Legacy - May 2016

Legacy

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Matching the Hatch Since 2011

o Contents: o Game Fishing Planet Earth o Opinion o Special o Activism o Climate o Habitat o Harvest o Hatcheries o Salmon Feedlots oo Cleaner Electricity

Cover photo: Steve Sawchuk “Steel on the fly” Location: Cowichan River – British Columbia Photo credit: Kevin Meyer

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

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 – Journal of Wild Game Fish Conservation: Complimentary, nononsense, monthly publication by conservationists for conservationists LEGACY, the WGFCI Facebook page and the WGFCI website are utilized to better equip fellow conservationists, elected officials, business owners and others regarding wild game fish, their unparalleled contributions to society and the varied and complex issues impacting them and those who rely on their sustainability.

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

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

Wild Game Fish Conservation International Founders

Bruce Treichler

Jim Wilcox

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Contents Game Fishing Planet Earth – Then and Now _________________________________________________________ 6 Peter Fine's Fish of a lifetime (48” wild Atlantic salmon) ____________________________________________________ 6 Charterboat Slammer – Westport, Washington _____________________________________________________________ 7

Special ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 8 Seals And Sea Lions Pay The Price For B.C. Salmon Farming _______________________________________________ 9 Steam Injection Fractures Caprock in Big Alberta Spill, Regulator Confirms _________________________________ 12 Mark your Calendar – October 1, 2016 ____________________________________________________________________ 15 HELP PREVENT ENVIRONMENTAL ERADICATION IN FLORIDA ____________________________________________ 17 WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SALMON ESCAPE INTO THE WILD? ______________ 19 Petition Ask the U.S. State Department to protect Alaskan waters from mining threats upstream. _____________ 22

Opinion __________________________________________________________________________________________ 23 How B.C. mining could hurt Northwest fishermen _________________________________________________________ David Suzuki: Tapping Earth's abundant geothermal energy _______________________________________________ Hungry killer whales waiting for Columbia River salmon ___________________________________________________ Risks far outweigh any benefit from proposed oil terminals in Grays Harbor ________________________________ Alaska can't afford to waste another dime on Susitna dam _________________________________________________ PSE gingerly steps toward future with less coal ___________________________________________________________ Hatcheries play a critical role in salmon recovery _________________________________________________________

23 25 27 30 32 35 37

Community Activism, Education and Outreach ______________________________________________________ 39 Stopping Farmed Salmon at the Cash Register____________________________________________________________ Open Letter to the Honourable Minister Hunter Tootoo ____________________________________________________ Recommended Video: St’at’imc - The Salmon People (15:45)_______________________________________________ Okiwi Bay residents protest fish farm plans ______________________________________________________________ Site C protester hospitalized with low heart rate, supporter says ___________________________________________ Women’s Fly Fishing Night ______________________________________________________________________________ KAMCHATKA STEELHEAD PROJECT ____________________________________________________________________

39 40 42 43 46 48 49

Climate___________________________________________________________________________________________ 50 The West Coast Is the World's Fifth Largest Economy — Can It Unite to Stop Big Oil? _______________________ 50 Longannet power station closes ending coal power use in Scotland _______________________________________ 135 US States Team Up to Nail Big Oil for Climate 'Fraud'______________________________________________________ 55

Habitat ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 59 Stephen Hume: Court rules against Shawnigan Lake landfill _______________________________________________ TULALIP TRIBES TESTIMONY TO PFMC ON “PROTECTION AND RESTORATION OF HABITAT IS KEY TO SALMON RECOVERY” ________________________________________________________________________________ Fish kill in Florida: 'Heartbreaking images' seen for miles __________________________________________________ Nadleh Whut'en and Stellat'en hereditary leaders proclaim B.C.'s first aboriginal water laws _________________ B.C. Ignores Best Practices, Allows Mount Polley-style Tailings Dams on Alaska Border, New Report Finds ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Chehalis Basin restoration projects will open 130 miles of streams to migrating fish ________________________

59 61 62 64 66 69

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Harvest __________________________________________________________________________________________ 72 Ocean salmon: There’s a season, but a conservative one __________________________________________________ Lean year for coho means big worries for Westport salmon charters _______________________________________ Puget Sound salmon fishing season negotiations break down _____________________________________________________ ASMI sees opening for wild salmon in Southeast Asia _____________________________________________________ Feds make West Coast ban on new forage fisheries official ________________________________________________ PSC TECHNICAL REPORT: MARK SELECTIVE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT ___________

72 74 77 79 82 84

Hatcheries________________________________________________________________________________________ 89 TREATY TRIBES RELEASE 43 MILLION HATCHERY SALMON LAST YEAR _________________________________ 89

Salmon Feedlots – Weapons of Mass Destruction, Floating Cesspools _______________________________ 91 Suspicion of ISA in Rødøy_______________________________________________________________________________ 92 U.S. environmentalists sue to overturn approval of GMO salmon ___________________________________________ 94 Chile algal bloom blog: Navy complains to prosecutors over dead salmon; Director asks employees to pray _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 97 ‘Marine mammal massacre’ ends sea lions’ invasion of salmon pen ________________________________________ 99 Court Orders Safeguards To Prevent Salmon Farm Diseases _____________________________________________ 102 Did not that lice surviving chemical treatment (translated) ________________________________________________ 104 Livestock adventure price ______________________________________________________________________________ 106

Renewable Energy: Geothermal, Waves, Tidal, Solar, Wind, Hydropower_____________________________ 108 Wind and Solar are Crushing Fossil Fuels _______________________________________________________________ 108 Geothermal ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 113 Green Scene: Shutting Burrard Thermal makes no sense _________________________________________________ 113 Marine Hydrokinetics (Wave Energy) ____________________________________________________________________ 116 New Swedish wave energy buoy boasts 5x the output of existing technology ______________________________ 116 Wind__________________________________________________________________________________________________ 118 U.S. oil states leading in wind power ____________________________________________________________________ 118 Gov. Branstad joins MidAmerican Energy in announcing $3.6 billion investment in additional wind generation capacity _________________________________________________________________________________ 119 Hydropower ___________________________________________________________________________________________ AN ENGINEERING DISASTER ON EDGE OF L.A. OFFERS AN OMINOUS WARNING _________________________ Raping and pillaging at proposed Site C location_________________________________________________________ Clearcutting has begun in the Peace Valley to make way for Site C dam ___________________________________ Washington's Olympic Peninsula loses 2 dams and gains a wild river – plus a new beach __________________ Removal of 4 Dams to Reopen 420 Miles of Historic Salmon Habitat on Klamath River ______________________

121 121 126 128 129 132

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Forward The May 2016 issue of “Legacy” marks fifty five consecutive months of our complimentary eMagazine; the no-holds-barred, watchdog journal published and distributed by Wild Game Fish Conservation International.

Wild game fish are our passion. Publishing “Legacy” each month is our self imposed responsibility to help ensure the future of these precious gifts entrusted to our generation for their conservation.

Please read then share “Legacy” with others who care deeply about the future of wild game fish and all that rely on them.

Sincerely,

Bruce Treichler James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Game Fishing Planet Earth – Then and Now Peter Fine's Fish of a lifetime (48” wild Atlantic salmon) While fishing Hampshire Avon Kyle Scottish Salmon Fishing Surgery

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Charterboat Slammer – Westport, Washington Crossing the Grays Harbor bar at sunrise

Editorial Comment: We at Wild Game Fish Conservation International appreciate fishing guides and charter operators who work so very hard day in and day out to provide recreational fishing opportunities for their clients.

The knowledge these men and women willingly share and their “safety first” mantra lead to lifelong, multigenerational memories for those who enjoy and appreciate recreational fishing.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Special

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Seals And Sea Lions Pay The Price For B.C. Salmon Farming British Columbians were shocked to learn of the recent slaughter of 15 California sea lions by salmon farmers on the west coast of Vancouver Island. But the killing of marine mammals at open-pen salmon feedlots is nothing new. And the cumulative death toll is horrifying.

The most recent killings, disclosed on March 30 by salmon farming giant Cermaq, took place in December of last year at their Binns Island salmon farm north of Tofino.

The 15 California sea lions, lured by the presence of tonnes of densely packed young salmon, were shot by Cermaq staff for posing "an ongoing threat to the safety of the farm staff, fish and net pens."

Environmentalists have been quick to point out the folly of allowing what are essentially factory farms in some of our most sensitive and cherished marine ecosystems.

"Clayoquot Sound is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It's a recognition of just how special a place this is", said Clayoquot Action's Bonny Glambeck. "Yet even here, wildlife is not safe from Norwegianowned industry."

Marine mammals, seals and sea lions in particular have paid a terrible price at the hands of salmon farmers.

We hear a lot about the risks of open-pen salmon feedlots to the survival of our wild salmon, but much less about other collateral damage the industry causes. Marine mammals, seals and sea lions in particular have paid a terrible price at the hands of salmon farmers.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) statistics show that since 1990, the B.C. industry has shot and killed more than 7,000 of our marine mammals: almost 6,000 harbour seals, 1,200 California sea lions and 363 endangered Steller sea lions.

"Marine mammal interactions" (a.k.a. deaths) are a well-known and inevitable consequence of openpen salmon farming. It's hard not to see how putting large numbers of slow-moving, artificially fattened fish directly into the habitat of hungry sea lions is flawed by design.

So the shooting of seals and sea lions is an accepted industry practice, not just in B.C., but around the world. Outrage also swept across the U.K. recently following revelations that hundreds of seals were being killed by Scottish salmon farmers.

Shooting "nuisance sea lions" is only one of the ways feedlots take a toll on our marine mammals.

It is not uncommon for them to get caught in the nets that enclose the pens and drown. Seal and sea lion entanglements are such a problem for the industry that they have even forced Marine Harvest to withdraw applications for sustainability certification for some of their feedlots.

Tragically, whales can also die from entanglement at salmon farms. In 2013, the body of a young humpback whale was reported at the Ross Point salmon farm near Tofino. Cermaq claimed it had died elsewhere and simply drifted into the enclosure.

The DFO claimed evidence for drowning in the nets inconclusive, but it would not be the first humpback to die at a B.C. salmon farm -- nor at feedlots in other countries. A humpback tangled in salmon feedlot rigging has also been caught on video.

Sadly, there appears to be little consequence to salmon farmers for these deaths, apart from the bad public relations they cause. In 2013, another Norwegian company, Grieg Seafoods, managed to negotiate its way out of charges of nine counts of unlawfully destroying marine mammals.

In that incident, 65 California sea lions and one harbor seal perished after becoming entangled in nets at three of their farms within a six-month period.

Both government and industry will downplay the recent killings, pointing to reductions in the number of reported shootings in the last several years. But the numbers are curious.

From 1990 to mid-way through 2011, reports averaged about 360 seals or sea lions killed per year -almost one per day. Then, virtually overnight, the reported numbers plummeted to an average of less than one a month.

Did salmon farmers come up with some new technology to keep sea lions away, somehow managing to roll it out in the space of a couple months to over a hundred feedlots, owned by multiple companies, located in remote areas scattered across the province? Or is there a simpler explanation?

Salmon farmers are given a blanket authorization to kill "problem" seals and sea lions, with the requirement to report the shootings after the fact.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels From 2011 on (about the same time as the precipitous drop in reported killings), this license to kill was included as part of their aquaculture license, removing separate licensing under Canada's Marine Mammal Regulations. In other words, they shoot first, report later.

Perhaps salmon farmers just stopped reporting all of the seal and sea lion shootings? They certainly would have motive. It is an industry that faces almost constant controversy over its environmental practices, and marine mammal deaths simply add to their public relations problem.

It would also be exceptionally easy to get away with. In the remote bays along B.C.'s coast where most feedlots are located, there are rarely others around to witness a shooting.

The majority of what we know about what goes on at salmon farms is based on what salmon farmers tell us goes on.

And there is evidence that shootings have gone unreported by salmon farmers in the past. In 2010, videos emerged showing salmon farm feed bags containing sea lion carcasses weighed down with rocks that had washed ashore in Clayoquot Sound. The bags were identical to ones stacked on the structure of a nearby salmon farm. Then there was the mass grave of sea lions discovered nearby.

But it is not just self-reporting of sea lion shootings that we need to be concerned about. For sea lice counts, the use of antibiotics and toxic chemicals, incidental catch of other wild fish species, escapes of Atlantic salmon and, most troubling of all, disease outbreaks that endanger wild salmon, the majority of what we know about what goes on at salmon farms is based on what salmon farmers tell us goes on.

Given the grave risks to our coastal ecosystem that open-pen salmon feedlots present, the reliance on self-reporting is deeply concerning. Where it becomes downright frightening is when the federal government cedes its authority to salmon farmers on decisions that could have truly catastrophic consequences for our coast.

Last year, the Federal Court struck down licence conditions that allowed salmon farmers to transfer disease-infected salmon smolts into our coastal waters.

But the federal government has teamed up with the salmon farmers to appeal that decision. If they are successful, it will mean salmon farmers will decide for themselves if their virus-laden farmed salmon pose a risk to our wild salmon.

The appeal is a particularly reckless form of deregulation that we came to expect in the Harper era.

We expect more from the Trudeau government. The new Liberal Fisheries Minister, Hunter Tootoo has the power to halt the appeal, but to date he has not done so.

With the consequences of global warming changing our coastal ecosystem at a frightening pace, every species, from the top to the bottom of the food chain, is now at risk. Seal and sea lion populations may be considered stable at the moment, but we have entered an unprecedented time in the history of our oceans. We just don't know what comes next.

What we do know is that regulating salmon farmers by the honour system will not protect our wild salmon, nor the orcas, wolves, bears, eagles, seals and sea lions that depend upon them.

The only way to ensure the killing stops and our wildlife is protected is to remove salmon feedlots from our coast.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Large fractures in earth seeped bitumen at one of four well sites operated by CNRL near Cold Lake, Alberta

Steam Injection Fractures Caprock in Big Alberta Spill, Regulator Confirms Incident highlights fragility of high-cost energy extraction.

March 23, 2016 Three years after an eruption of 10,000 barrels of melted bitumen contaminated the boreal forest and groundwater near Cold Lake, Alberta, the provincial energy regulator has now officially blamed hydraulic fracturing, or the pressurized injection of steam into the ground for fracturing nearby rock.

The bitumen blowout occurred sometime between May and June 2013 at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.'s Cold Lake project, an operation that uses steam injection to melt bitumen and bring it to the surface.

In this case, the pressure from the steam cracked rock between different formations, allowing melted bitumen to find natural fractures and flow to the surface at five different locations, including under a lake.

In some places, the bitumen erupted through fissures in the ground as long as 159 metres deep.

The event, not the first of its kind as an earlier Tyee investigation revealed, killed wildlife and seeped nearly 20 barrels of bitumen a day into muskeg over a five-month period.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In a lengthy report, the Alberta Energy Regulator concluded what experts had suggested all along -that all five bitumen seeping events "were caused by excessive steam volumes, along with an open conduit (wellbore or natural fracture or fault) or hydraulically induced vertical fractures."

According to the regulator, an independent third party expert panelthat also reviewed the bitumen disaster found that the company, a major bitumen producer, had failed to properly account for geological faults and fractures in the region it was steaming.

That panel submitted "that CNRL's approach had insufficiently addressed the impact of geological variability" and how natural fractures would respond to increases in steam pressures.

In particular, the company did not properly address a new geohazard in the tarsands: the erosion of salt formations underneath bitumen deposits by the movement of groundwater.

The industry-funded regulator concluded that "CNRL did not contravene any rules in their use of their specific steaming strategy," but has since implemented regulatory requirements "designed to prevent a further incident and permanently reduce steaming volumes."

