fredriksen, one of Norway's richest men and principal shareholder in the aquaculture company Marine Harvest, has caused a storm by suggesting that salmon farms should not be allowed near runs of wild salmon.

Mr. Fredriksen, who made his billions in oil, gas and shipping before turning his attention to salmon farming in 2005, now has a Cypriot passport and a home in Chelsea. He made his controversial remarks to a Norwegian newspaper while he was fishing this summer on the Alta river in Norway.

He said: "I am concerned about the future for wild salmon. Fish farming should not be allowed in fjords with salmon rivers. The fish farming industry should be allowed to operate in fjords but not where wild salmon are present in local rivers."

His remarks have been welcomed by the managers of wild salmon rivers who have maintained for 20 years that intensively-reared fish cause fatal environmental damage in sea-lochs both by escaping and breeding with genetically different wild fish and because of the explosion of parasites they cause.

Salmon feedlots sited in Norway’s once-legendary wild Atlantic salmon and Sea trout migration routes

READ ENTIRE TELEGRAPH ARTICLE HERE

Russia  The Russian Government and the EU Fisheries Commission back NASF‘s campaign to curb Norwegian salmon netting.

Since 1994 the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF) and its international partners have campaigned to close the Norwegian commercial salmon fishery in Finnmark. As well as ruining Norway‘s own rivers the nets are taking salmon native to rivers in Russia and Finland. A recent international scientific study has established that between 60 and 70% of the biggest salmon killed by Norwegian nets belong to Russia and Finland.

These are fish that spend two or more winters at sea and return during the spring months. Their numbers have greatly declined in recent years and they now form the most threatened component of the entire salmon population of the North Atlantic. In many countries they are protected but Norway continues to ignore the international consensus that they should not be killed until their numbers greatly increase.

The international NASF coalition fighting to convince the Norwegian government that it is killing off the most valuable component of the wild salmon stocks of three countries has argued that the nets off Finnmark are a violation of the UN Law of the Sea, art. 66. Now the Russian authorities have sent Norway a warning letter making similar complaints.

The Russian letter includes protests against the interceptory mixed-stock fisheries that are allowed to operate within the sensitive Varanger fjord environment and the use of a particularly lethal method that involves bend nets (krogarn). This form of fishing is now banned virtually all over the world and bend netting is also illegal in other areas of Norway. It is feared that if it is allowed to continue off Finnmark it will cause irreparable damage to the salmon populations that spawn in Russian rivers.

The EU is also complaining to Norway, citing the poor biological levels of salmon in Finnish rivers.

Salmon native to these rivers are all targeted by the netting. The Norwegian Government also fails to protect the glorious Neiden river that empties into the Varangerfjord near the Kola peninsula.

For the last 18 years the Minister and staff of the department of the Enviroment in Oslo have been well aware of the damage Norwegian nets have been doing. This has resulted in much reduced incomes for the Saami and other local people of Finland and for the Russians who live in the Kola region. To make matters worse Norway is proposing to lengthen the fishery’s annual open.

The North Atlantic Salmon Fund spends large sums protecting wild Atlantic salmon everywhere from commercial exploitation by compensating professional fishermen who give up salmon fishing. Its chairman, Orri Vigfusson, said: “We believe the netting could wipe out the large salmon of the Neiden river, and those of famous Russian watersheds like the Kola river, the Kharlovka, the Rynda, the Litza, the Zolitaya and the mighty Yokanga. This greedy and thoughtless Norwegian policy must be stopped.“ The North Atlantic Salmon Fund, NASF, is an international coalition of voluntary private sector conservation groups who have come together to restore stocks of wild Atlantic salmon to their historic abundance.

Scotland  Researchers say cleaner fish will provide 'green' pest control for salmon industry January 16, 2012 The University of Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture is breeding wrasse to be used sustainably in Atlantic salmon farms to naturally remove sea lice from the skin of other fish.

Ectoparasites such as sea lice can hamper fish growth and leave farmed salmon vulnerable to diseases. The aquaculture industry is licensed to use a number of sea lice medicines but the use of wrasse will provide an additional tool to combat the pest and reduce medicine use.

The UK salmon industry produces around 150 tonnes of fish per year valued at around £1 billion. It is estimated that sea lice cost the Scottish salmon industry £30 million annually.

The University project, being carried out in conjunction with Marine Harvest Scotland Ltd and Scottish Sea Farms, looks at key research priorities currently limiting wrasse production including: brood stock origin and conditioning, gender control, spawning, larvae and juvenile performances, disease control and deployment strategies.

Stirling’s Reproduction and Genetics group is utilising their expertise in marine fish brood stock management, population genetics and fish husbandry, as well as their marine facilities at Machrihanish, as part of the research.

The £2.1million project is part funded by the Government-backed Technology Strategy Board, which has also financially backed the Institute’s development of a novel environmentally friendly sea louse vaccine.

Parasite resistance to control poses a major threat to the sustainability of the UK and global aquaculture industry. Stirling researchers are using innovative developments in sequencing, mucosal immunity, and protein mass spectrometry to develop a novel vaccine capable of providing substantive, eco-friendly control of sea louse infections in farmed salmon.

The studies are part of research funding of almost £4.5 million awarded to Stirling’s Institute for Aquaculture for major research projects over the last six months.

Dr Herve Migaud, the Institute's Research Director, commented: “These successes underline the commitment of the Institute to solving current problems in sustainable aquaculture both worldwide and in the UK and recognise the continued high quality of our research.”

The Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO) will publish the practical findings of the projects as they progress to the wider Scottish salmon farming industry.

The vaccine project jointly backed by the Scottish Government and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, is being carried out in conjunction with Pfizer and the Moredun Research Institute.

The Institute of Aquaculture is a leading international centre and the largest of its kind in the world. It brings together cross-disciplinary, world class researchers to meet the wide range of challenges faced as aquaculture grows to meet global demands. It has almost 100 staff and over 100 postgraduate students.

 Anti-fish farming campaigner to land on Scottish shores February 5,2012

AN anti-fish farming demonstrator who is being deported from Canada is returning to Scotland to continue his campaign against the industry.

Don Staniford is fighting a high-profile court battle in the Canadian province of British Columbia, after a fisheries company accused him of making defamatory comments.

But the Canadian government will deport the Briton in any case, as he has been living in the country illegally since 2010.

He says he will ‘bring energy’ back into the campaign against fish farming, which he says damages the environment and spreads disease.

Mr. Staniford, who is originally from Birkenhead, near Liverpool, in England, has previously worked with Friends of the Earth in Edinburgh and the Pure Salmon campaign. He is due to arrive in Scotland in March.

He said: “I’m now going to work for the Green Warriors of Norway where I will be global salmon farming coordinator.

“I will spend time in Scotland, where I will cut my teeth.

I plan to bring energy back into the campaign.

“I’ll be looking at the salmon farms in Orkney and on the west coast, where there has been growing dissent in terms of escapes, sea lice and infectious diseases.

“There will be a lot of work and I’ll be getting my hands dirty.”

Fisheries firm Mainstream Canada, a subsidiary of Norwegian-owned Cermaq, is seeking around £80,000 in damages from Mr Staniford.

They are also seeking a ‘permanent injunction’ to stop him ‘writing, printing or broadcasting defamatory words against Mainstream.’

Cermaq has interests in Scottish waters, as well as other locations around the world.

The judgement in the case may not come for six months, but Mr. Staniford will be in the UK by that point.

A Canadian Border Agency spokesman declined to comment on the case but said foreign nationals must show they meet requirements to enter and remain in Canada.

 Runaway Salmon Stir Conservation Worries January 25, 2012 As if the Loch Ness Monster wasn’t scary enough. Now, the Lox Ness monsters could be wreaking havoc in Scottish waters.

Meridian Salmon GroupA salmon cage.

The details are obscure, but sometime during a ferocious storm around Christmas, 300,000 farmed salmon owned by the Meridian Salmon Group disappeared from their cages in the sea near Uyea, a tiny island in the Shetlands. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

Tom Whittles, a Scottish government spokesman, said the tempest — with winds that reached as much as 100 miles per hour — washed 11 cages full of fish out to sea. After a search operation aided by government aircraft, the cages were finally recovered last week. But the fish themselves were not, according to the Scottish Salmon Producers Organization.

Conservationists worry about such escapes, partly because farmed fish are genetically less diverse than wild fish; interbreeding would have the effect of reducing the diversity and fitness of the offspring, making the wild salmon population more susceptible to disease.

Farmed salmon have also been known to infect their wild cousins with diseases and parasites. The Pure Salmon Campaign, which is no longer active, has reported that millions of farmed salmon escape into the wild each year.

Aquaculture itself is unpopular in some quarters because farmed fish must be fed several times their weight in wild-caught fish food before they reach marketable size.

Blue Planet Society, a conservation organization, mused in a blog post about whether the escape spelled ecological disaster. “There is a strong possibility that 300,000 farmed salmon are swimming about in the North Atlantic creating havoc in the marine ecosystem,’’ it wrote.

But Mr. Whittles argues that the fears are overblown. ‘‘It’s important to make a distinction between fish loss and fish escape,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ve got farmed fish that were used to being fed by humans suddenly exposed to extreme conditions,’’ and without food, he noted. ‘‘So there would certainly have been a high rate of mortality.’’

He defended the Scottish industry’s record, saying that reported escapes in 2010 were the lowest on record.

Mr. Whittles said the incident was being investigated by Meridian, the company’s insurers, and by scientists from Marine Scotland, a government agency. Meridian Salmon did not respond to requests for comment.

Matthew Thompson, an aquaculture specialist with the sustainable seafood program of the New England Aquarium in Boston, said it would be “very hard to have a firm sense of what the impact will be,” given the uncertainty on how many of the fish are still alive.

READ ENTIRE RESPONSIBLE AQUACULTURE ARTICLE HERE

ď ś Salmon cages under tow again January 15 2012

One of the salmon cages tied up at Dales Voe THE SALMON cages washed out to sea during the Christmas Day hurricane have been located again, 82 miles east of Shetland.

The remaining eight cages, belonging to Meridian Salmon Group, have now been broken into smaller units and are being towed by three vessels towards Shetland, the Danish tug Westsund, and the whitefish trawlers, Fairway and Devotion.

Making progress of 1.5 knots per hour it is expected that the tow will take between 50 and 55 hours.

Meanwhile, the first two cages were towed into Dales Voe, Lerwick, on Thursday night and on Friday.

USA

ď ś US Senator Maria Cantwell – Engineered Salmon As you may know, consumers, environmentalists, and some scientists have expressed concerns about genetically modified products. They generally maintain that the long-term effects of growing and consuming genetically modified foods are unknown. Many people have expressed concerns about the potential for genetically modified organisms to breed with unmodified plants, unintentionally producing hybrids that carry the new genes. Others have expressed fears that introduced genes could prove allergenic or harmful to human health.