Fragile, inefficient operations The incident, which cost Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. nearly $50 million to clean up, highlights the fragility of operations that fracture bitumen formations with high-pressure steam.

These energy-intensive projects, which often use more than three barrels of steam to produce one barrel of bitumen, now produce the majority of Canada's bitumen for export. At current oil prices, such inefficient operations are losing money.

Approximately 80 per cent of Alberta's bitumen deposits lie deeper than 75 metres and cannot be mined. The majority of bitumen extraction now comes from steaming operations that use gravity or waves of steam to melt a resource as hard as a hockey puck.

As a consequence, the deep deposits, all capped by rock, are currently being heated to as high as 300 C with steam.

During the steaming process, the overlaying caprock acts as a primary but not always impermeable seal that keeps steamed bitumen from seeping into aquifers, industry wellbores and other geological formations, as well as the forest floor and lakes.

For years, geoscientists as well as annual industry progress reports to the Alberta Energy Regulator consistently showed that the technologies used to steam deep deposits have created the same sort of problems now plaguing the hydraulic fracturing of unconventional oil and gas resources across North America.

Both technologies inject highly pressurized fluids (gas, water, steam or hydrocarbons) into formations, where the resulting pressure can crack or fracture overlying rock and well casings in unpredictable ways. These fractures can bring fluids or gases to the surface, contaminate groundwater or connect with other existing wells.

Across North America, hydraulic fracturing has triggered earthquakes, pushed gases to the surface, connected to natural faults and fractures, "communicated" with other wells, damaged nearby wellbores and contaminated groundwater.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The ongoing problem for industry is that it can't control where the fractures will go or what natural faults they might connect with.

In Canada's heavy oil production, the injection of steam has amassed a long case history of problems, including fracturing into well sites and other formations, steam leaks and blowouts.

Fracking bitumen with steam has also mobilized arsenic and fouled groundwater.

Still waiting on caprock study The large Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. bitumen spill occurred exactly at the same place where another major leak occurred in 2009. The regulator did not report on that event until years later.

The new regulator report confirmed that caprock "is being compromised during high pressure cyclic steam stimulation" at CNRL's Primrose East project.

Injection pressures and steam volumes used by CNRL "either activated existing fracturing and faulting" of caprock or "altered the stress state enough to induce fracturing to enable releases of bitumen emulsion into the Grand Rapids Formation."

The bitumen then migrated up through natural fractures, faults, or vertical hydraulically induced fractures to the surface.

Cyclic steam injection, which pumps steam into a single well for weeks at a time allowing the steam to soak and build up pressure underground, has been plagued with technical problems for years.

In 2002, petroleum geologist Maurice Dusseault reported that steam injection due to high pressures caused "hydraulic fracturing out of zone, perhaps intersection with 'thief zones' and the opening of fracture pathways to water or the surface."

To deal with these major geohazards and the threat to caprock, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (now the Alberta Energy Regulator) created a special Oilsands Caprock Integrity Project seven years ago.

At the time, OCRIP's website specifically warned that "uncontrolled releases of steam, oil or formation water caused by in situ oil production (e.g. cyclic steam stimulation and steam-assisted gravity drainage) create concerns for resource and environmental conservation."

But OCRIP has yet to publicly release a promised analysis of "human-induced geological hazards" in the region, as well as an incident review database of steam operations that have broken the caprock.

The project's website appears to no longer exist.

A 2011 paper written by employees of Schlumberger, an oil servicing multinational and fracking expert, warned that continuous steam injection can deform a bitumen formation so badly that it can "reduce rock strength, induce new fractures or re-activate existing fractures posing contained risk of containment of breach of caprock."

In turn, the fracturing of caprock "can provide pathways for bitumen and steam to flow to aquifers or to the surface causing significant risk to safety and the environment," warned the paper.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Mark your Calendar – October 1, 2016

Hello Wild Salmon lovers!

Without our independent scientist, Alexandra Morton, chances are, we would not know about Norwegian strain viruses in our BC waters, or the drug resistant sea lice epidemic! To keep her research ongoing, would you/could you donate an item or adventure for our raffle tickets or live auction for her fundraiser?

The Sierra Club-Quadra Island chapter, and friends, are happy to present an evening with internationally acclaimed salmon biologist and renown environmentalist, Alexandra Morton, at the Quadra Community Center, October 1st, 2016 The evening will highlight some of her latest findings of an imported Norwegian strain of the globally feared Infectious Salmon Anemia virus, now in our BC waters. The study, done in collaboration with world renown scientists has been peer reviewed and published in Virology Journal just a few weeks ago-you may have heard about it on the news as it went nationwide. The evening will also feature a spotlight on our horrendous out-of-control salmon farm sea lice problem, the poisonous chemicals they use to combat them, and how those are affecting our fragile waters and eco system.

Alexandra has been relentless and heroic in her efforts to move the salmon farms out of our wild salmon migration routes and onto land. Land based farms are already having great success such as Namgis First Nations Kuterra facility near Port Hardy. Because she is an independent scientist, she relies on the kindness and goodwill of others to support herself and carry on her good work. To help her with that, we are planning on selling raffle tickets and are also hosting a live auction fundraiser on the evening of October 1st.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels We understand so many projects are in need of funding right now, however, if you feel as we do, that this one is too important not to deal with, then please be generous and donate to this event-either to the raffle tickets, the live auction or a cash donation If you are going to donate something for the raffle tickets, please let us know what that will be before the 30th of March, as we will need all donations and their values for the gaming commission. Please let us also know of any blackout or restriction dates. We will be advertising this event in our local papers and would like to list the donors and prizes, so if you have any photos to represent your business, please let us know which one you'd like us to use to help us advertise this event.

Thank you for your time and support. We hope you will be able to join us for this special evening.

So far we have: 2 companies donating kayaking trips 2 fishing charters- 4 people for 5 hours 4 Whale watching tours 2 nights at a resort cabin for 4 to 6 people 4 nights for 6 people at a rental by April Point on Quadra Island Tuition package from Hollyhock on Cortes Custom necklace from jewelry artist Dana Wilcox

Custom-designed, hand crafted 20� necklace from jewelry artist, Dana Wilcox. This one-of-a-kind piece of fine art features antique copper link chain and more than forty authentic Swarovski crystal beads.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

HELP PREVENT ENVIRONMENTAL ERADICATION IN FLORIDA Petitioning President Barack Obama and 9 others Dear citizens and elected officials, we are at an intersection where we can choose between handling problems now or leave the problem for our children.

The choices we make today affect the lives of our children tomorrow. As our great President Abraham Lincoln once stated, "You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

The government has ignored the people who have elected them to lead by instead showing loyalty to corporations that are destroying our environment to make a dollar. Florida voters have made it abundantly clear in the past that they choose the earth over corporate greed.

Weeks ago, the Army Corp. of Engineers started releasing billions of gallons of waste water into the Florida ecosystem. The devastation is unfathomable. These waste waters hold highly concentrated levels of phosphorous and nitrates which are being flushed down man made water ways and into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers.

These rivers run east and west into precious coastal estuaries which harbor more marine biodiversity than that of any rainforest. These estuaries are supposed to be protected by our government.

The damage caused by these polluted waters also ignites massive algae blooms. These "red and or brown tides" are 100% man made. They have happened before in the past and we the people took steps to prevent this from ever happening again.

But this time it's being allowed to kill the life and diversity of coastal Florida estuaries by our elected representatives. The death toll continues to rise as the waste water continues to pour into these protected lands. In the past week alone; citizens have documented the mass killing of protected seagrass, shellfish, millions of baitfish and gamefish.

Even populations of dolphin and manatee have begun to perish and nothing has been done despite the laws protecting them. In 2015, Florida declared the bill "Amendment 1" which basically reads: 33% of net tax money received from citizens would be placed into a "Land Acquisition Fund"(land purchase fund).

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels This fund’s sole purpose was to buy land for conservation purposes. Again, the citizens of Florida spoke and 75% of us voted YES to this bill. Florida has opportunities to buy tens of thousands of acres from US Sugar Corp. right now. This would reinstate the natural flow of water to the state southward below Lake Okeechobee. This water runs through miles of plant life and environmental purifications that naturally clean the polluted water before it enters the everglades.

Governor Rick Scott amongst others stopped the progress being made and killed the negotiation process. The people used to believe the government had their best interest at heart. The people now know the government only has the best interest of corporate America in mind.

US Sugar and the state of Florida couldn't come to a deal on the largest ecological restoration project in state history, but US Sugar may instead try to rezone all that natural pristine habitat into residential and commercial land.

This is our intersection. We the people are drawing the line in the sand. We choose the earth. We stand beside Mother Nature and our state. We elected you to make the proper decisions that benefit all communities, including our ecosystem, NOT large corporations.

These wildlife, tourist and fishing communities on the Florida coasts are losing everything. But every human being will lose far more than that if this isn't resolved. One day our children or grandchildren will grow up hearing fairy tales of what used to be "the fishing capital of the world." Instead they will be left a barren wasteland if we don’t take action, literally.

We've made these mistakes in the past. In the northeast we have destroyed a once abundant population of wild Atlantic salmon. Money and development was the priority over conservation then, which is still killing the planet now. The Atlantic salmon are now highly endangered and all but extinct in the United States.

Let's use this as a learning lesson and change the way we think about nature and economics. Let's grow our communities responsibly and support all businesses around our small business owners that safeguard the environment in coastal communities. Let's drive more tourism money through something we can be proud of, a clean state that prides itself on being an example for the rest of the country.

The citizens demand transparency with Amendment 1, and the possible uses of it to protect the environment we cherish. We demand clean waters, to save our estuaries, and the immediate STOPPING of the discharge from Lake Okeechobee. We demand that a state of emergency be declared upon our state to gain federal assistance to clean up this mess and hold the corporations responsible accountable for their actions.

We choose to end double standards between citizens, corporations and government: if it is illegal for a citizen to kill a dolphin, manatee, oversized game fish or protected animal, it is now going to be illegal for corporations and government as well. Finally, we demand compliance with scientific advice, to purchase the land south of Lake Okeechobee from US Sugar and restore the natural southerly flow of waste water thru the states preserves.

Side note: if we hear you "cannot strike a deal", we've all heard of eminent domain. We leave you with a quote from Albert Einstein, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Wild Alaskan sockeye salmon swimming upstream. The FDA has failed to fully examine the risks that a new species of genetically engineered salmon would present to wild salmon.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SALMON ESCAPE INTO THE WILD? April 8, 2016 In late 2015, the Food and Drug Administration gave the greenlight to AquaBounty, Inc., a company poised to create, produce and market an entirely new type of salmon. By combining the genes from three different types of fish, AquaBounty has made a salmon that grows unnaturally fast, reaching adult size twice as fast as its wild relative.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Never before has a country allowed any type of genetically engineered animal to be sold as food.

The United States is stepping into new terrain, opening Pandora’s box. But are we ready for the consequences?

In order to answer that question, we must first look back on how we as a nation arrived at this point.

Historically, the United States has enjoyed a rich bounty of seafood from the ocean. When I lived in Alaska, I always loved the late summer months when wild salmon would fill the rivers, making their way to spawning grounds. Fresh, wild salmon filets were delicious and abundant. And they still are.

Unfortunately, outside of Alaska, our poor management of an enormous fishing industry and important habitat has depleted fish stocks all along our coasts. Salmon species, in particular, are sensitive to environmental changes. The development and industrialization of our coast has polluted and dammed the rivers they depend on to breed. Although salmon used to be abundant on both the east and west coasts, large, healthy populations of salmon now exist mostly in Alaska.

The current and historic range of salmon in the Western United States and Canada.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Instead of fixing the environmental problems we have created or investing in the protection and recovery of our existing wild salmon resources, some have decided to create a new, genetically engineered fish that brings a host of its own problems and further undermines the sustainability of our food supply.

The genetically engineered salmon that the FDA approved will undertake a journey that stretches halfway around the globe in order to arrive at your dinner table. AquaBounty plans to produce the salmon eggs in a lab on Prince Edward Island in Canada, fly them to Panama to be raised and filleted, and then bring them back to the U.S. so they can be sold to your family. How many tons of greenhouse gases are emitted during that 5,000-mile trip?

That’s a far cry from the farm-to-table experience of eating seafood caught and sold by your local fisherman. Even worse, the FDA has so far refused to require food labels, so you won’t even know if the fish you’re eating is genetically engineered.

The waste and secrecy inherent in this process is bad enough, but the environmental consequences of this decision are potentially enormous. The FDA has failed to fully examine the risks this new species of salmon may present to wild salmon—and the environment—should it escape into the wild, which even some supporters of the FDA decision acknowledge is inevitable.

Once free, these fish will enter a world where wild salmon are already in a precarious state.

In this fragile environment, genetically engineered fish would compete with their wild counterparts for food and space, and could even potentially interbreed with them. They will also bring new diseases and cause changes to basic food webs and ecosystem processes that are difficult to anticipate.

Editorial Comment: Now that the USFDA has approved genetically modified salmon for human consumption, these “Frankensalmon” will be raised to maturity in ocean-based salmon feedlots to minimize financial costs while increasing risks to human health and environmental integrity.

Even more concerning is that the FDA does not have the expertise to properly understand the environmental devastation a release of genetically engineered fish could cause. The FDA exists to ensure that the food and drugs we consume are safe for humans, but does not typically evaluate the environmental impacts of putting new types of engineered foods into the ecosystem. The two agencies with actual biological expertise in fisheries and ocean ecosystems, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, were not given the chance to formally review FDA’s approval.

Congress has not created a comprehensive statutory scheme to address the management of genetically engineered products. As a result, agencies are left trying to regulate genetically engineered products under a patchwork of ill-fitting statutes that do not comprehensively address associated environmental and other risks of these new creatures.

This new breed of fish does not herald progress. Instead, it highlights the ways we have devastated many of our wild fish populations and our continuing failure to recover this once-abundant natural food source.

We are opening Pandora’s box, and we are completely unprepared for the consequences.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Petition Ask the U.S. State Department to protect Alaskan waters from mining threats upstream.

The following message will be presented to the U.S. Department of State with your signature included. After you act, you will be re-directed to a page to ask your state leaders to act as well.

Dear Secretary Kerry, The economy and culture of Southeast Alaska are directly tied to the health of our rivers and our salmon runs. We are concerned that massive mining development upstream in British Columbia, in the headwaters of major transboundary salmon rivers such as the Taku, Stikine and Unuk, threatens our water quality and fisheries, and thus our jobs, culture and overall way of life.

We urge you to engage with the Canadian government and also take action to safeguard Southeast Alaska’s $2-billion-a-year fishing and tourism industries and rich cultural and traditional heritage from mine pollution.

Like most Americans, I want Alaska's natural resources managed in a responsible way. The U.S. and Canada need to work together to protect fish and water quality in this world-class salmon region that we share.

Please stand up for Alaska and take advantage of this opportunity for international collaboration.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Opinion

Joel Brady-Power and his wife Tele Aadsen in front of Brady-Power’s fishing boat, the F/V Nerka.

How B.C. mining could hurt Northwest fishermen March 17, 2016 The headwaters of the Taku, Stikine and Unuk Rivers — Southeast Alaska’s major salmonproducing rivers — are in British Columbia, where up to 10 major mining proposals dot the map of these watersheds.

AS a second-generation commercial fisherman my life has always revolved around salmon. Although a resident of Washington, I have spent summers fishing in Southeast Alaska since I boarded my parents’ boat as a 2-week-old.

My livelihood depends on healthy salmon runs, something we have struggled to maintain here in Washington. Now, Alaska’s salmon also face major threats, from unprecedented development proposals across the border in British Columbia.

Though I catch Alaskan salmon a few hundred miles north, I’ve seen how Western Washington’s economy has reflected the strength of Alaska’s salmon runs. Fishermen across the Pacific Northwest have cautiously sighed with relief at the delayed, but not dead, Bristol Bay Pebble Mine proposal.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In part, we have U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to thank. She spoke out against the Pebble Mine at a 2014 rally at Seattle’s Fishermen’s Terminal. But now, an even bigger, quieter storm is brewing in Southeast Alaska.

Sailor, take warning: The headwaters of the Taku, Stikine and Unuk Rivers — Southeast Alaska’s major salmon-producing rivers — are in British Columbia, where up to 10 major mining proposals dot the map of these watersheds. One mine is already operational, with nine other projects in various stages of exploration and permitting. I rely on these rivers, flowing from B.C. into Alaska, to provide the clean water and fish habitat for my summer catch.

The scariest part?

Alaska and the U.S. currently bear all the risk and none of the reward from these large-scale mines, with no way to protect ourselves from a catastrophic event. It’s not if, but when, mine disasters will occur.

I learned of the disaster at B.C.’s Mount Polley mine during the middle of our fishing season in August 2014. Months later, I saw the horrific footage of the toxic slurry that was released into the Fraser River watershed, just north of my home in Bellingham. The formerly untainted waterways were devastated in an instant. I shuddered imagining a similar scene unfolding in Southeast Alaska.

Last November, I spoke on a panel at Seattle’s Pacific Marine Expo — the annual trade-show epicenter of the Pacific fishing industry — about my concerns regarding large-scale mining development in B.C. Of the thousand exhibitors that week, not a single fisherman, seafood processor or marine supplier could avoid negative economic impacts if Southeast Alaska experienced a disaster like Mount Polley. Just weeks before, as if to put a finer point on it, Brazil experienced a tailings dam (an embankment used to store byproducts of mining operations) failure that devastated not only an entire town, but 400 miles of river before mine waste reached the Atlantic Ocean.

Given the widespread concern as B.C. mines continue to be rapidly developed, we seek action. We need Cantwell — this time joined by her Washington state congressional colleagues — to once again stand up for Washington jobs and Alaskan fishermen in the face of this unprecedented development in British Columbia. We need to establish guaranteed protections that B.C. mines will not impact Alaskan waters and need financial guarantees that, if they do, fishermen and American taxpayers aren’t left with the daunting cleanup bill.

As Cantwell and Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski recently noted in their joint keynote at the January Arctic Encounter Symposium in Seattle, “What’s good for Alaska is good for Washington.”

Let’s also remember: What’s bad for Alaska is bad for Washington.

Thousands of Alaskans are calling on Murkowski to bring this issue to the U.S. State Department to enforce the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 and to receive a federal review of the region from the International Joint Commission.

I support this call from Alaskans and I ask our state’s elected officials to support Murkowski in maintaining the integrity of our Pacific salmon states.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Geothermal-energy facility in Kenya

David Suzuki: Tapping Earth's abundant geothermal energy March 29th, 2016 In the midst of controversy over B.C.’s Peace River Site C dam project, the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association released a study showing the province could get the same amount of energy more affordably from geothermal sources for about half the construction costs.

Unlike Site C, geothermal wouldn’t require massive transmission upgrades, would be less environmentally disruptive, and would create more jobs throughout the province rather than just in one area.

Despite the many benefits of geothermal, Canada is the only “Pacific Ring of Fire” country that doesn’t use it for commercial-scale energy. According to the Desmog Blog: “New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, the United States, and Mexico all have commercial geothermal plants.”

Iceland heats up to 90 percent of its homes, and supplies 25 percent of its electricity, with geothermal.

Geothermal energy is generated by heat from Earth’s rocks, liquids, and steam. It can come from shallow ground, where the temperature is a steady 10 to 16 C; from hot water and rocks deeper in the ground; or possibly from very hot molten rock (magma) deep below Earth’s surface.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels As with clean-energy sources like solar, geothermal energy systems vary, from those that use hot water from the ground directly to heat buildings, greenhouses, and water to those that pump underground hot water or steam to drive turbines. The David Suzuki Foundation’s Vancouver and Montreal offices use geothermal.

According to National Geographic, geothermal power plants use three methods to produce electricity: dry steam, flash steam, and binary cycle. Dry steam uses steam from fractures in the ground. “Flash plants pull deep, high-pressure hot water into cooler, low-pressure water,” which creates steam. In binary plants, which produce no greenhouse-gas emissions and will likely become dominant, “hot water is passed by a secondary fluid with a much lower boiling point”, which turns the secondary fluid into vapour.

Unlike wind and solar, geothermal provides steady energy and can serve as a more cost-effective and less environmentally damaging form of baseload power than fossil fuels or nuclear. It’s not entirely without environmental impacts, but most are minor and can be overcome with good planning and siting. Geothermal fluids can contain gases and heavy metals, but most new systems recycle them back into the ground.

Operations should also be located to avoid mixing geothermal liquids with groundwater and to eliminate impacts on nearby natural features like hot springs. Some geothermal plants can produce small amounts of CO2, but binary systems are emissions-free. In some cases, resources that provide heat can become depleted over time.

Although geothermal potential has been constrained by the need to locate operations in areas with high volcanic activity, geysers, or hot springs, new developments are making it more widely viable.

One controversial method being tested is similar to “fracking” for oil and gas. Water is injected into a well with enough pressure to break rock and release heat to produce hot water and steam to generate power through a turbine or binary system.

Researchers have also been studying urban “heat islands” as sources of geothermal energy. Urban areas are warmer than their rural surroundings, both above and below ground, because of the effects of buildings, basements, and sewage and water systems. Geothermal pumps could make the underground energy available to heat buildings in winter and cool them in summer.

New methods of getting energy from the ground could also give geothermal a boost. Entrepreneur Manoj Bhargava is working with researchers to bring heat to the surface using graphene cords rather than steam or hot water. Graphene is stronger than steel and conducts heat well. Bhargava says the technology would be simple to develop and could be integrated with existing power grids.

Unfortunately, geothermal hasn’t received the same level of government support as other sources of energy, including fossil fuels and nuclear. That’s partly because upfront costs are high and, as with oil and gas exploration, geothermal sources aren’t always located where developers hope they’ll be.

As Desmog notes, resources are often found in areas that already have access to inexpensive hydro power.

Rapid advancements in renewable-energy and power-grid technologies could put the world on track to a mix of clean sources fairly quickly— which is absolutely necessary to curtail global warming. Geothermal energy should be part of that mix.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Hungry killer whales waiting for Columbia River salmon March 30, 2016 Some say it’s too late to turn this march toward extinction around. If you know these fish and these whales, like we do, then you understand that they are two of nature’s most resourceful species. We must not give up on them now.

RIGHT now, southern-resident killer whales circle the waters off the mouth of the Columbia River eager to score their favorite meal — a fat spring chinook salmon. It’s late March and the Pacific Northwest’s rivers should be a surge of snowmelt and salmon. But they aren’t.

The southern-resident killer whales are on the brink of extinction because they can’t find enough food. With eight new calves — the biggest baby boom this population has seen in almost 40 years — the moment to help our iconic blackfish is today.

What can we do? The whales are showing us: We need to focus on Columbia Basin salmon.

Last summer was a disaster for salmon and a shocking look into the possible future of Columbia and Snake River fisheries. Last July, reports emerged that more than a quarter million sockeye returning from the ocean had died as a result of high water temperatures in the Columbia and Snake rivers. In the end, 96 percent of returning endangered Snake River sockeye died before reaching Lower Granite Dam. The oldest member of the southern resident killer whale clan, a whale nicknamed “Granny,” who is estimated to be more than 100 years old, remembers the days before the dams and climate distress.

Her memory of endless, enormous fish is what brings the southern-resident killer whales back at this exact time of year to the mouth of the Columbia River, where NOAA tracking data confirm the whales congregate.

The Columbia River Basin once produced more salmon than any other river system in the world. It remains the gateway to millions of acres of pristine, high-elevation spawning habitat. But today, wild Columbia Basin spring chinook are returning to their natal streams at roughly 1 percent of their historic numbers.

There are those who say it’s too late to turn this march toward extinction around. If you know these fish and these whales, like we do, then you understand that they are two of nature’s savviest and most resourceful species. We must not give up on them now.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

This orca, a member of J pod,, was photographed eating what is likely a chinook salmon in Haro Strait in 2008.

Each of the whales has a number, name and distinct personality. They travel in matriarchal pods and live in a web of caring, tight-knit social arrangements. Southern resident J26 (or “Mike”) frequently swims alongside his younger siblings, the orca equivalent of baby-sitting. “Oreo” (J22) is the mother of two boys, and almost 20 years ago, when her sister J20 (aka “Ewok”) died, she took over the parental responsibility of her young niece J32 (also known as “Rhapsody”) who was only 2 years old.

If anyone can band together to come back from the brink, these whales can.

The fish the whales depend on are equally remarkable. Salmon form the spine of the Pacific Northwest’s ecosystem. Without them, everything else totters and risks collapse. Somehow they continue to hang on over dams and against impossible odds. It’s as if they — like the whales — carry a memory passed down through generations of a time before the Columbia became the most hydroelectrically developed river system in the world.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels If we return to a healthy river, we’ll bring back the fish. Just look to the Elwha River restoration. More than 4,000 chinook were counted above the former Elwha Dam the first season after it came down.

In December 2014, the killer whale “Rhapsody” washed up on shore dead with a near full-term fetus.

A preliminary necropsy showed that her blubber layer was thin and dry of oil, consistent with inadequate diet for an extended period.

The untamed outdoors is this region’s 'second paycheck.'”

The untamed outdoors is this region’s “second paycheck,” and our rivers, mountains and coast would be lifeless and lonely without the wild animals that make them pulse and sing.

Both Washington state and the federal government are currently reviewing the endangered status of the southern-resident killer whales. The whales have been federally listed as endangered for more than 10 years — and yet they continue to decline.

A federal judge in Portland is expected to rule soon on the adequacy of the most recent Columbia Basin salmon-restoration plan. The previous four plans have each been rejected by the court. We now need political leaders in the Northwest and Washington, D.C., to work with the people of the region to craft coherent solutions that honor these iconic, connected species.

And we need to learn from the whales and focus our efforts where they do: on the Columbia Basin.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Risks far outweigh any benefit from proposed oil terminals in Grays Harbor

By Fawn R. Sharp & Larry Thevik More than 500 people testified last fall at two public hearings about crude oil terminals proposed at the Port of Grays Harbor. More than 90,000 submitted written comments on a draft environmental study, the vast majority calling on local and state officials to deny permits for the terminals. They pose too many risks and costs to our communities, the health and safety of our families and our regional economy.

The overwhelming concern of area residents during the public comment period was echoed clearly in a recent poll, commissioned by the Quinault Indian Nation, which found 57 percent of Grays Harbor County voters oppose plans to transport by rail, store and ship crude oil to West Coast and overseas refineries. The telephone survey of 402 likely Republican, Democrat and independent Grays Harbor County voters was conducted in December 2015.

Among the top concerns of survey respondents were the potential negative impacts on traffic, the health of fish and wildlife in Grays Harbor, and water quality in local rivers, streams and our coastal shores. We share local residents’ concerns about oil trains, tankers and barges that would pose an ever present risk of oil spills, elevate vessel traffic safety risk and impede access to fishing grounds for both tribal and non-tribal fishers.

No crude oil currently moves through Grays Harbor. If built, proposed terminals would mean regular transits of oil-filled vessels crossing the rough bar between the harbor and the ocean. Imagine oil tankers three football fields in length navigating the narrow, shallow shipping channel through the harbor.

Not surprisingly, the poll also indicated county residents are extremely concerned about the struggling local economy. Our communities need economic development. We need to do more with our waterfront. But choosing crude oil terminals could close off other development options, like plans to make Aberdeen’s waterfront a more desirable place to work and play and an attractive stop for the millions of visitors who come through on their way to the spectacular Olympic coast.

A better path than crude oil would build on our strengths like commercial fisheries and tourism. Grays Harbor and surrounding waters support nearly 700 tribal and more than 3,000 non-tribal commercial fishing jobs.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels A study last month by the Greater Grays Harbor Chamber of Commerce found nearly 6,000 tourismrelated jobs in the county, accounting for one in four non-farm industry jobs in the region and ranking us sixth out of Washington’s 39 counties for tourism.

Grays Harbor is essential habitat for shellfish, including oysters and razor clams, fish such as salmon, steelhead and sturgeon and is a major nursery ground for Dungeness crab. Scenic beauty, clean beaches, birds and wildlife, and recreation opportunities are central to our local quality of life and the lifeblood of our tourism economy. We should focus on keeping Grays Harbor and the Washington coast safe and productive, not putting them at risk from oil trains, tankers and barges.

In the coming months, state and local leaders are expected to approve or deny permits for proposed crude oil terminals. As they continue to weigh their decision, we hope they will come to the same conclusion we have, that on balance any modest economic benefits we may get from the terminals are far outweighed by the many risks and costs. We can do better than crude oil. Let’s work to build our economy in ways that are consistent with the views of a majority of county residents and the sustainable industries we already have in place and can build on.

Fawn R. Sharp is President of the Quinault Indian Nation Larry Thevik is Vice-president of Washington Dungeness Crab Fishermen’s Association

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

OPINION: Susitna dam has bled Alaska's treasury long enough; let's kill the boondoggle for keeps.

Pictured: An artist's rendering of the Susitna-Watana dam.

Alaska can't afford to waste another dime on Susitna dam March 31, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Well, that was uncomfortable!

I just sat through the first three days of "pre-licensing" for the proposed Susitna-Watana dam. And, for much of those three days scientists from state and federal resource agencies just grilled statehired science consultants about the quality of their studies on the project. Each day, critiques flew at Alaska Energy Authority during these initial study review meetings about flawed studies, cut corners, and iffy data that are supposed to justify the state of Alaska’s plan to dam the Susitna River. Some of the most respected energy and fisheries experts in state and federal agencies, including Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries Society and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (the agency with the final say on the pending dam license) raised these concerns.

At a time when the state’s dire budget dominates our attention, I am surprised that so many Alaskans have no idea that the state, through the AEA, is still slowly and quietly plodding along in pursuit of the Susitna dam, and spending state money to do it. As the deficit literally grows by the day, few projects symbolize gross, negligent spending as well as the Susitna dam does -- both in size (705 feet tall) and cost (at least $6 billion).

To date, the state of Alaska has spent roughly $193 million on these questionable studies alone. One notable example of the problematic studies was uncovered in October 2014, when AEA’s scientists admitted they had a difficult time differentiating between juvenile coho and chinook salmon. As you can imagine, hearing the state’s highly paid consultants admit they didn’t know the difference between two critical salmon species left me skeptical about the quality of the investment the state of Alaska has made in this costly prelicensing exercise.

This round of meetings was hardly different from those in 2014, as one study flaw after another was uncovered. Federal and state agency officials, along with independent scientists, quickly identified myriad “significant errors” in study design, execution and results.

I am grateful that these meetings are happening though, because the reviews and criticisms of AEA’s research will go on an official record. AEA shouldn’t be able to pretend their research is reliable, as they use it to justify building the type of dam the rest of the world has not only stopped even considering but is actively tearing down because of detrimental impacts to fish, rivers and communities. But beyond these meetings, the state of Alaska should stop this fiscal madness and shut this project down.

As of now, Alaska’s position appears to be to let AEA slowly advance the Susitna dam despite science and economics pointing to the contrary. The governor appears unwilling to make a hard decision.