On January 15, 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released final guidance for the regulation of genetically engineered (GE) food and products. The final guidance indicated that the FDA will be regulating GE-derived foods under the same standards as non-GE foods, which is based on the composition of the product. If a GE product's composition does not differ materially from its non-GE counterpart, they will not have to be labeled. However, GE-derived animals and products must gain FDA pre-market approval regardless of composition standards.

The FDA is currently considering approval of the first GE animal for human consumption, an Atlantic salmon developed by the biotechnology firm AquaBounty. On August 25, 2010, the FDA announced that it will hold a public comment period concurrent with the approval process, as well as a hearing on labeling for the GE salmon. On September 19th, the FDA's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee held an open meeting to discuss FDA scientific findings. In anticipation of this meeting, FDA scientists released a briefing document stating that the GE salmon is safe for human consumption and, in the boundaries of the current application, poses no risk to the environment. The FDA is evaluating the GE salmon under its authority to regulate new veterinary drugs because they believe the DNA construct used to change the fish meets the definition of a drug as defined by federal statute. According to the FDA's interpretation of the statute, AquaBounty can request that its supporting data remain confidential for proprietary reasons.

On September 28, 2010, I joined eleven U.S. Senators in signing a letter to Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of Food and Drugs at the FDA, regarding the pending approval of GE salmon for consumption. The letter expresses my concerns about the adequacy of approval mechanisms as well as the lack of transparency during the approval process. It is my belief that the limited review did not sufficiently consider human health risks or potential threats to natural salmon species and their ecosystems. Given these concerns, I believe that GE salmon should not be approved for human consumption until these concerns can be adequately reviewed and addressed.

Please be assured that I will keep your views in mind should I have the opportunity to consider any related legislation, and that I will pay close attention the ongoing debate regarding genetically modified food and crops. I believe that we must work to ensure the safety and integrity of our food supply and our environment, and I will continue working to provide consumers with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.

ď ś Norway's salmon producers eye U.S. as tariff falls January 27, 2012 (Reuters) - Norwegian salmon farmers can freely send fish to the United States for the first time in 21 years after U.S. officials dropped a penalty tariff stemming from old charges that Norway had dumped underpriced salmon in U.S. markets.

Norway is the largest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon in the world and exported more than $5 billion worth last year, two thirds of it to other European countries.

The decision to rescind the 24 percent penalty duty on fresh whole Norwegian fish was announced on Thursday by the United States International Trade Commission.

Editorial Comment: Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI), like Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture (GAAIA), has serious concerns regarding the negative impacts of open pen Atlantic salmon feedlots to wild Pacific salmon and their sensitive ecosystems as well as the impacts to cultures and economies that rely on robust populations of wild Pacific salmon.

Just as importantly, WGFCI is concerned regarding the short term and long term impacts to the health of humans and wildlife that consume Atlantic salmon raised in open pen feedlots while being chemically treated via their feed to fight off a variety of parasites and diseases.

"This gives us absolutely an extra opportunity," Alf-Helge Aarskog, chief executive of Norway's Marine Harvest ASA, told Reuters. "Norwegian salmon is attractive in the USA, and always has been."

The cost of air transport across the Atlantic will however keep Norway-based salmon farmers at a disadvantage to Canadian and Chilean competitors, analysts said, noting salmon was a globally priced commodity.

Although the United States has never hindered the import of Norwegian fillets, Norway sold less than 20,000 tonnes to American importers last year out of the nearly 1 million tonnes of salmon it sent abroad.

Aarskog said salmon from his fjords would remain rare in American supermarkets but that American sushi restaurants may begin offering it.

"They want whole fish and that is likely a market that will open up to us now," he said.

Produced by Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture

READ ENTIRE REUTERS ARTICLE HERE

 2003: First-Ever U.S. Tests of Farmed Salmon Show High Levels of CancerCausing PCBs

Analysis of Fish Consumption Data Shows 800,000 U.S. Adults Eat Enough PCBs From Farmed Salmon to Exceed Allowable Lifetime Cancer Risk 100 Times Over July 30, 2003 WASHINGTON — The Environmental Working Group (EWG) today released results of the most extensive tests to date of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) levels in farmed salmon consumed in the United States. EWG bought the salmon from local grocery stores and found seven of 10 fish were so contaminated with PCBs that they raise cancer-risk concerns, relative to health standards of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Salmon farming has made salmon the third most popular fish in America — and comprises 22 percent of all retail seafood counter sales. However, EWG analysis of government data also found that farmed salmon are likely the most PCB-contaminated protein source in the current U.S. food supply.

EWG analysis of state-of-the-art fish consumption data derived from 20,000 adults from 1990 through 2002 shows that roughly 800,000 US adults are 100 times over their lifetime allowable cancer risk by eating this contaminated salmon.

PCBs were banned in the U.S. in the late 1970s and are among the “dirty dozen” chemical contaminants slated for global phase-out under the UN treaty on persistent organic pollutants. PCBs are highly persistent, and they have been linked to cancer and impaired fetal brain development.

Farmed salmon are fattened with ground fishmeal and fish oils that are high in PCBs. As a result, salmon farming operations that produce inexpensive fish unnaturally concentrate PCBs and have a higher fat content. Farmed salmon contains 52 percent more fat than wild salmon, according to USDA data.

Wild Alaskan salmon eat Pacific Ocean fish that are naturally lower in persistent pollutants, and they carry less fat than farmed salmon.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has control over store-bought fish, uses PCB safety standards set in 1984. For recreationally caught fish, the EPA employs a more recent standard that reflects current scientific concerns about PCBs and is 500 times safer than the FDA's.

“FDA could not have predicted the rise of the farmed salmon industry when it set its PCB safety standard decades ago,” said EWG Vice President for Research Jane Houlihan. “The industry’s growth has been rapid and unexpected, but it is having a real public health consequence.”

READ ENTIRE ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP ARTICLE HERE

Alaska February 12, 2012

 Report concludes that Pebble Mine would degrade Bristol Bay fisheries A new scientific report released by the Wild Salmon Center and Trout Unlimited says the proposed Pebble Mine would siphon as much as 35 billion gallons of fresh water out of the headwaters of Bristol Bay every year, eliminating critical salmon habitat.

While this would likely facilitate the development of a much larger mining district, it would also further endanger the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery, concluded a group of researchers that includes Lance Trasky, a retired regional supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“The Bristol Bay watershed and its tributary streams are a powerhouse of wild sockeye salmon production—the very best in the world,” Trasky said. “The Pebble Mine proposal dwarfs all of the existing mines put together in Alaska and, if constructed, will have devastating consequences for salmon, as well as the wildlife and humans who depend on them.”

The report, entitled “Bristol Bay’s Wild Salmon Ecosystems and the Pebble Mine,” examines the potential impacts of the mine on the wild salmon fishery, and concludes that there is too much at stake ecologically, economically and culturally to risk development of the Pebble deposit. A summary of the report is at www.wildsalmoncenter.org/pdf/PM. The heated discussion over whether the mine should be developed has been going on for several years now, with millions of dollars spent on advertising a continuous stream of arguments on why the mine should or should not be built.

The project would have a footprint covering 28 square miles of land, produce up to 10.8 billion tons of waste rock, and have up to 9 miles of dams just to impound toxic wastes produced on site.

The new report comes on the heels of an announcement from the Pebble Limited Partnership in Anchorage of the unveiling of a massive new environmental baseline document characterizing the physical, biological and social environments of the Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet regions. That document, of some 27,000 pages, is online at www.pebbleresearch.com or in a DVD that can be requested from the Pebble Partnership.

The document is being viewed with skepticism by Bob Waldrop, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, Kimberly Williams, executive director of Nunamta Aulukstai, and Tim Bristol, director of Trout Unlimited Alaska. They issued a statement saying that the data released has done little to help foster a more factual debate on the mine.

“The known facts of this proposed project remain the same: It is a giant and diffuse sulfide ore body in a seismically active zone beneath the salmon-rich headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak drainages,” they said. “Any project to develop the ore body at Pebble puts the Bristol Bay Basin’s aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as the region’s world-class salmon fishery, at risk.”

The data contained in the massive document has not been peer reviewed, nor are the studies replicable based on the information provided, they said. “These documents do not contain accessible data or raw data but instead the information is couched in 27,000 pages of interpretation. The format of the document disregards requests from agencies and stakeholders for data, not opinions,” they said.

ENTIRE CORDOBA TIMES READ ARTICLE HERE

California  Viewpoints: State has stake in Columbia salmon solution January 17, 2012 The story of Pacific salmon has not recently been a happy one. Population declines in the West Coast's big three rivers – the Sacramento-San Joaquin, Klamath and Columbia-Snake – have meant less fishing, lost jobs, scarce fish and higher prices for consumers. Without major changes to how we manage these waterways, the beating heart of our region's salmon economy may cease.

Fortunately, there are some bright spots on the horizon. On a growing number of rivers, adversaries are opting to collaborate rather than litigate. People are starting to work together to restore rivers, recover salmon and rebuild jobs.

On the San Joaquin River, for example, city leaders, farmers, fishermen and conservationists ended decades of litigation when they sat down together to craft a plan they all could live with. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein then shepherded the plan through Congress. It has restored water – and salmon – to a 60-mile stretch of river, reconnecting it to San Francisco Bay for the first time in 70 years. Twenty exhausting years of conflict are over.

Farther north, farmers, fishermen, Native American tribes and others have made important progress working together to secure a future for farming and fishing based on a plan that will restore the Klamath River by removing four dams.

Finally, as the result of successful collaborations in Washington state, three dam removals commenced this fall on two other salmon rivers. After resolving issues such as energy and water quality, both the Elwha and White Salmon rivers will flow freely for the first time in a century and provide habitat to struggling salmon runs – benefiting our region's ecology and its economy.

Our next big opportunity to restore salmon and jobs rests on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington. The Columbia basin was once the world's most productive salmon watershed. The Columbia River's largest tributary, the Snake, once produced nearly half of this abundance. Today, thousands of miles of pristine habitat remain, much of it in the wilds of central Idaho. Unfortunately, four dams on the lower Snake make passage lethal for migrating salmon. Completed in the 1970s, these dams are the straw that broke the camel's back. After the dams' construction, all Snake River salmon populations plummeted.