In an op-ed printed March 13, Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott argued, “When you’re facing hard decisions, the human impulse is to procrastinate. We get it. As our team was delving into the options for tackling Alaska’s growing budget gap, don’t think we weren’t tempted to kick the can down the road.”

They are right.

But with Susitna, the administration is itself kicking the can down the road. By allowing the project to limp along, quietly draining millions of state funds that could be invested in people or projects that will benefit all of Alaska.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels At the beginning of their administration, Walker and Mallott appeared to listen to Alaskans who asked they put fish first, among other items. But the slow pursuit of Susitna is one of many places where their administration is quietly putting our fisheries at risk, rather than putting fish first.

Healthy fisheries and a healthy economy should go hand in hand. The state’s fishing industry is valued at $5 billion and sport fishing brings in around half a billion dollars to the state. As for the Susitna River, we know it is the fourth largest producer of king salmon in Alaska. Further, the Susitna drives the upper Cook Inlet commercial fishery that is valued at $35 million and also hosts a sport and recreational economy that employees more than 1,900 individuals.

Speaking of money, AEA has told the administration they need $100 million more to get to the licensing process.

Alaska has already sunk enough into some seriously flawed research. Fixing those flaws is going to require a lot more money beyond $100 million. With nearly $200 million already spent and a potential construction price tag of well more than $6 billion, the Susitna dam is a relic of Alaska’s cash happy days with rampant -- and in some cases irresponsible -- spending that was possible due to the price of oil being over $100 a barrel. As all Alaskans know, those days are gone.

Shutting the Susitna dam down for good, not just kicking the can down the road, would show the administration is truly willing to put our economy and our fish first.

Samuel Snyder is the Alaska engagement director for Trout Unlimited and has worked with the community of Talkeetna and the Susitna River Coalition for the past several years to protect the Susitna River from the proposed Susitna dam. He holds a doctorate from the University of Florida’s graduate program on religion and nature, where he studied the values and politics of river restoration and trout conservation. His book, "Backcasts: A Global History of Fly Fishing and Conservation," is due out from University of Chicago Press in June.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

PSE gingerly steps toward future with less coal March 21, 2016 The Olympian Editorial Board Puget Sound Energy is officially moving closer to setting a retirement date for two controversial coalfired power plants it co-owns in Montana. This is a welcome, overdue move.

The utility, which serves swaths of Western Washington including Thurston County, went before the Utilities and Transportation Commission on Thursday and made an unusual request to delay a power rate adjustment hearing until January.

The stated reason was PSE wants time to develop a plan for the future retirement of Colstrip 1 and 2 power plants. Importantly, PSE said it intends to provide “a narrow window of dates for the planned retirement of Units 1 and 2.”

That appears to be the strongest statement to date of the Bellevue-based utility’s plans to cut back its use of coal, although PSE would continue to operate two other Montana coal-fired plants in which it has investments.

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have been on PSE’s case for years, arguing that the power plants are heavy polluters, no longer cost effective and an unnecessary contributor of greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.

Also, lower-cost natural gas is making coal fired power less competitive, creating what Doug Howell of the Sierra Club has described as an inevitable shutdown scenario.

“PSE’s customers are moving there. The economics are there,” Howell said recently. “It’s moving from being inevitable to … being more imminent.’’

Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and the Northwest Energy Coalition were among the co-petitioners who either support or do not object to PSE’s request for delays in its rate case. The utility had been expected to file its paperwork for a rate adjustment by April 1.

Puget Sound Energy spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment. The company has diversified its source of electrical energy in recent years, investing more than $2 billion in wind power, but it owns a share in four Montana coal plants.

Energy engineering consultant David Schlissel, who testified at the UTC this month and talked about his latest Colstrip study, says power from the coal plants is already more expensive than what PSE could obtain from the market.

A step away from coal will carry costs for decommissioning the plants and cleaning up the filthy coal legacy. PSE faces environmental issues with coal ash ponds in Montana that are already the subject of lawsuits.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In a move that supports PSE’s actions, the Legislature recently approved Senate Bill 6248 to let utilities put plant-retirement money into special accounts monitored by the UTC that can help pay for the eventual shutdowns.

Puget Sound Energy deserves credit for this latest step to move away from highly polluting sources of energy. It echoes what TransAlta is doing with its planned phase-out of coal-fired power plants near Centralia.

We look forward to seeing PSE’s plan.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Salmon fishing guide Dave Grove, left, nets a fall Chinook for David Moershel while fishing on the Columbia River near Desert Aire, Wash., Sept. 8, 2014.

Hatcheries play a critical role in salmon recovery March 16, 2016 Over the past few years, the Columbia River has been blessed with record returns of fall chinook, coho and sockeye — returns the region hasn't seen since Bonneville Dam was completed in 1938.

This progress was neither easy nor haphazard. Over the last 40 years, a coalition of tribal, federal and state agencies worked together to reverse salmon declines.

Contrary to claims made by a few salmon interest groups, the Columbia Basin, while still facing many challenges, is home to world leaders in salmon management. Columbia River stocks provide the backbone for fisheries from Idaho all the way to southeast Alaska.

A recent Oregonian editorial poses a number of questions about the use of hatcheries in Columbia Basin salmon recovery.

While some of the questions merit discussion, most stem from reactions to a sensationalized press release about the research and not from the Oregon State University research findings.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The attention-grabbing release betrayed the actual research and mischaracterized the study's conclusions. A fair review of the OSU research supports, not contradicts, what the tribes have been arguing for decades: Hatcheries can be an effective tool for increasing fish recovery and can be managed to minimize impacts on wild fish.

In the past, nearly all Pacific Northwest hatcheries were operated solely to provide salmon for fisheries with no regard to effects on wild populations. Fortunately, hatchery practices have advanced and evolved. The Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Nez Perce tribes called for hatchery reform in 1982, realizing that appropriately managed hatcheries can make the difference between empty rivers and healthy runs of salmon. These hatcheries — designed for the needs of the fish as a natural resource rather than the needs of humans for an economic and recreational source — represent a significant change in approach to help restore wild salmon populations.

Today, the salmon raised in tribal recovery hatcheries play a pivotal role in rebuilding sustainable salmon populations that are capable of supporting carefully managed river and ocean fisheries.

We stand by our programs and their results: • In 1990, only 78 natural-origin (wild) Snake River fall chinook reached Lower Granite Dam. The run was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Last year, over 20,000 salmon reached the dam, thanks to restoration efforts begun in 1995 by the Nez Perce Tribe to avert the impending catastrophe. The Nez Perce success is the result of carefully supplementing wild stocks with well-managed hatchery fish. Initially opposed to the effort, state and federal agencies are now working cooperatively with the tribes on a long-term rebuilding program that is making progress towards de-listing the run in the next few years while providing benefits to all fishers.

• The Umatilla River's spring chinook population was extirpated in the early 1900s and water levels ran dangerously low. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation worked with Umatilla Basin stakeholders to develop a comprehensive restoration approach that included flow enhancement, fish passage improvement, stream habitat enhancement and hatchery reintroduction/supplementation. By the late 1980s, fish began to return and runs have been healthy enough to support both a tribal and non-tribal fishery for the past 20 years.

• In 2012, The Oregonian reported on the landscape-shifting research of the Nez Perce Tribe's Johnson Creek supplementation program for spring chinook. Results from this study demonstrated that a carefully managed hatchery can prevent extinction and help rebuild natural abundance but can do so with minimal impacts to the natural population.

The region must recognize that the Columbia Basin does not have poor productivity because of hatcheries. Rather, we have hatcheries because of poor productivity. The Columbia Basin is no longer a wild, fully connected, healthy and whole ecosystem from the river mouth to the highest headwaters. The effects of the man-made alterations made to meet human needs have been almost more than the salmon could handle. We look forward to the day when salmon no longer need human intervention to maintain healthy, wild, self-sustaining populations.

Until then, using hatcheries as a recovery tool, together with habitat improvements, dam management priority changes and responsible fishery coordination, we can help these fish along until they can handle it themselves.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Community Activism, Education and Outreach

Stopping Farmed Salmon at the Cash Register

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Open Letter to the Honourable Minister Hunter Tootoo April 5, 2015 To the Honourable Minister Hunter Tootoo Min.XNCR@dfo-mpo.gc.ca Thank you for your response of April 5, 2016. I am sorry that you won’t meet with me. I would like to better state my case.

Indeed, you have been given an excellent mandate, but I have reason for concern that the bureaucratic structure you inherited may be having difficulty making the transition. As a result, I feel it would benefit Canadians for you to hear directly from people like myself who are on the frontlines of fisheries research in Canada.

Here is my evidence: First as you note, a DFO scientist did communicate with my co-authors regarding the paper “Discovery of variant infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAV) of European genotype in British Columbia, Canada.” However, are you aware that Virology Journal was asked by a DFO scientist to “retract” the paper?

Ideally, debate on scientific publications is public, to the benefit of science and society.

But in this case DFO sought to quietly remove the paper from public view.

This is precisely the sort of disregard for scientific process that Canadian scientists were so hopeful would cease with the election of your Liberal government.

Second, regarding my opportunity to meet with DFO to discuss the state of scientific knowledge on farm-origin sea lice and wild salmon. As my colleagues and I sat through that meeting, DFO failed to reveal they had evidence that drug resistance was developing in sea lice in Musgamagw Dzawda’enuxw territory before the 2015 outbreak that killed ~ 20% of the salmon leaving the rivers of their territory.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels This lack of transparency is signature behaviour of the previous government with First Nations and Canadians suffering direct negative consequences.

Third, do you realize that the Minister of Fisheries is named as co-appellant with Marine Harvest in appealing a lawsuit that struck down portions of the DFO transfer permit? Specifically, the court ruled that the salmon farming industry must not be permitted to transfer young farmed salmon infected with disease-causing pathogens into marine net pens. The judge ruled such a transfer contravenes the Fisheries Act. Where is the valid scientific argument to allow millions of Atlantic salmon infected with disease – causing pathogens to be placed in the migration routes of wild Pacific salmon that are so important to Canadians and are in critical decline?

This appeal was initiated during the previous government and I cannot reconcile DFO’s continued participation with your mandate. Please drop this appeal or explain to Canadians how diseasecarrying Atlantic salmon on Pacific salmon migration routes is a scientifically sound benefit to us.

These are some of the issues I had hoped to speak with you about, as well as, the risks DFO is taking that threaten trade in Canadian seafood.

In fairness to your staff, I suspect it is confusing to receive a new mandate when the day-to-day pressures on the ground remain the same. That is why it is critical that you do not insulate yourself from scientists.

Minister Tootoo there are remarkable advances that resolve the endless turmoil of salmon farm impact on wild salmon. These advances benefit the economy, would make Canada a leader in aquaculture and wild fish restoration and pioneer an honest, respectful, cooperative relationship with the First Nations of Canada. These are very real solutions, some buried and muted within your own department. Clearly there are problems. BC’s wild fisheries are in serious trouble while salmon farming is facing catastrophic social and ecological issues globally.

Respectfully, I feel you need to crack open the doors and windows and allow in fresh ideas and enthusiasm. Speak with scientists who embrace the brilliant mandate you have been given and explore a better way for Canada to prosper from her rich coastlines. Status quo appears blind to what is now possible.

Minister Hunter Tootoo, I suspect you have not been accurately briefed on me or the thousands of people who share my view that we could have a much better relationship with the salmon that built the soil of this province and feed the trees that make the oxygen we breath.

Department of Wild Salmon is a concept that brings together First Nation Fishery teams, DFO’s capacity for genomic profiling and Canadian university mathematical modelers to embark on the first ever truly adaptive management of wild fish. It would make Canada a leader and bring prosperity to Canadians.

All that I ask is that you hear what is possible. Please meet with me.

Respectfully, Alexandra Morton, Gwayum’dzi

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Recommended Video: St’at’imc - The Salmon People (15:45)

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Okiwi Bay residents protest fish farm plans March 28, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels More than 200 people turned out to protest against a proposed fish farm at Okiwi Bay in the Marlborough Sounds.

Residents, holiday makers and day trippers gathered at the bay on Saturday with the message: "Hands off Okiwi Bay." Dutch-owned Skretting Ltd applied to the Marlborough District Council in January for resource consent to construct a tank-based finfish research facility, operate a hazardous goods facility, and discharge contaminated seawater into Okiwi Bay, 90 kilometres west of Blenheim.

Okiwi Bay residents believe contaminants from the proposed fish farm will pollute the bay.

Protesters holding placards linked arms and chanted "hands off Okiwi Bay" on their way to the beach.

Bach owner and protest organizer Paula Holder said although the application would go to a hearing, believed to be held in June, residents believed the fish farm was a "done deal".

Protesters march against a fish farm in Okiwi Bay, Marlborough Sounds.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels "This can't happen. We are the guardians of Okiwi Bay and we have to protect it for future generations.

"Skretting's initial submission says they want to pump contaminated water into the bay through a pipe near where the kids swim. That would include phosphorous, nitrates and fish solids.

"It's like telling kids to go swim in a creek polluted with dairy farm run off. We wanted to show Marlborough District Council to prick up their ears and listen to us. We don't want this in our bay.

"We are taking all the risk and Skretting are getting all the gain."

Skretting's application said Okiwi Bay had a large tidal exchange and would be unaffected by a small quantity of discharged nutrients, with no adverse effect on water quality. The project would have major benefits for the aquaculture industry, it said.

Okiwi Bay Residents' Association chairman Tim Greenhough said residents were concerned the fish farm pumps could be noisy.

"People have come to the bay to retire for the peace and quiet or for a holiday to relax. They don't want the noise of industry."

The outfall pipe was near the gravel beach and a designated swimming spot for children.

Releasing contaminated water three hours before high tide and three hours after high tide would see the contaminants pushed ashore, he said. The contaminated water could be 15 degrees celsius warmer than the temperature of the bay, he believed.

"It's an idyllic little bay. We are concerned about children swimming in contaminated water. It's not just fish poo that comes out.

"Skretting are cagey about what they feed the fish and hide behind commercial sensitivity. It could be antibiotics, growth hormones or colouring to make the fish a nice colour."

The Marlborough District Council has already received more then 200 submissions ahead of the hearing.

Skretting produced and supplied two million tonnes of fish feed a year to fish and shrimp farms in 18 countries, including supplying 65 per cent of fish feed to New Zealand aquaculture companies.

The company planned to use the facility for research and development to improve feed efficiency in chinook salmon, and reduce the use of marine raw materials in the salmon diet.

The consent application included building a dozen 7000-litre experimental tanks and two 15,000-litre holding tanks to grow chinook salmon, rainbow trout, snapper and hapuka, although in the first three years the focus would be on salmon.

Two 30,000-litre water storage tanks and water treatment equipment would also be installed.

The company also planned to take and discharge of up to 70 cubic metres of seawater, or 70,000 litres, a day into and out of Okiwi Bay to re-circulate the sea water tank system.

Up to 20 kilograms a day, or 7300kg a year, of fish feed, containing nitrogen, phosphorous and suspended solids, would be discharged into the bay, the application stated.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Kristin Henry on a hunger strike outside the BC Hydro headquarters to protest the Site C dam, in Vancouver, BC. March 27, 2016

Site C protester hospitalized with low heart rate, supporter says April 2, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels A Site C dam protester who hasn’t eaten solid food for nearly three weeks (21 days and counting) has been hospitalized with a low heart rate, a fellow protester said Friday.

“They’re monitoring her heart rate because it’s really low, alarmingly low,” said Amy Widmer, who is also involved in the protest against Site C, of Kristin Henry’s hunger strike against the project.

“She’s been in hospital since last night and other than her heart rate everything else is stable and fine. She still hasn’t eaten.”

Widmer said that Henry can’t be reached at the moment, because “she needs her space.”