The government's Columbia basin restoration efforts to date have failed both fish and fisherman. Last summer, a federal judge rejected the Obama plan – the fourth to be deemed illegal since 1995. Our government has spent $10 billion over two decades on largely ineffective measures. Faced with a court order to produce a new plan within two years, the same agencies responsible for this series of illegal plans are poised to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Following on these other restoration success stories, it's time for President Barack Obama and our elected leaders on the West Coast – including Gov. Jerry Brown and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Feinstein – to support a stakeholder process to address the needs of Columbia basin salmon and the jobs they support.

READ ENTIRE SACRAMENTO BEE ARTICLE HERE

Washington State ď ś Being Frank: We need to win the battle for salmon recovery

By BILLY FRANK JR. February 6, 2012 ¡

Billy Frank, Jr. is chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. For more information, visit www.nwifc.org

Editorial Comment: Wild Game Fish Conservation International (WGFCI) shares the concerns presented below by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission regarding irresponsible development within floodplains.

Developing within these fragile ecosystems leads to the destruction of critical fish and wildlife habitat while at the same time it puts human lives and property in harm’s way during floods.

Similarly, WGFCI is on record as being opposed to steep slope logging practices in Washington State as these contribute to loss of human life and property and to catastrophic fish and wildlife habitat degradation and destruction during major storms.

Letter/Editor We are losing the battle for salmon recovery in Western Washington because salmon habitat is being destroyed faster than it can be restored.

Despite massive cuts in harvest, careful use of hatcheries and a huge financial investment in restoration during the past four decades, salmon continue to decline along with their habitat. As the salmon disappear, so do our tribal cultures and treaty rights. We are at a crossroads, and we are running out of time.

That's why we are asking the federal government to come to align its agencies and programs and lead a more coordinated salmon recovery effort. We want the United States to take charge of salmon recovery because it has the obligation and authority to ensure both salmon recovery and protection of tribal treaty rights. That responsibility is alive today, just like the treaties.

We held up our end of the bargain when we ceded most of the land in western Washington to the U.S. government through the treaties of 1854-55. In those treaties, we retained certain rights for ourselves, such as the right to harvest salmon in our traditional fishing places as we have always done. But those rights are meaningless if the salmon disappear. Already some of our tribes have lost even their most basic ceremonial and subsistence fisheries, the cornerstone of tribal life.

We began our effort to get the federal government to take charge of salmon recovery when we traveled last summer to Washington, D.C., to meet with the White House. Follow-up meetings with federal leadership have been encouraging. Attention is being focused on increased enforcement of existing habitat protection laws, protecting instream flows for salmon, and ensuring that federal actions are helping to meet salmon recovery needs and goals.

Too often, federal actions and federally funded state programs don't contribute to salmon recovery, and sometimes even make it more difficult. A recent lawsuit filed by environmental groups over floodplain management in Western Washington provides a good example.

The environmental groups want the U.S. government to stop issuing flood insurance in some parts of Puget Sound until floodplain management plans are changed to reflect the needs not only of developers, but of endangered salmon and orcas as well. We couldn't agree more.

Floodplains are low-lying areas that allow rivers to spread out during high flows. They help provide important salmon habitat for migration, rearing and spawning. Dikes, overdevelopment and other floodplain impacts restrict the ability of that habitat to support salmon, and can lead to more costly damage when flooding occurs. But it doesn't have to be that way. Floodplain management that is good for flood control can also be good for salmon habitat.

Up until now, the federal government's main response to declining salmon runs has been to restrict harvest. That's a recipe for failure. Habitat must be held to the same standard as harvest if we are going to recover salmon.

Before tribes can go fishing, we are required to show that our fisheries will contribute to salmon recovery under the Endangered Species Act. Those who damage or destroy habitat must be held to the same standard. No amount of fishery restrictions can restore salmon unless they have enough good spawning and rearing habitat.

We believe that salmon recovery must take place at the watershed level because that's where salmon begin and end their lives. We already have developed recovery plans and identified barriers to salmon recovery for most watersheds in western Washington. Those plans must be implemented and those barriers fixed, and it needs to happen soon.

One thing is clear. By every measuring stick we use, salmon habitat continues to disappear at an alarming rate, and that trend shows no signs of improvement.

What we have been doing isn't working. If we are going to succeed with salmon recovery, the federal government must use its authority to honor our treaties and put us all back on the path to salmon recovery.

Chehalis River Basin Flood Damage Prevention

Location of proposed Chehalis River Dam

Quinault Indian Nation: Response letter: Draft report: Chehalis River Fish Study Additional Chehalis River Fish Study draft report review comments and questions submitted from the following: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Chehalis Tribe, City of Chehalis, S. Scott and Associates LLC, Wild Game Fish Conservation International, Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority and Fish Study Data Transfer Workshop

 State agencies, tribes say earthen dam study is lacking January 31, 2012 State agencies and officials from both the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis and the Quinault Indian Nation blasted the first draft of a study looking at the potential impact on fish if an earthen dam would be built on the upper reaches of the Chehalis River Basin to help control flooding. They say the study’s preliminary results and simulations “simply fly in the face of reality” and contain “unreasonable assumptions.”

The study is being done at the behest of the Chehalis Basin Flood Authority, but the science looking at the temperatures in the water and the data collected has come under fire, with more than 400 comments received on the study, most of them negative.

The responses now have consultant Anchor QEA asking the Flood Authority for more money to respond to the comments.

The fish study has, so far, cost the state nearly $1.14 million. Paul Schlenger, the managing scientist of the study, told the Flood Authority that the group is $40,000 over budget and will need another $20,000 to respond to the comments. However, Schlenger said the consultants are willing to split the difference with the Flood Authority and are only asking for $40,000.

READ ENTIRE ABERDEEN DAILY WORLD ARTICLE HERE

Editorial Comment: Precious taxpayer dollars continue to be irresponsibly spent on efforts associated with a proposed Chehalis River dam near Pe Ell, Washington: 1. This dam will not protect Interstate-5, Centralia, Chehalis and the Chehalis-Centralia Airport from flooding during 100-year or greater storm events.

2. Legislatively required restoration and protection of Chehalis River basin fish and wildlife species listed as either Threatened or Endangered via the US Endangered Species Act ensure that this proposed dam will not be constructed 3. Tribal opposition (Chehalis Tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission) to this environmentally-destructive dam will stop it from being constructed Providing more money to complete the Chehalis River Fish Study will not change the outcome the proposed Chehalis River dam will impact natural spawning fish and their ecosystems.

ď ś Report Leaves Lewis County Flood Authority Leaders With Mixed Feelings February 9, 2012 There is a question of how much influence the Office of Financial Management (Washington State) report will have over the flood control project the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority chooses.

"I think it's going to have a huge impact on that," Julie Balmelli-Powe, the Chehalis representative, said. "I think the Flood Authority is losing some of their weight in selecting a final flood control project."

Balmelli-Powe is a proponent of building a dam in the upper Chehalis watershed and said water retention is the only plan that's going to serve all the people of the basin.

The Centralia representative, Edna Fund, said the OFM report is key to the decisions the Flood Authority makes in the future - but so are other elements, such as the ongoing fish impact study.

"There are so many different factors that play into this," Fund said. "But if we have done a good job doing our research, I think it'll be OK." Lewis County Commissioner Ron Averill said the OFM could have some influence over the Flood Authority's decision whether to build a dam.

"It kind of depends on how it's presented, in that they're looking at alternative projects besides a dam or water retention," Averill said.

Averill said Jim Kramer, the Ruckelshaus Center consultant, could comment on the fish impact study or on the issue of water retention, but it's not what he's concentrating on.

All three representatives said they've had a positive experience so far working with Kramer and that he seems objective.

"I think that Jim Kramer is a good person to be doing that," Averill said. "He knows the procedures and he appears fairly neutral."

Still, Balmelli-Powe remains a bit skeptical.

"I hope it's a good thing," Balmelli-Powe said. "If everything they tell us is true and they're going to take a neutral approach, I guess it's a good thing."

The final draft of the OFM report is due to the governor and Legislature in July.

Editorial Comment: It is an irresponsible waste of local, state and federal taxpayer dollars to continue efforts associated with the proposed Chehalis River dam located upstream from Pe Ell, Washington.

Here’s why: 1. Interstate 5, the cities of Chehalis and Centralia and the Chehalis-Centralia airport will continue to flood 2. The Chehalis Tribe and the Quinault Indian Nation (NWIFC) oppose the proposed dam 3. Several Endangered Species Act-listed fish and wildlife species will be adversely impacted by this dam Action required to prevent loss of life and catastrophic property damage due to expected Chehalis River floods: 1. Immediate and permanent moratorium on steep slope logging throughout the Chehalis River basin 2. Immediate and permanent moratorium on floodplain development throughout the Chehalis River basin

ď ś Local Flood Authority Members Find Credibility in Study February 2, 2012 While some agencies have criticized Anchor QEA's conclusions, local Flood Authority representatives still believe the study is valuable.

"The study had its faults, but I think it's salvageable," Julie Balmelli-Powe, the Flood Authority's representative from the city of Chehalis, said. "There are major issues that need to be addressed, but the whole model isn't bad."

Chehalis hired its own Vancouver-based fish biologist to examine the study's conclusions. "(The biologist) agreed with a lot of the comments but didn't believe this is a fatal flaw against water retention" Balmelli-Powe said.

She pointed out that the conclusions released by the firm are only a draft of the study, and said it's too early to make final conclusions.

Balmelli-Powe had concerns about giving Anchor QEA the full $40,000 the firm asked for to complete the study, but agreed no one expected the results to garner so many comments.

"It's in everyone's best interest to make sure they have the money to complete the study accurately so they have undeniable facts," she said.

She is on the executive committee of the Flood Authority, which will meet this month to discuss reimbursing Anchor QEA, as well as other budgetary issues.

Many of the comments the study received criticized it for having too limited a scope of work; for example, only three species of fish were looked at.

Balmelli-Powe said all of the individual parties responsible for hiring Anchor QEA - Fish and Wildlife, Ecology, the tribe, the PUD and three Flood Authority members - knew the Flood Authority couldn't afford to complete a very in-depth study and that the scope of work would have to be limited.

Centralia representative Edna Fund echoed Balmelli-Powe.

"We knew from the very beginning we did not have enough money to study all the species," she said. "But the representatives who were there at beginning knew we had to limit what species we could look at.

Those agencies were at the table when we were doing this, as directed by the legislature. It was evident from beginning this is the way it was."

Fund also supported giving Anchor QEA additional funding.

"When you look at the total amount of the whole study, that's really a small amount," she said. "And I am happy that we did get a lot of responses. It shows that this a very important item for all of us."

Lewis County Commissioner Ron Averill said he believed the study to be credible.

"You've got a large number of groups out there that just don't want the dam, and they're critical of virtually anything you do," he said. "I have always conceded that there will be adverse impacts to fish. On the other hand, there have been many advances in the process whereby you can mitigate whatever damage is done."