Henry, Widmer and several others involved in the protests against Kinder Morgan’s planned pipeline expansion between Alberta and Burnaby have now set their sites on the Site C dam on the Peace River in northern B.C. Before her hospitalization, Henry lived and slept in an encampment outside the power utility’s corporate offices in downtown Vancouver with about six other activists, there to protest Site C, the $8.8-billion hydroelectric project.

Henry, 24, hasn’t eaten solid food since March 13, she said recently in an interview outside the tents grouped in the plaza near the intersection of Dunsmuir and Homer. Since starting the hunger strike, she has consumed only tea, water, and a once-a-day bowl of veggie broth with an iron supplement, Henry said.

“I’m still feeling pretty good, just really tired.”

Widmer, a 27-year-old Simon Fraser University student who was arrested with two other women at the National Energy Board hearings in January and charged with mischief, said the Site C project is at a critical juncture, “not only for the loss of agricultural land but that fact that the energy is going to provide energy to the tarsands.”

Dave Conway, B.C. Hydro’s community relations manager for Site C, said Friday there haven’t been any major problems with the encampment, but that they had several health and fire safety concerns that were addressed Friday afternoon when fire officials showed up.

Among the concerns were propane cooking stoves that were inside tents and needed to be removed, he said.

Conway noted that the encampment has grown in size and that a number of people there are protesting other issues besides Site C. “We certainly respect the right of individuals to protest in a safe and lawful manner, and we’re aware that people have different perspectives on the Site C project. We certainly don’t want any harm to come to the young woman who’s been protesting or any of the people.

“However, the project is well underway and we’ve been doing many years of studies.

We’ve received the approvals we require and have been successful in a number of court challenges.”

Editorial Comment: Actually awaiting results of litigation put forth by those with unceded rights – First Nations and others who rely on the abundance of resources available in the Peace River valley.

It’s never too late to stop irresponsible projects!

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Women’s Fly Fishing Night

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels OLYMPIA CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED APRIL 27, 2016, 7:00PM NORTH OLYMPIA FIRE STATION 5046 BOSTON HARBOR ROAD NE

KAMCHATKA STEELHEAD PROJECT

Kamchatka R. fisherman photo by M Zimmerman

Steelhead Project Sampling photo by J Vicars

Program: The public is invited to the April 27, 2016, meeting of the Olympia Chapter of Trout Unlimited for a presentation on the Kamchatka Steelhead Project. The speaker is Dr. Mara Zimmerman, Research Scientist, with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). Her presentation will focus on her recent trip to Kamchatka, Russia to participate in an international collaboration between scientists, fishing guides, and anglers. She will share lots of pictures of steelhead and rivers in this wild and remote area of the world.

We will have refreshments and a fishing equipment raffle following the presentation.

Bio: Dr. Zimmerman has been a Research Scientist with WDFW since 2008. Research in her unit focuses on tributaries to the lower Columbia River and rivers on the Washington coast. Current research topics include Coho marine survival, distribution and behavior of fishes in the Chehalis River, life history diversity and energetics of steelhead trout, and anadromous fish reintroductions to the Cowlitz River.

Mara holds a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Michigan. She has conducted research on a diversity of freshwater fauna including crayfish, freshwater mussels, sticklebacks, lake trout, and, most recently, salmon and steelhead. Prior to joining WDFW, she worked as a biologist for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, a graduate student instructor for the University of Michigan, and a post-doctoral research associate for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. In her current position, she enjoys leading science efforts at WDFW and working collaboratively to improve the conservation and management of fish populations in Washington State. Mara and her husband Ramsey moved to Olympia in 2008 with their two children. They enjoy the fishing, hiking, and many other opportunities the beautiful outdoors of the Pacific Northwest provides. She can be reached at Mara.Zimmerman@dfw.wa.gov.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Climate

The West Coast Is the World's Fifth Largest Economy — Can It Unite to Stop Big Oil? From First Nations activism to innovative city initiatives, the West Coast is leading the fight against global warming even as many countries lag behind.

March 21, 2016 Rex Parris, the three-term Republican mayor of Lancaster, California, is no squishy liberal. “I believe when you walk out the door of your home, you should be safe. I think capitalism is the best economic system we have available, and the United States should have the strongest military in the world.”

But when it comes to climate change, Parris calls it “the greatest threat facing the human race since the beginning of time.” He’s a rarity in a party in which nearly all presidential candidates in the 2016 race denied the existence of man-made climate change or the need to halt fossil-fuel production.

Parris has broken ranks with the denialists by signing a “no new fossil fuels infrastructure” pledge.

Prior to the Paris climate summit in December, a dozen mayors from Santa Barbara, California, to Vancouver, British Columbia, and more than 20 other elected officials endorsed a prohibition on exporting oil, coal, and natural gas through the region. The pledge is inspired by a resolution passed by the city of Portland, Oregon, in November that relies on local powers over public safety, health, and land zoning to obstruct the siting of fossil fuel export terminals.

A coalition of environmental, labor, faith-based, and indigenous communities backed that resolution and a second one aimed at preventing oil trains from passing through Portland. Daphne Wysham, a coordinator with the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, says that after the resolutions passed, she initiated the pledge to help spread the anti-fossil-fuel movement along the West Coast.

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales championed the resolutions alongside City Commissioner Amanda Fritz. The measures are designed not to encroach on the federal power to regulate interstate commerce, which prevents states and cities from banning the transport of fossil fuels outright. Hales says once they are translated into land use code, “if a company wants to open a new terminal for exporting oil or compressed natural gas or propane or, even worse, coal, the answer is going to be, ‘No, that’s not a permitted use in industrial and commercial zones in Portland.’”

It’s one sign of how the West Coast is leading the fight against global warming even as many countries lag behind. The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington and the premier of British Columbia launched the Pacific Coast Collaborative (PCC) toward that end in 2008. Recently the PCC released its “Action Plan on Climate and Energy” to green the region’s economy by prioritizing solar and wind power, low-carbon transportation, and energy efficiency. With 54 million people and $3 trillion in gross domestic product, effectively the fifth-largest economy in the world, the Pacific Coast has the might to reshape the U.S. economy.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The anti-fossil-fuel movement comes at a crucial time. Despite the historic Paris accord on climate change signed by 196 nations, some nations are still on a hydrocarbon binge. Canada is allowing a 43 percent rise in tar sands production, India said it would double coal production, and the U.S. Congress lifted a 40-year-old ban on the export of domestic fossil fuels, which is expected to boost mining and fracking over time.

Oil and gas companies have been eyeing the West Coast as the gateway to Asia, with plans to lace the region with more than two dozen natural-gas pipelines, oil terminals, and coal depots. Cities reliant on heavy industry or desperate for jobs, like Washington’s Tacoma and Kalama, are greenlighting projects like methanol plants, and Coos Bay, Oregon, is banking on employment from a natural-gas pipeline snaking 230 miles through the Cascade Mountains.

Joseph Lowndes, an associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon, who studies U.S. politics and social movements, says, “The fossil fuel industry has enormous resources. They have staying power.” He says energy companies promise struggling cities that “[they’ll] make money quickly. People are willing to buy it because they feel vulnerable.”

If all else fails, many predict, the oil industry will try to bulldoze opponents. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), funded by oil giants like ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, is notorious for rejecting climate change science while pushing pro-oil policies at the state level. Now that Asian markets are open to U.S. energy production, Hales says he is “very concerned about ALEC throwing money around to influence cities” as well. In California, a tidal wave of oil lobbying and money— $10.7 million in three months alone—sank Governor Jerry Brown’s bill to halve oil consumption in vehicles by 2030. Around the same time, Washington state’s plan for a carbon tax was likewise shredded by a buzz saw of oil-funded opposition.

But First Nations and environmental activists in the Pacific Northwest have spun a web of resistance by delaying oil refining equipment headed to Alberta tar sands, occupying lands slated for pipelines, locking down rail lines carrying coal trains, and skirmishing on the water with drill rigs headed for the Arctic.

Patient organizing can thwart the energy industry at the local level. Richmond, California, is home to a Chevron refinery that exploded in 2012, sending more than 15,000 people to hospitals for respiratory ailments. The current mayor, Tom Butt, and three allies swept to victory in 2014 despite being outspent 20-to-1 by Chevron. Mayor Butt, who signed the “no new fossil fuels infrastructure” pledge along with predecessor Gayle McLaughlin, says Chevron has “a long history of controlling the city council.”

Because the energy industry can successfully pit jobs against climate justice, Hales says, the West Coast must go beyond the “thou shalt not” pledge.

Cities and states are taking action, sometimes reluctantly. Under threat of lawsuits from environmentalists, San Diego passed a plan for 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and a 50 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. Parris claims Lancaster will be the first “net-zero city in the world.”

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Butt says Richmond is shifting consumers to electricity that is 56 percent renewable, and less than 20 percent of residences are opting out. Hales says cities could combine purchasing power to convince manufacturers to develop electric trucks for municipal services, transforming the overall car market.

PCC partners envision turning Interstate 5, which connects Baja California to British Columbia, into a “West Coast Green Highway” through alternative fuels and 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on California’s roadways by 2025. Utilities serving PCC states and Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho are studying how to integrate their power grids so sun-powered electrons from California or wind-powered ones from Wyoming can zip to states dependent on coal-fired electricity. The PCC is also pushing for a high-speed rail network, with work underway on the $68 billion section between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Although important, these plans are first steps. Physics does not care about our promises and pledges. Many scientists say the world must reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to avoid disaster, but elected officials say they have little power to directly affect the private sector. Plans rely on market mechanisms involving taxation or zoning to encourage low-carbon solutions. Proposals include cap and trade for carbon pollution, backed by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and a fee on carbon in Oregon that would be returned to households and businesses. California’s cap-and-trade program went into effect in 2012, but critics slam it for rewarding polluters by providing free emission allowances to utilities that they can sell. Distributing carbon taxes is a mixed bag as well because it deprives local governments of funding for new jobs, aid to hard-hit communities, and adaptation of industry needed in a post-carbon future.

Wysham advocates measures such as requiring energy companies to purchase “climate-risk bonds,” which would factor in all the social costs of greenhouse gases. Making polluters pay upfront for the damage they create would render fossil fuels uneconomical.

It’s the type of bold move the West Coast needs on the road to a low-carbon future. Governors, legislators, and mayors will have to wrest the steering wheel from energy companies to prevent heading into the worst-case climate change scenarios.

Lowndes says the crucial missing element is “a broad campaign and direct action that can draw reformists and radicals into a coalition that can win the public to its side.” One model, he says, is the anti-nuclear-power campaign of the 1970s, which “stopped 150 plants that were set to go online.” If people power can be combined with elected power, then it could finally be lights out for the fossil-fuel era.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

A view of the Longannet coal-fired power station on the Firth of Forth

Longannet power station closes ending coal power use in Scotland The biggest plant of its kind in Britain has been generating electricity for 46 years, with closure marking ‘end of an era’ for coal power in Scotland March 23, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Scotland will on Thursday witness an end to the coal age which fired its industrial revolution with the closure of Longannet power station.

The symbolic switch off is an important step towards a lower carbon Britain but is another blow to energy security.

The Fife-based plant – the biggest of its kind in Britain – has been generating electricity for a quarter of Scottish homes for almost half a century but has bowed to a mixture of old age, rising transmission costs and higher taxes on carbon.

Over 230 direct jobs and an estimated 1,000 indirect ones could be hit by the decision from Spanishowned utility, Scottish Power, to switch off the last generator at the 2,400 mega watt capacity plant.

“Coal has long been the dominant force in Scotland’s electricity generation fleet, but the closure of Longannet signals the end of an era,” said Hugh Finlay, generation director at ScottishPower.

“Longannet has contributed more electricity for the national grid than any other power station in Scotland’s history, and it is a sad day for everyone at ScottishPower,” he added.

No decisions have been taken on the future of the site, but Scottish Power expects to outline its plans before the end of the year. Longannet is the largest coal-fired plant in Britain as rival Drax is firing as much wood as coal these days. When built Longannet was the largest of its kind in Europe.

WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said: “The closure of Longannet marks an historic and inevitable step in our energy transition as Scotland becomes one of the first nations to end its use of coal for power.

“While the power station has served the nation for many years, the world is moving forward to cleaner, cheaper forms of renewable energy generation.”

There are still a couple of open cast coal mines in Scotland but Longannet was the last big user of supplies. Locally-mined coal was key to Clydeside shipbuilding and steelmaking north of the border in the last century.

Advertisement Scottish Power, one of the big six energy suppliers and now owned by Iberdrola, once had half a dozen coal-fired power stations but is now dependent on gas and wind farms for generating electricity.

A spokesman for the company said Longannet had originally only been expected to work for 25 years but heavy investment in new equipment had allowed it to keep on running for 46 years.

“It was uneconomic to continue”, said the Scottish Power spokesman, because of the high transmission charges and carbon taxes. However, he added that the company was still investing heavily in energy systems Six new onshore wind farms with investment of over £650m are currently in construction, and over £500m will be spent this year strengthening the network of cables, power lines and substations that keep the lights on for 2.5m homes and businesses.

Last November Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary, unveiled plans to close all British coal-fired power stations by 2025 as part of a plan to reduce the country’s carbon emissions.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman a press event Tuesday to announce a multi-state legal probe into climate denial. At left is former US vice president Al Gore.

US States Team Up to Nail Big Oil for Climate 'Fraud' Legal experts say oil companies could face billions of dollars in liabilities.

March 30, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Some of the world's largest oil firms face a high-powered U.S. legal effort to investigate them for long knowing, and hiding, the link between burning fossil fuels and destructive climate change.

If the oil giants lose, their total liabilities could run into the billions or even trillions of dollars, according to some legal experts, and Canadian energy firms may not be immune.

Flanked by Al Gore, five U.S. state attorneys generals took to a podium Tuesday to join New York's legal battle against alleged climate denial by big oil companies, such as ExxonMobil.

"The first amendment, ladies and gentlemen, doesn't give you the right to commit fraud," said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

"We have heard the scientists. We know what's happening to the planet. There is dispute, but there is confusion -- and confusion sowed by those with an interest in profiting from the confusion, and creating misperceptions in the eyes of the American public that really need to be cleared up," he added.

A total of 17 state attorneys general agreed to coordinate their investigations against ExxonMobil and other giant oil firms suspected of suppressing the risks of climate change for decades from their shareholders and the American public.

The move, said Schneiderman, pits an "unprecedented" and "coordinated" multi-state legal attack against "a relentless assault" from well-funded, "highly aggressive and morally vacant forces" trying to stop climate action in America.

The announcement follows New York's moves in November to issue a subpoena against ExxonMobil to hand over historic corporate memos going back 40 years related to its research on climate change.

A Washington D.C. legal expert believes this new, wider probe will pump out invaluable documents that will fuel further lawsuits against oil companies for the harms caused by climate change globally. “Documents lead to new documents. Testimonies lead to new witnesses. The story is going to come into the public light in a much richer and a more damning way,� said Carroll Muffett, with the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.

Some of these ExxonMobil documents have already been made public by investigative journalists at Inside Climate, the LA Times and the Columbia School of Journalism.

The memoranda suggest that the giant company in the 1970s -- then known simply as Exxon -- had scientists who knew that the company's fossil fuel products were worsening climate change, but actively spent millions of dollars on climate denial propaganda to deny it, said Schneiderman.

"You have to tell the truth. You can't make the kinds of misrepresentations we've seen here," he added.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Al Gore, and a coalition of state attorneys announce an "Historic Effort To Combat Climate Change."