Averill said Anchor QEA should answer the critics and then proceed with the enhancement study.

"There's quite a bit more to be done before we throw up our hands and say it's all over," he said.

Jefferson County, Ecology discuss net pens PORT TOWNSEND — The debate about net pens has gone on for nearly a year, but the probability of installing such a facility in Jefferson County is slim, a county commissioner says.

“You look at Jefferson County and see how much shoreline we have, but there are very few places where you could put in a net pen,” said County Commissioner John Austin on Tuesday after a Monday meeting with representatives of the state Department of Ecology.

The county submitted its proposed updated Shoreline Management Plan to the state Department of Ecology in November 2010.

Most OK’d in February Ecology approved most of the plan in February 2011 — except for the county’s ban of all fin-fish aquaculture, which raises fish, such as salmon, in pens.

Ecology ruled that the county did not have the authority to forbid net pens.

Since that time, the county and state have worked toward a compromise.

On Monday, the three commissioners and staff concerned with the matter met with five representatives of Ecology and one researcher from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to discuss the next steps.

Ecology employees said they were only “there to listen” and that no decisions would be made on the spot.

The NOAA researcher augmented Ecology staff, said Brian Lund of Ecology.

“We do not have a raft of experts on staff, so when we want to learn something, we reach out to consultants,” he said.

“We reach out to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, to NOAA and to other agencies to gain the experience we need to make these decisions.

“Your role,” he told commissioners and county staff members, “is to provide the information to support your case, and then the determination is made whether the state will agree with you.”

‘Look statewide’ Laurie Levander of Ecology said: “Part of Ecology’s mission is to look statewide to see how all these SMPs add up so we don’t end up excluding business on a statewide basis.”

Nothing was resolved after the three-hour meeting, though county Associate Planner Michelle McConnell said the discussion was helpful because it opened the door for “staff-level” conversations in the future.

“We had some really great dialog,” McConnell said.

“It was good for the teams to have direct conversation with each other and determine if there are places in Jefferson County where it makes sense to have net pens.”

Now legal, but where?

READ ENTIRE PENINSULA DAILY NEWS ARTICLE HERE

Venezuela  Farewell, Trawl-Fishing CARACAS, Apr 8 , 2008 (IPS) - Trawl-fishing is on its way out in Venezuela, amid demonstrations by artisanal fisherfolk who support the new law as amended by President Hugo Chávez.

"Trawling is killing off fish species. In our case, we fish with hooks, catch a ‘pargo’ (sea bream), try again, catch a ‘mero’ (grouper), and clean them as we go. We used to fill the boats in a single night, but for years now that hasn’t happened, and sometimes we come back empty-handed," Manuel González told IPS. González is a veteran member of the Fishers’ Association of Río Caribe, a town on the Caribbean coast 550 kilometres northeast of Caracas.

Groups of fisherfolk have been organising marches in the capital, some of them driving trucks carrying their boats, to show their support for the Law on Fisheries and Aquaculture, amended by Chávez in March by a decree-law banning trawl-fishing.

Before the amendment, the previous law promulgated by Chávez in 2001 only prohibited trawling less than six miles (10 kilometres) from the mainland or less than 10 miles (16 kilometres) from island shores.

But the amended law bans trawl-fishing in all Venezuelan waters, where González said "Italian and Spanish ships used to trawl, not only Venezuelan fishing vessels."

At a march in Caracas last Thursday, Franklin Hernández of the Socialist Fishers’ Front in the state of Sucre, where Río Caribe is located, said that "we artisanal fisherfolk are the ones who really supply the country. There will be no shortage of fish, and we support the new law 100 percent."

After another demonstration in Puerto La Cruz, 300 kilometres east of Caracas, Adrián Carías, spokesman for the fisherfolk of Los Cocos, told IPS that "when this law comes into force we’ll start seeing better catches, and those who stand to gain are the people, because when there are lots of fish of all sorts, prices will come down."

Agriculture Minister Elías Jaua said that "banning trawling will not cause shortages, because smallscale artisanal fisherfolk supply 70 percent of production, and industrial fishing 30 percent, but trawlfishing provides only six percent of the total."

However, statistics from the Industrial Trawl-Fishing Association (AVIPA) indicate that its members supply 70,000 tons of fish a year. According to the Agriculture Ministry, the total catch in Venezuela in 2007 was 267,000 tons.

READ ENTIRE IPSNEWS ARTICLE HERE

Featured artist: ď ś Shallow Waters: Ta'Kaiya Blaney & Aileen De La Cruz (click, watch, listen)

Attention Artists (amateurs and professionals) LEGACY will feature a monthly masterpiece from photographs submitted by artists located anywhere on planet earth.

Selections will include only photos of original art (paintings, music videos, sculptures, photographs, lures and more). Photos selected will promote values associated with wild game fish conservation.

Please submit your photos and contact information to LEGACY PUBLISHER.

2012 NORTHWEST YOUTH CONSERVATION & FLY FISHING ACADEMY

The Washington Council Trout Unlimited and the Washington State Council Federation Fly Fishers jointly announce they will begin accepting applications for the 2012 Northwest Youth Conservation and Fly Fishing Academy beginning January 1. The Olympia Chapter Trout Unlimited and the South Sound Fly Fishers will again host the Academy at the Gwinwood Conference Center on Hicks Lake in Lacey, Washington from June 24 through 30, 2012.

The Academy is designed to educate youth about the importance of conservation and resource stewardship and is modeled after the nationally acclaimed award winning Pennsylvania Rivers Conservation and Fly Fishing Youth Camp held annually in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania.

The curriculum is structured to provide students with a background in fundamental science and includes presentations on ecology, hydrology, aquatic entomology, invasive species, watersheds, wildlife management, and fish behavior. Participants will also learn the essential fly fishing skills that include fly casting, fly tying, fly selection, streamside ethics and etiquette, knot tying, reading water, and water safety.

Twenty-four youths, ages 12 to 16, who show an interest in the outdoors and fly fishing will be selected to attend. The Academy is co-educational with acceptance based upon a candidate’s written essay indicating his/her desire to attend and what she/he hopes to learn from it.

Applications will be accepted until April 15, 2012. Total cost, including meals and lodging, is $275.

Fly fishing rods, reels, and fly tying equipment will be available.

Wild Game Fish Around Planet Earth

Arctic Grayling

Photo Courtesy of

Frontier Fishing Lodge http://www.frontierfishinglodge.com/ P.O. Box 32008 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6K 4C2 Email info@frontierfishinglodge.com

Adrienne Comeau with a White Sturgeon Fraser River British Columbia, Canada

Featured Fishing adventures: ď ś Newfoundland Sports Fishing – Newfoundland, Canada Welcome to Newfoundlandsportsfishing.com and Island Safaris Fishing Adventures. These fishing adventures take place at our Little Harbor Deep Lodge located on the Eastern side of the Northern Peninsula at the mouth of the White Bay. The lodge sits next to the Little Harbor Deep River which during the summer fills with large numbers of Atlantic Salmon and Sea Run Brook Trout. This is where your fly fishing adventure for these beautiful fish will begin.

Here at Little Harbor Deep Lodge and Island Safaris we are very dedicated to providing safe and comfortable access to the incredible fly fishing, adventures, and experiences that the Newfoundland wilderness has to offer. We provide clean and comfortable accommodations that sits in a virtually untouched region of this wilderness next to a river with a remarkable fishery.

We have unlimited fishing adventures and experiences to offer and our staff will do their very best to make your experience as enjoyable and memorable as possible. Come give us a visit and take on these large and beautiful Atlantic Salmon and Sea Run Brook Trout. We also visit remote areas exploring unknown streams and lakes for Landlocked Salmon and Brook Trout. Learn more about these remote trips in our Back In The Bush program.

Explore the rest of our site and learn more about the fly fishing at Little Harbor Deep and Juniper Lodges and be sure to click on our newsletter page and sign up for our monthly newsletter. Please feel free to contact us at any time for more information or to make a reservation.

ď ś Dave and Kim Egdorf's Western Alaska Sport Fishing Nushagak River Alaska

Legacy distribution

”Legacy” is distributed around planet earth via Facebook “groups” and it is shared with others via e-mail and other means.

Facebook groups utilized to distribute “LEGACY”  Fishing World Wide (300)  Salmon Are Sacred (3,300)  Save Our Rivers (4,500)  Save the Baltic Salmon (3,000)  Steelhead Salmon (3,700)  Straight Lines and Bent Poles With James T. (1,000) 

WGFCI Facebook Friends

March 2012

Our Readers Write (re: February 2012 issue of Legacy) 

What a great magazine!!!

Thank YOU for your hard work and dedication!!! :) A. Lauder (Alberta, Canada)

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This is a very impressive publication M. Clancy (Washington State, USA)

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Awesome, thanks so much.....Sharing :) S. Sankey (British Columbia, Canada)

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Thank you S. Vdm (Brussels, Belgium)

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Great edition. Congrats.

G. Douchene (British Columbia, Canada)

# 6 Green Highlander

Jerome Malloy New Brunswick, Canada

Conservation Video Library – “Why we fight” The End of the Line Sacred Headwaters - British Columbia, Canada Atlantic salmon feedlots - impacts to Pacific salmon Salmon: Running the Gauntlet - Snake River dams Farmed Salmon Exposed Salmon farm diseases and sockeye Shame Below the Waves Locals Oppose Proposed Pebble Mine Occupy Vancouver, BC - Dr. Alexandra Morton Farming the Seas (Steve Cowen) Farming the Seas (PBS) Cohen Commission – Introduction Deadly virus found in wild Pacific salmon A tribute by Dr. Alexandra Morton (turn up the volume) In our hands Final Trout - Rising from the Shadows Green Interview with Dr. Alexandra Morton Closed containment salmon farms Don Staniford on 'Secrets of Salmon Farming' The Great Salmon Run H2oil - A documentary about the Canadian tar sand oil From Tar Sands to Tankers – the Battle to Stop Enbridge Risking it All - Oil on our Coast To The Last Drop: Canada’s Dirty Oil

Tar Sands – Alberta, Canada

“From Tar Sands to Tankers – the Battle to Stop Enbridge”

Attention Conservation-minded Business Owners Many businesses around planet earth rely in part on sustained 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 sustained 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.

Sustained 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 can effectively protect and restore planet earth’s wild game fish for this and future generations to enjoy and appreciate. This will be our LEGACY.

WGFCI endorsed conservation organizations  American Rivers  Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture  Salmon Are Sacred  Save Our Salmon  Sierra Club – Cascade Chapter  Sportsman’s Alliance For Alaska  Trout Unlimited 

Wild Salmon First