The government attorney said climate denial by publicly traded companies is a form of "fraud." In his state of New York, most of the world's companies are traded. Local laws prohibit companies from denying the truth to investors about a company's risks.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Oil firms could be on hook for trillions: expert Muffett believes the much larger U.S.-wide investigation could expose firms to "billions of dollars" in liabilities -- maybe more.

"It affects nearly everyone on earth. What are the financial implications of that deception? It's measured in the trillions of dollars," said the legal expert.

The pioneering legal field of "climate litigation" -- once dormant with few legal victories -- is accelerating faster than global warming, he noted.

ExxonMobil, in particular, he said, will be well armed with an army of lawyers to mount a powerful defence. "But when you combine the investigative legal capacities of entire [U.S.] states -- the legal playing field starts to look a lot more level."

ExxonMobil said Tuesday in a statement sent to The Tyee that the allegations against it "are politically motivated."

"The allegations are based on the false premise that ExxonMobil reached definitive conclusions about anthropogenic climate change before the world's experts and before the science itself had matured, and then withheld it from the broader scientific community."

"Such a claim is preposterous. It assumes that the expertise of a handful of Exxon scientists somehow exceeded the accumulated knowledge of the global scientific community at the time, and that the Exxon scientists somehow were able to reach definitive conclusions before the science had developed," the company said in a statement.

Closer to Canada, Andrew Gage with West Coast Environmental Law says the New York-led legal probe against oil companies could also encourage governments north of the 49th parallel to sue oil companies for climate change damages.

"I think Canadian courts could entertain a possible lawsuit by local governments, provincial governments, by individuals or by companies that are impacted by climate change," said Gage from Victoria, B.C. on Tuesday.

A parliamentary budget officer report last month showed Canadians are facing $4.9 billion in economic losses from extreme weather events, between now and 2020.

Canadian oil producers also face risks, which go well beyond our borders, Gage said.

"Canadian oil and gas companies could also be sued elsewhere in the world for the emissions and the product they are taking out of the ground here. A Bangladeshi could file a lawsuit against a Canadian company for the harm that's happening in Bangladesh."

"It certainly does mean Canadian companies could be on the hook."

Gage pointed to relevant climate litigation internationally. In Germany, he said, coal company RWE* is being sued by a Peruvian farmer for a glacier melt threatening his South American community. And in the Philippines, several oil companies are under investigation by the country's human rights commission for global warming damages. The archipelago was slammed in 2013 with the deadliest typhoon in history.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels 90 firms create most global carbon pollution A 2013 global study found that just 90 companies are responsible for two-thirds of all greenhouse gases produced since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and oil companies were the biggest culprits.

The study found that the top 10 contributors of all "cumulative worldwide emissions of industrial" greenhouse gases between the years 1854 and 2010 were: 1. Chevron 3.5% 2. Exxon 3.2% 3. Saudi Aramco 3.1% 4. BP 2.4% 5. Gazprom 2.2% 6. Royal Dutch Shell 2.1% 7. National Iranian Oil Co. 2.0% 8. Pemex 1.4% 9. ConocoPhillips 1.2% 10. Petroleos de Venezuela 1.1% Al Gore was encouraged by the U.S. states' efforts announced Tuesday. He said state attorneys general likewise played an "historical victory" in combating the tobacco issue. But that battle took 40 years of court actions, he warned.

"We do not have 40 years to continue suffering the consequences of the fraud allegedly being committed by the fossil fuel companies where climate change is concerned," the former U.S. vice president said Tuesday.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Habitat

Stephen Hume: Court rules against Shawnigan Lake landfill March 21, 2016 A contentious landfill storing contaminated soil in the Shawnigan Lake watershed has been ordered to stop by B.C.’s Supreme Court because it contravenes Cowichan Valley Regional District bylaws.

Justice Brian Mackenzie granted an injunction sought by the regional district to deny the site’s owners, Cobble Hill Holdings Ltd., South Island Aggregates Ltd., which operates the quarry, and South Island Resource Management Ltd., which incorporated in 2015 and was retained for carrying out the site reclamation, any further receiving and storing of contaminated soil.

The operation has been a source of controversy for the rural and recreational community since 2013 when the provincial government issued a permit allowing the importation of contaminated soil, some of it from the Metro Vancouver region, for use as landfill at the site.

There have been demonstrations, heated community meetings, sometimes vituperative social media campaigns, lawsuits, political resignations, and even interventions by other municipal governments.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels But what stopped the operation ultimately proved simple, even if the court arguments were detailed and complicated.

The operation, which trucked in contaminated soil and stored it in an encapsulated facility as backfill for the reclamation of an active rock quarry, violated regional district zoning, which prohibits use of the site for either a landfill or a contaminated soil treatment facility, the judge ruled.

Mackenzie declined to order removal of contaminated soil already stored on the site “because of the difficulty in enforcing a mandatory injunction and in separating the different material now on site.” He awarded costs in the case to the regional government.

South Island Resource Management said in a news release: “This decision deals with only one aspect of our operation. We continue to operate the mine and manage the material already on site.”

The company told the court it had invested more than $7 million in landfill cells, perimeter ditches, catch basins, groundwater monitoring wells, and water treatment to prevent any contaminants from leaving the site.

The release said company lawyers were reviewing the decision, and “we understand the owner of the property, Cobble Hill Holdings, is considering an appeal.”

Sonia Furstenau, the regional district’s director for Shawnigan Lake, said residents of the community of about 6,000 — it swells to as many as 12,000 during summer months because of the many recreational properties at the popular lake — were elated by the decision.

“It has been a long, hard fight to protect our watershed, and one that we had no intention of ever giving up on,” Furstenau said. “I hope that the provincial government will respect the court’s decision and that they will work together with the local government and the Shawnigan community to ensure the long-term protection of our drinking water.”

The decision came on the eve of World Water Day, March 22, which focuses international attention on the importance of fresh water. The event, which has taken place since 1992, advocates for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

Last week, B.C.’s Outdoor Recreation Council listed Shawnigan Creek, which drains near the controversial quarry and landfill, as fourth on its annual list of the most endangered waterways in the province for 2016.

It cited the landfill, which the province had granted a 50-year permit to receive up to 100,000 tonnes of contaminated soil a year to a total of five million tonnes, as a potential threat to the aquatic ecosystem and water quality for a stream that had been the object of a major fisheries rehabilitation project.

The Mill Creek Bay and District Conservation Society used fish from nearby Goldstream Provincial Park to establish a significant coho run in the late 1970s, the council said. Shawnigan Creek now produces coho salmon returns that in 2015 exceeded those in Goldstream and many other Greater Victoria salmon-bearing streams.

“It’s time for all levels of government to be proactive about the protection of water,” Furstenau said. “I sincerely hope to see this issue come to the forefront at the provincial and federal levels.”

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

TULALIP TRIBES TESTIMONY TO PFMC ON “PROTECTION AND RESTORATION OF HABITAT IS KEY TO SALMON RECOVERY” April 15, 2016 This week the Tulalip Tribes prepared testimony to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council on how we need to turn the corner on restoring salmon habitat if we want to protect fisheries.

Unfortunately, that testimony wasn’t able to be read into the official record.

Take a look over it yourself: As we are all here, working to finalize a fisheries package that is so constrained by the lack of coho, I think it is important that we stop and acknowledge both the importance of and the disparate treatment we are giving to habitat loss as it relates to declining stocks and lost fisheries. In fact, nothing is more significant then the condition of our region’s habitat on the current status of our salmon. This reality, coupled with the predictions relative to climate change and population growth creates great urgency.

Tribes have always lived throughout the watersheds in western Washington and are leaders in the region’s salmon recovery effort. No other people know these watersheds as well and none have a greater stake in their future. The tribes believe that if salmon are to survive, we must begin to achieve real gains in habitat protection and restoration.

You can read the entire testimony here.

Editorial Comment: The “Four H’s” (Habitat, Hatcheries, Harvest and Hydropower) have historically been recognized as the four areas with the greatest impacts to wild salmon; whether one is referencing population declines or restoration of weak stocks. This is not rocket science. It’s a matter of our priorities.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Fish kill in Florida: 'Heartbreaking images' seen for miles March 25, 2016 Florida may be the fishing capital of the world, but you'd never know it from the latest scenes around the state's Indian River Lagoon.

Usually idyllic beaches, waterways and estuaries near the massive, biodiverse ecosystem along central Florida's Atlantic coast are littered with scores of dead, rotting fish; an estimated hundreds of thousands of them are floating belly up in brackish, polluted water as far as the eye can see.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels "The heartbreaking images can be seen for miles," said Mike Conner, who has been fishing the area since the 1970s. "All up and down the coast, it's the same story, and it could get worse before it gets better."

But the devastation isn't merely what is visible on the surface; it runs far deeper.

El Nino has soaked Florida recently, even during its usual "dry season."

In January, parts of central Florida received triple the amount of rain they normally do for the month.

All that rainwater eventually made its way into estuaries via urbanized neighborhoods, picking up fertilizer and other pollutants along the way.

But that's not all.

Temperatures were warmer than usual during the winter, allowing a toxic algae bloom and brown tide to deplete the water of oxygen.

Ed Garland, a spokesman for the St. John River Water Management District, said officials can't determine the effect from the brown tide on the seagrass yet since the water is too cloudy. In 2011, more than half of the seagrass reportedly died off, and there are still damaged areas from that die-off.

These scenes are no doubt jarring to the eyes -- and not to mention the nose -- but state environmental officials said they have happened before.

"Fish kills happen all the time," said Kelly Richmond of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. "This is a massive kill, but there are fish kills all over the state."

However, Richmond conceded, "We have had brown tide there before but nothing to this extent."

The impact extends beyond the shores of the Indian River Lagoon -- comprised of the Mosquito, Banana River and Indian River lagoons -- and into the pocketbooks of Floridians, especially those in the state's two most profitable industries: tourism and fishing.

"Our oysters are dead, seagrasses are dead," said Conner, the fisherman. "It (will be) hard to recover. You never fully recover."

Editorial Comment: Given the risks to human health, ecosystem integrity and tourism/fishery-based economy, there is an obvious need to solve this unacceptable situation.

Fertilizers and other pollutants entering these water bodies are obvious contributors to the algal explosions that rob oxygen required by these fish. The unintended result of these man-caused algal blooms is the same as applying poison directly to these life-supporting waters – the fish die in massive numbers.

Chemicals responsible for these fish kills must be banned in order to restore the health and economies of these waters and the communities that rely on them

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

George George Sr., whose Nadleh Whut'en hereditary leadership name is Yutunayeh, signs a water policy declaration that covers the traditional territory of his First Nation and that of the Stellat'en.

Nadleh Whut'en chief Martin Louie looks on

Nadleh Whut'en and Stellat'en hereditary leaders proclaim B.C.'s first aboriginal water laws March 30, 2016 The hereditary leaders of two northern B.C. First Nations proclaimed the first traditional aboriginal water laws in the province, which could have implications for industrial development including mining and LNG pipeline projects.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The Nadleh Whut’en and Stellat’en First Nation traditional leaders declared on Wednesday no development would take place on their traditional territories in the Northern Interior unless the water laws were followed.

“We are here to make it safer for everybody. We are here to make it safer for the animals, ourselves and the plants,” said Nadleh Whut’en chief Martin Louie. “You can do it our way, or not do business at all.”

The First Nation leaders said their power to enact the water laws were backed by a historic 2014 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that granted a Tsilhqot’in Nation title to 1,740 square kilometres of traditional territory in the Interior, and pushed consultation obligations for government to a higher threshold. They also cited a landmark B.C. Court of Appeal ruling involving the Stellat’en and nearby Saik’uz First Nation, which allows First Nations to launch lawsuits to protect their territory from companies, even before proving aboriginal title.

The First Nation leaders said they have notified the province and industry about their water policy.

The B.C. Ministry of Environment said it had not received the declaration and would not comment on its specifics.

However, ministry spokesman David Karn said in an email that the province is committed to meeting its duty to consult during the implementation of the recently passed Water Sustainability Act and regulations.

The First Nations’ water management policy aims to protect surface waters so they will remain “substantially unaltered in terms of water quality and flow.” Companies would be expected to complete a wide-ranging 11-step consultation process with Nadleh Whut’en and Stellat’en environmental staff that includes a systematic evaluation of environmental issues and concerns with each surface water system, including collecting data on historical water quality and cultural use.

Louie said frustration over the lack of protection that B.C. and Canadian laws provided for water in their territories drove them to put their traditional laws on paper, something they would not normally do with their oral laws.

He cited concerns, for example, the Endako molybdenum mine had caused harm to water and fish, and that the First Nations had been unable to get the company, the province or Canadian officials to act on their concerns. Thompson Creek Metals, which owns the mine that is shuttered because of low prices, was not immediately available for comment.

In 2014, The Vancouver Sun reported the Ministry of Environment was re-evaluating the amount of waste water the Endako mine was allowed to discharge because a review had found effluent was affecting the aquatic environment.

Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Stewart Phillip said he expected other aboriginal groups in the province to follow suit, enacting their own traditional laws as a result of the Tsilhqot’in court decision.

He said he also saw this as a transition where the leaders of the First Nation hereditary systems would take more control of their traditional territories, saying that band council’s power only extended to reserve lands and areas like housing.

Phillip and First Nation Summit leader Ed John both signed the water policy declaration.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

B.C. Ignores Best Practices, Allows Mount Polley-style Tailings Dams on Alaska Border, New Report Finds March 23, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels New mines proposed for north-west B.C., close to the Alaska border, will have tailings dams similar to the one that collapsed at Mount Polley, despite recommendations of an expert panel that companies use other methods of storing waste, says an analysis written for a coalition of Canadian and U.S non-governmental organizations.

The new analysis, Post-Mount Polley: Tailings Dam Safety in British Columbia, underlines the need for the province to immediately bring in firmer legislation and says it is time B.C. lived up to commitments to make the mining industry safer.

The expert panel report on the 2014 Mount Polley disaster — which sent 25 million cubic metres of slurry and waste water flooding into lakes and rivers surrounding the mine — recommended best available practices and technology be used for tailings storage, including dry stack technology where appropriate.

However, four major B.C. mines in the Alaska/B.C transboundary region are failing to implement those recommendations, meaning a similar dam breach could threaten the area’s major salmon rivers, says the report released Tuesday.

The paper, written by Dave Chambers of the Center for Science in Public Participation on behalf of 15 groups including Earthworks, MiningWatch Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the David Suzuki Foundation and Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, says that the KSM, Galore Creek, Red Chris and Schaft Creek mines all require dams two to six times higher than Mount Polley and that the tailings ponds will contain between seven and 27 times the volume of the Mount Polley pond.

“The mines proposed in the region are far beyond the scope and scale of Mount Polley and the consequences of another tailings dam failure are likely to be far worse,” Chambers said.

All the mines will generate acid waste meaning any failure would put the Unuk, Stikine and Nass watersheds at risk ,jeopardising the billion dollar fishing industry.

Red Chris, owned by Imperial Metals — the same company that owns Mount Polley — is the only one of those four mines in production, with the others in various stages of the environmental assessment and permitting process.

But, even though the dam at Red Chris has been completed, changes can be made to make it safer, according to the report.

Energy and mines ministry spokesman David Haslam said tailings storage at Red Chris has been the subject of three independent reviews, including one by experts retained by Tahltan First Nation.

“Our government is leading Canada in making changes to how mining is done and we will continue to work hard to ensure our policies are the best in the world,” he said.

But Chris Zimmer of Rivers Without Borders is skeptical and points to tougher reviews of projects in jurisdictions such as the Yukon.

B.C. seems to be continuing down the same path it has taken before, he said.

“Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over expecting different results,” Zimmer said.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels “But it shouldn’t take an Einstein to figure out that mines using Mount Polley’s mine waste disposal methods risk future Mount Polley-scale mine waste disasters.”

Although B.C. has implemented less important recommendations from the expert panel report, the province appears to be ignoring the most important one, Zimmer said.

“The fundamental recommendation was no more wet tailings. B.C. doesn’t seem to have learned the lesson here,” he said.

One problem is that B.C. seems to be looking at the immediate costs to companies, rather than the immense costs of an accident, according to Zimmer, who does not accept claims that alternative technology is not practical at the transboundary mines.

“From an engineering perspective, this is doable,” he said.

Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett said previously that the provincial government will implement all the expert panel’s recommendations and the province is currently undertaking a mining code review.

“The tailings storage facility portion of the code review is expected to be completed this spring and revisions could be legally in force by mid-2016,” Haslam said.

“Government will also work with industry and professional organizations to ensure recommendations directed at them are implemented. It is anticipated this work will be completed by spring 2017.”

Although the expert panel said, where practical, B.C. should move to best technologies, such as dry stack for tailings storage “the panel also noted that there are circumstances where other technologies are more appropriate, due to the need to neutralize chemicals in the tailings or challenges with dewatering the tailings,” Haslam said.

A strong regulatory framework is needed because companies almost inevitably choose the cheapest option, said Ugo LaPointe of Mining Watch Canada.

Slurry can be made thicker, even if a company cannot change entirely to dry stack tailings, and there are ways to make dams more stable than the design used at Mount Polley, said LaPointe, who wants a fundamental shift in the attitude towards safety in the mining industry.

Bennett said in 2014 that one Mount Polley disaster is one too many, LaPointe said.

“Two years later, it’s time for him to make good on his promise and put these recommendations into policy and practice.”

Last November, with a background of growing Alaskan concerns about the safety of B.C. mines, Premier Christy Clark and Alaska Governor Bill Walker signed a memorandum of understanding that strengthens collaboration on major mine developments on either side of the border.

However, a coalition of Alaskan business owners, fishermen, First Nations and politicians is continuing to call for the issue of development close to transboundary rivers to be referred to the International Joint Commission.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE NEWS RELEASE 600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091 April 04, 2016 Contact: David Price, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 360-902-2565 Kirsten Harma, Chehalis Basin Lead Entity, 360-488-3232 Alice Rubin, Recreation and Conservation Office, 360-902-2635

Chehalis Basin restoration projects will open 130 miles of streams to migrating fish OLYMPIA -- Public and non-profit organizations in Grays Harbor, Lewis, and Thurston counties are receiving about $6 million in state grants this spring for 28 habitat restoration projects in the Chehalis River Basin.

The projects represent an initial phase of a long-term effort to restore habitat and reduce flood damage throughout the basin. State lawmakers included the grant funds in the 2015-17 capital budget as part of a $50 million appropriation for the overall initiative.

Most of the grant projects, scheduled for completion by July 2017, are designed to restore fish passage where it is blocked by culverts or dams. Altogether, they will open more than 130 miles of streams to migrating salmon and other aquatic species, said Kirsten Harma of the Chehalis Basin Lead Entity, a consortium leading the effort that includes local, state, and tribal governments and interested citizens.

Projects receiving funding are shown in the accompanying table. They include: Eight culvert corrections proposed on private property by the Lewis County Conservation District. The projects are designed to open 68 miles of streams to migrating coho, steelhead, and cutthroat trout.

A culvert removal project on Darlin Creek, a tributary of the Black River in Thurston County. The project, sponsored by the Capitol Land Trust, will open two miles of coho and cutthroat habitat in an important section of the Chehalis watershed.

Improvement or replacement of three culverts that block fish passage in the Johns River watershed of Grays Harbor County, under the sponsorship of the Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The competitive grant process was conducted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the Chehalis Basin Lead Entity’s Habitat Work Group. Proposals were selected for funding by biologists, engineers, and habitat restoration professionals from WDFW, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Quinault Indian Nation, and a representative of the Lead Entity’s citizen advisory committee. The state Recreation and Conservation Office is administering the funds and overseeing the projects.

Projects were evaluated based on their potential benefits for fish and other species, value to local communities, and the likelihood that they could be implemented quickly and cost-effectively. Twentyfive (25) of the projects involve on-the-ground restoration work, while three are for planning and design of restoration activities that will take place in future years in Grays Harbor and Lewis counties.

More information on the Chehalis Basin Strategy, including opportunities for public involvement, is available athttp://chehalisbasinstrategy.com Grant recipients: Capitol Land Trust: Amanda Reed, 360-943-3012 Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force: Lonnie Crumley, 360-482-3037 Lewis County Conservation District: Kelly Verd, 360-748-0083, ext. 114 Lewis County Public Works Department: Ann Weckback, 360-740-1440 Sylvan Terrace Owners Association: Dorothy Zee, 360-943-6430 Wild Fish Conservancy: Jamie Glasgow, 206-310-9302 Chehalis Basin Habitat Restoration Grants 2016

Grant award

Stream miles opened

Project

Sponsor

County

Lower Satsop River: Restoration project design and permitting

Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

Grays Harbor

$251,000

N/A

Fish barrier corrections scoping and design

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$308,000

N/A

Big Creek Polson Camp Rd. fish barrier correction

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$529,000

4.8

Gaddis Creek South Bank Rd. fish barrier correction

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$307,000

6.5

Darlin Creek fish passage improvements

Capitol Land Trust

Thurston

$100,000

2.0

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Bunker Rd. and Wisner Creek barrier

Lewis County

removal (2 projects)

Conservation District

South Fork Newaukum stream and

Wild Fish

habitat assessment

Conservancy

Great Eight barrier removal (8 projects)

Lewis County Conservation District

Lewis

$45,000

5.4

Lewis

$98,000

N/A

Lewis

$799,000

68.1

Grays Harbor

$306,000

3.3

Harstad Creek Middle Satsop Rd. fish

Chehalis Basin

barrier correction

Fisheries Task Force

Boyer Road fish barrier correction

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$66,000

2.5

Eaton Creek South Bank Rd. fish barrier correction

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$307,000

3.3

Taylor Creek Taylors Ferry Rd. fish barrier correction

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$293,000

2.9

Johns River tributaries barrier corrections (3 projects)

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$1,150,000

11.0

Mox Chehalis Branch Rd. fish barrier correction

Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force

Grays Harbor

$412,000

12.2

Sylvan Terrace barrier removal

Sylvan Terrace Owners Association

Thurston

$97,000

0.5

Stearns Creek tributary fish barrier removal

Lewis County Public Works

Lewis

$39,500

2.4

Prairie Creek fish barrier removal

Lewis County Public Works

Lewis

$39,500

4.8

Carlisle Lake/Gheer Creek fish passage

Wild Fish Conservancy

Lewis

$700,000

10.2

Notes: Stream miles opened to fish passage are rounded to the nearest 0.1 mile.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Harvest

Ocean salmon: There’s a season, but a conservative one

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels There will be a recreational salmon fishing season in the ocean off the West Coast this summer, but it will be conservative and it allows for no catch of coho in nearly every area, including Westport, the Pacific Fishery Management Council announced Thursday.

In Westport, the season opens July 1 and goes seven days a week until Aug. 21 or until the quota of 16,600 Chinook is caught.

The limit in the marine area off Westport is one chinook. All coho must be released.

One of the options considered by the PFMC was no salmon fishing at all in order to protect weak coho runs.

“We have made the tough decisions and implemented fishery restrictions to give salmon stocks their best chance of rebounding from the effects of the drought and El Niño,” said Council Vice-Chair Herb Pollard.

“It has been difficult for the Council, its advisers, fishery stakeholders and the public to balance fishing opportunities on harvestable Sacramento and Columbia River fall Chinook stocks with the severe conservation needs we are facing with many coho stocks and Sacramento River winter Chinook,” said Acting Council Executive Director Chuck Tracy. “But the Council has recommended commercial and recreational ocean salmon seasons in Washington, Oregon, and California this year that provide important protections for stocks of concern.”

Washington and Northern Oregon (North of Cape Falcon) Fisheries north of Cape Falcon (near Nehalem in northern Oregon) depend largely on Columbia River Chinook and coho stocks. Columbia River fall Chinook returns are expected to return at high levels, and Columbia River coho are expected to return at reduced but moderate levels in 2016.

However, coastal Washington and Puget Sound coho abundance is dramatically reduced from recent years, and some wild coho stocks are expected to return at very low levels. In response, the Council has been challenged with shaping fisheries to provide access to relatively abundant Chinook stocks while protecting natural coho populations.

North of Cape Falcon, there is an overall non-Indian total allowable catch of 70,000 Chinook coastwide (compared to 131,000 last year) and 18,900 marked hatchery coho in the area off the Columbia River (compared to 170,000 last year).

Commercial Fisheries Tribal and non-Indian ocean commercial fisheries are designed to provide harvest opportunity on strong Chinook returns primarily destined for the Columbia River while avoiding coho stocks of concern. Coho retention is prohibited in all commercial fisheries north of Cape Falcon this year.

Non-Indian ocean commercial fisheries north of Cape Falcon include traditional, but reduced, Chinook seasons in the spring (May-June) and summer (July-August), and any coho caught in the commercial fishery must be released. The Chinook quota of 19,100 in the spring is approximately half of the 2015 quota, while the summer season Chinook quota is similar to last year at 23,400 Chinook.

Tribal ocean Chinook fisheries north of Cape Falcon are reduced from 2015 levels with a quota of 40,000 fish (compared to 60,000 last year).

(See background article below)

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

The Deep Sea Charters boat Slammer returns to the dock at Westport after an all-day fishing trip for lingcod.

Lean year for coho means big worries for Westport salmon charters Low coho runs could mean more economic hardship for already hard-hit Westport and its charter boats.

April 11, 2016 WESTPORT — As pretty much always, it’s windy and cold on this day by the ocean.

A few tourists poke around the main drag in town, maybe stop in a gift shop and buy caramels. It’s the slow time of the year, with just a couple of boats taking customers out for bottom fishing.

In his office at Deep Sea Charters, Larry Giese, one of the two big local fishing-boat operators, talks about its being a nervous time in this little town of 2,100.

The salmon season could be an unmitigated disaster. Coho — one of five salmon species that migrate out to sea and then return to the state — are in big trouble; the Columbia River hatchery coho are expected to return in half the numbers of last year.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels State and tribal fish managers are expected this week to decide whether to cut way back on the commercial and recreational salmon fishery in Washington’s ocean waters — or call it off completely.

“We’re fishermen. We’re not hedge-fund managers and bankers and Internet gurus. We’re fishermen,” says Giese, a member of the state’s sport-fishing advisory board. “We’re already operating on a shoestring of what we used to have.”

The managers have been meeting in recent days, hashing it out with reports, one of which includes a list of 64 acronyms and abbreviations (RER for Rebuilding Exploitation Rate, SDC for Status Determination Criteria) that are supposed to make things simpler.

The managers are looking at salmon quotas.

Besides zero fishing, the other two options are mixtures of chinook quotas (either 58,600 or 37,800) and coho quotas (either 30,000 or 14,700), and dates when the fishery would be open.

In comparison, last year the quota was 64,000 chinook and 150,000 coho salmon.

Giese, 65, is used to financial hurt in the fishing business.

He used to be a manufacturing engineer before he was laid off in the early 1990s. He had gone fishing from Westport with his dad since age 4.

In 1993, he decided to buy Deep Sea Charters.

“We had a pretty good season. Then came 1994,” remembers Giese.

Because of bad salmon runs, fishing for them was banned that year.

“I thought to myself, what did I get myself into?” says Giese. “I worked for my brother building custom homes. I found a job as a machinist.”

The last decade has been pretty good, he says. The business owns eight boats.

It’s always been about the salmon at Westport, even as it has promoted everything else from bottom fishing to crab races.

Giese says salmon fishing accounts for 70 percent, or $4.2 million, of the town’s charter-boat business.

He figures that Westport’s 42 or so boats employ about 130 people. That means a lot in Grays Harbor County, with its 9.7 percent unemployment rate, twice that of King County.

Temperature shift The all-too-obvious statement that everything is linked in the ocean is dramatically shown with the coho salmon.

Three years ago the ocean surface waters in the North Pacific warmed up by as much 5 degrees Fahrenheit. This mass was nicknamed “The Blob” and it spread across hundreds of miles.

Scientists didn’t place the blame on climate change but, said the feds, “the situation does not match recognized patterns … ” When you have warmer ocean waters, the microscopic animals called zooplankton with less fat are the ones that do better.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels These little organisms are the base of a food web, and if it’s less nutritious right at the beginning, that reverberates up to the salmon.

The coho were particularly vulnerable because they spend less time in the ocean, says Aaron Dufault, a state fish biologist. If there is less food during that time, they die off or return much smaller.

“They were half the size,” says Giese. “Where you’d get a 12- to 15-pound coho, it was 7 or 8 pounds.”

And so what to do?

The state says a robust fall chinook run is expected.

But when you catch chinook in the ocean, you’ll inevitably catch some coho, too.

Coho that are caught and released have a 14 percent mortality rate.

“Salmon capital” In this little town, it is time to hunker down.

At the longtime favorite McBee’s Silver Sands Motel, owner Rhonda McBee says, “I just wait. It’s the salmon that really draws the volume of people. It’s a huge deal, a trickle-down, shops, gas stations.”

She remembers how it used to be: “This was the salmon capital of the world.”

Rob Bearden, 62, is the mayor of Westport. He used to be a commercial fisherman and now is a pilotboat captain taking shipping traffic in and out of Grays Harbor.

His parents used to own Bearden’s Pancake House in Westport.

Back then, in the 1960s when Bobby Kennedy would bring his family over for salmon fishing and there were 270 charter boats, “My folks opened up between 3 and 4 in the morning. People would line up outside the building to get something to eat.”

In 2015, the salmon season at Westport was 76 days. This year? Maybe half of that, if lucky?

At least there are the lingcod.

Sure, they’ve been described as prehistoric-looking bottom fish with large heads, vampire teeth, bugeyed and mouths big enough to swallow a basketball.

But they’re good eatin’, say those who on this day venture out on a $140 bottom-fishing trip.

Mitchell Mock, of Port Orchard, does the math. Ten pounds of lingcod, 10 sea bass, “Right there, you’ve paid for your trip.”

The town’s mayor also used to run a charter boat.

There is just something about catching a majestic salmon.

“I’ve had a nice big salmon take somebody around the boat five times,” remembers Bearden.

At Westport, all they can do is wait for the fish managers to decide their fate.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Puget Sound salmon fishing season negotiations break down April 14, 2016 Negotiations between the state and treaty tribes over fishing in Puget Sound broke off Thursday, leaving the prospect of a fishing season in limbo.

At the same time, federal fishery managers have approved a limited salmon fishing season off the state’s Pacific coast.

As co-managers, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and Puget Sound treaty tribes negotiate salmon fishing seasons, based on preseason run forecasts.

“I’m disappointed we couldn’t find a solution between us and the tribes,” said Fish and Wildlife Director Jim Unsworth.

He said the agency would reach out to tribal negotiators in hopes of restarting talks.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels If an agreement can’t be reached by month’s end, both parties will have to seek their own permits from NOAA to open fisheries this year.

The question of how to craft fishing seasons based on this year’s projected low returns led to the breakdown in talks. The forecast is a return of 255,000 coho to the Sound, about one-third the size of 2015’s forecast.

Heading into meetings this week in Vancouver, Washington, the tribes were adamant that no coho fishing should take place in the Sound.

During negotiations, the tribes refused to change that stance, while the state said it could craft seasons to allow fishing for hatchery coho while protecting stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act. In a plan being forwarded to NOAA Fisheries, the tribes stated they will close all their fisheries except for several terminal areas where harvestable hatchery fish will be caught.

In a statement issued Thursday, the tribes put the onus on the state agency.

“Unfortunately, the political leadership with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife did not provide a fisheries package that met the conservation needs of stocks of concerns because of low abundance,” Lorraine Loomis, chairwoman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, said in the statement.

“The treaty fishing package is a conservative and appropriate approach to this historically low return.”

Tony Floor, director of fishing affairs for the Northwest Marine Trade Association, disagreed with the tribal assessment.

He has been involved in these season-setting meetings since they began decades ago, first as a staff member with Fish and Wildlife and now as a recreational fishing proponent.

“In my view, the state was very well prepared and came ready to negotiate with the priority of protecting coho stocks,” Floor said. “However, the tribes came to the negotiating table to dictate.

“They said no, they said no, they said no. Whether it was to mark selective fishing for hatchery fish or catch and release, they said no,” he added.

As for fishing in Puget Sound this year, Floor said none will be permitted until further notice effective May 1.

“Where it goes from here, these are uncharted waters. It has never happen,” Floor said. “Attorneys are quickly becoming involved, as well as the publicity machines. It has quickly gone to a war of words.

“Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and we can get back to the negotiating table.”

For the ocean fishery, there will be no early season hatchery chinook season this year, but fishing for all salmon will open July 1 and end in late August or when chinook or coho quotas are reached.

This year’s recreational fishing quota coastwide is 35,000 chinook, down from more than 50,000 chinook last year.

Coho retention will be allowed only in the waters off the Columbia River, with a modest quota of just 18,900 coho, down drastically from the 2015 quota of 150,800 fish.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

ASMI sees opening for wild salmon in Southeast Asia April 5, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels A recent Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI)-funded trip to Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines was fruitful and will likely result in new contracts and an expanded southeast Asian market for Alaska seafood producers, according to ASMI international program director Hannah Lindoff.

In February, ASMI sent eight industry members to southeast Asia to educate the local trade about the species available from Alaska and to spread Alaska's name brand through workshops, training and visits.

Editorial Comment: With declines of wild Pacific salmon populations from British Columbia to California, it is madness for Alaska to sell wild Pacific salmon and their parts to Asian markets.

Significant numbers of these wild Pacific salmon are born outside of Alaska waters at tremendous costs to Canadian and “Lower 48� taxpayers.

These multinational seafood corporations are not interested in sustainable fisheries - they only care about their bottom line.

Lindoff said that based on anecdotal evidence, the trip seems to have been a success, although more accurate data will be available in the coming months.

These greedy buggers (choose your own word) continue to rape and pillage wild salmon, their habitats and other marine wildlife in the process.

"We don't have any final numbers...but from what I'm hearing there are some tentative agreements, people have made some really good connections," she said. "What our industry has told is us that the value of meeting the potential customers is invaluable to them and they were really thankful for that, it really opened doors."

These magnificent salmon are not private property for a few multi-national corporations to destroy for their own short term gain!

The sale of USA-origin, wild Pacific salmon to foreign markets should not be permitted given declining populations of wild Pacific salmon and all that rely in them.

The group was "surprised" to see how much salmon was already being sold in all three of the countries, after touring retail.

"I think everyone was surprise to see how much salmon [there was] in all three of these markets, because you wouldn't think of them as traditional salmon-eating [countries]," Lindoff said.

Lindoff added that the products weren't necessarily Alaskan, but were a good indicator that Alaskan salmon could sell well there.

"It's our job to get people to understand how Alaska salmon is different from farmed salmon and where it can fit into these different company profiles," she said.

In terms of consumption of Alaskan products specifically, Thailand was "well ahead of Indonesia and Vietnam", but "Indonesia and Vietnam are developing very rapidly".

The group found that demand for high end, high quality seafood products was good.

"This is the case almost everywhere we go, there is a demand for high end seafood....your black cod, your king crab," Lindoff said.

There was also interest in pollock, and, in Vietnam, there was a particularly high interest in salmon heads.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels "They're used to salmon heads, we'll see what develops but I would say there was an overwhelming demand for salmon heads in our meetings [in Vietnam]," she said.

The group also found that there was a surprising appreciation for sustainability.

"You don't think about these developing markets as having the same interest in sustainability, but because they have their own fisheries they...have an appreciation for the USA brand, for food safety, for water quality," she said. "So there are a lot of factors in our favor in these markets."

ASMI sent eight Alaska seafood industry members on the trip, representing a "wide range of participants" with varying goals. Some were looking for alternative reprocessing facilities, others were looking for new customers or trying to expand an existing customer base in the area.

"We really had a wide variety of interests, it ran the gamut of all companies looking," Lindoff said.

The participants were: Bob Barnett, a commercial fisherman and a member of The Alaska Guys, an Alaskan seafood specialty company based in Singapore; Achaa Oyun, vice president of Asian operations at Seattle-based SODA Limited which specializes in frozen Alaska seafood with its Asian exports going primarily consisting of headed and gutted and whole round fish; Norimasa Aoyagi, president of Pyramid Island Seafoods; Lance Magnuson, managing director of Blue North Trading; Ron Risher, international sales manager, Asia, for Icicle Seafoods; Michael McGinley of Ocean Beauty Seafoods; Bangkok-based M. Motohiro "Tada" Tadauchi, of Trident Seafoods Asia, which already reprocesses Alaskan seafood in Thailand and is looking to expand into domestic southeast Asian markets; and Frank O'Hara III, marketing manager of Alaska operations for O’Hara Corporation.

Lindoff said the participants are currently in the follow up stages, but that "certainly there is a lot of interest".

"We'll have the metrics in a few months, between [the Boston Seafood show and Brussels is when they'll make a lot of [deals]...I think that's when things will get a little more serious," she said.

Developing markets less of a focus With ASMI facing almost certain budget cuts, the organization will need to be more careful in their developing market projects.

"We have to carefully weight opportunities to be engaged as a marketing agency and be strategic and work together as an industry as we continue to explore developing markets," she said.

ASMI will likely focus more of its efforts on maintaining its existing international markets in light of the budget cuts.

"We have established markets for which we have Market Access Program (MAP) funding, and we obviously need to maintain our focus there and not jeopardize our MAP grant funding, which is most of our funding," she said. "These emerging markets, that's going to [require] more ingenuity, our ability to find extra grant money or work with existing partners. And it will also depend on what our industry guides us to do."

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

A school of sardines swerves to avoid becoming prey.

Feds make West Coast ban on new forage fisheries official April 4, 2016 SEATTLE -- Federal officials finalized rules Monday for a West Coast ban on catching forage fish, the small fish that larger species, seabirds and marine mammals depend on for food.

The ban on new commercial fisheries will protect little schooling fish that play a critical role in the marine food web but that are not actively fished or managed, the National Marine Fisheries Service said. It marks the first action under a new approach to fisheries management that considers how one species affects others in the ecosystem.

The ban does not affect existing fisheries for forage fish, such as sardines and anchovies. It covers species including Pacific sand lance, silversides and certain varieties of herring, smelt and squid.

The restrictions apply to federal waters from 3 to 200 miles off Washington, Oregon and California, and do not affect fishing authorized by tribes.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Fishermen generally do not target forage fish in federal waters, and no West Coast fishing boats are known to be considering efforts do so.

But global demand is increasing for their use in fish meal or oil to feed livestock or farmed fish, which could put pressure on the species, said Paul Shively, who directs West Coast ocean conservation efforts for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The protections represent a real change in the way ocean resources are managed, conservation groups said.

"Instead of responding to a fishery crisis, they're being proactive," said Ben Enticknap, senior scientist with the conservation group Oceana. "Too often, fisheries start up and nothing is done to manage them in a sustainable way until the population crashes and by then, it's too late."

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees fisheries for dozens of species along the West Coast, adopted the ban last March by unanimous vote. The NOAA published final rules Monday to implement the ban, which takes effect May 4.

Shively said he hopes the move clears the way for other regions and state agencies to adopt similar protections.

Under the rules, commercial fishing for the small species cannot be developed until the Pacific Fishery Management Council weighs scientific information and considers potential effects to other fisheries, fishing communities and the marine ecosystem.

The rules limit the amount of forage fish that could be caught incidentally while fishing for other targeted species. It also includes provisions that allow future experiments with targeting forage fish under certain conditions.

Glenn Spain, with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, said protecting forage fish that are the basis of the food chain is "an obvious no-brainer."

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

PSC TECHNICAL REPORT: MARK SELECTIVE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT April 10, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The expansion of mark-selective fisheries in mixed stock areas is complicating a decades-old method of tracking fisheries impacts across the West Coast, according to a recent report from the Pacific Salmon Commission.

Mark-selective fisheries require fishermen to release salmon with an intact adipose fin that indicates it was not produced in a hatchery. Most hatchery fish are marked by removing the fin on the fish’s back near the tail. This method has allowed maintaining fishing opportunities in an era of federal Endangered Species Act listings on salmon.

Many of these mark-selective fisheries occur in mixed stock areas: parts of the ocean and Puget Sound where both weak and strong salmon runs from various rivers intermingle before returning to their river of birth to spawn.

You can read the entire report (Lessons Learned Report: Mass Marking and Mark-Selective Fisheries) here.

While the intention of these mark-selective fisheries is to allow for more fishing opportunity while not increasing impacts on weak natural runs in mixed stock areas, they undermine how fisheries are being managed coastwide.

One of the most important tools for studying how fisheries are working is the coded-wire tag program used by hatchery and fisheries managers in Alaska, Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

Small metal tags are inserted into the snouts of fish, each with a code for the hatchery where the fish was produced. A lot of data can be derived from these tags, including impacts of various fisheries.

Even though mark-selective fisheries have been described as “the most intensively sampled fisheries on the Pacific coast,” that effort is not enough.

From the report: Catch and escapement sampling in some areas is still inadequate for providing the data required for analysis of MSF impacts. This inadequate data and lack of analyses, combined with the large tagging and sampling costs of (Double Index Tag) programs, has led certain agencies to abandon DIT programs (with several more under consideration for termination). Since there is no viable alternative to DIT programs for estimating fishery impacts of MSFs on natural-origin stocks independently of assumption-based methods and models, this trend is alarming.

Double index tags are a method of inserting a coded-wire tag into a fish, but then not clipping the adipose fin. These fish would theoretically be able to escape mark-selective fisheries, adding to the data of their impacts. But because mark-selective fisheries aren’t being monitored enough, double index tagging is being abandoned.

As a result, fisheries managers’ confidence about the impacts of mark-selective fisheries can vary widely from year to year.

The chart above shows how far off pre-season estimates can be. In at least one year, the pre-season models were off by more than 50 percent.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In the end, the report doesn’t call for ending mark-selective fisheries, but rather improving how they’re monitored, sampled and modeled: Mark-selective fisheries have been prosecuted without consideration to limitations of catch sampling programs or the technical feasibility of evaluating impacts. Complex regulations (e.g., mixed-bag retention restrictions or fisheries at fine spatial or temporal scales) are being promulgated without regard to the need for, or capability to collect, the data required for stock and fishery assessments or to evaluate MSFs. Sampling designs must correspond to the same spatial and temporal strata described by the regulations for the fishery to improve the accuracy of expansions for catch and CWT recoveries. Agencies proposing MSFs need to coordinate sampling programs with the development of analytical tools to measure the impacts of these fisheries.

The report’s executive summary puts forward a fairly long list of observations and complications with how mark selective fisheries and the coastwide fisheries management regime work: No viable alternative to the adipose fin clip has been identified as a permanent visual mark for mass marked anadromous salmon. From Selection of a Mass Mark.

Mark-selective fisheries complicate implementation of PSC regimes. From Significance of MSFs to Implementation of PST Agreements.

fishing

Mark-selective fisheries can significantly change the magnitude, distribution, and uncertainty of fishery mortalities for unmarked fish (usually natural-origin). From Harvest Sharing Agreements.

Estimation of the fishery mark rate (the proportion of encounters that are marked by time-fishery strata) is critical to harvest management involving MSFs. If mark rates are overestimated, impacts of MSFs on unmarked fish will be underestimated; conversely, if mark rates are underestimated, mortalities of unmarked fish will be overestimated. From Planning Tools and Harvest Sharing Agreements.

Mark-selective fisheries require a coordinated and consistent approach to implementation of MM, MSFs, and coastwide sampling to enable accurate assessment and management of impacts to natural-origin fish. Adequate tagging and unbiased sampling programs in fisheries and escapement are required for analysts to detect potential differences between mortalities of marked and unmarked fish due to encounter rates in MSFs. Fishery sampling programs have been developed to provide data required to reliable estimates of stock-specific mortality of unmarked fish in individual MSFs, however they have not been implemented coastwide. Alignment of sampling with MSF spatial and temporal strata is required, to facilitate standard reporting of estimations of mortality for marked and unmarked fish. From Development of MSFs and Coastwide Coordination of CWT Sampling Programs.

Electronic sampling has not been employed coastwide, although it is required to recover DITs in MSFs. Cost, accuracy, practical feasibility, and policy concerns are some of the challenges faced by agencies in incorporating this technology into sampling programs. From Coastwide Coordination of CWT Sampling Programs.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Mass marking combined with visual sampling increases the cost of CWT recovery, by increasing sampling effort, and costs for storage, transport and tag removal. From Sampling for DITs. The increased costs associated with handling and sampling large numbers of marked and unmarked fish has resulted in reduced rates of sampling at some facilities and in fisheries because of agency budgetary constraints. From Coastwide Coordination of CWT Sampling Programs and Costs.

Visual sampling may adversely affect relations with salmon processors and First Nations, because it requires the removal of a large number of snouts or heads. From Sampling for DITs. Improved coordination of harvest management regulations and sampling programs is needed. The SFEC has been unable to develop methods for estimation of MSF impacts on unmarked fish by stock and age under the promulgated regulations. From Regulation of MSFs and Planning and Assessment of MSFs and Coastwide Coordination of CWT Sampling Programs.

Dissimilar regulations for adjacent areas having slight variations in species, gear, size and bag limit restrictions have complicated compliance, enforcement, and impact assessments. Similar regulations across spatial and temporal strata may reduce angler confusion and enforcement and assessment burdens. Based on reductions in retention of unmarked catch since the inception of MSFs, it is evident that angler behaviour has been modified to harvest selectively for marked fish. From Regulation of MSFs. Existing rates for release mortality, mark retention, and mark recognition errors are derived from studies that have indicated substantial variability by gear, vessel type, location, species, and size of fish encountered. Nonetheless, methods and models employed for stock and fishery assessments assume these rates are known with certainty. From Planning Tools.

A bilateral model does not exist for pre-season planning or post-season evaluation of MSFs for Chinook. From Chinook and Development of MSFs. Fishery planning and post-season assessments for MSFs rely upon assumption-based methods that do not account for uncertainty. From Planning and Assessment of MSFs. Agencies currently rely on Fisheries Regulation Assessment Model (FRAM) estimates of coho MU-specific exploitation rates for both pre-season projections and post-season mortality estimates. Managers have not accounted for uncertainty in estimating mortalities of unmarked fish in MSFs, instead accepting point estimates produced by the coho FRAM. The uncertainty of projections of mark rates and hence stock specific mortalities from MSFs by the coho FRAM can vary widely from year to year due to the uncertainty of abundance forecasts, variations in migration patterns, and conduct of fisheries. From Planning Tools.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The SFEC has been unable to develop methods to estimate stock-age-fishery impacts of individual MSFs when multiple MSFs impact CWT release groups. From Planning and Assessment of MSFs. Double index tagging programs have not been implemented as recommended.

Agencies may not believe that the information provided by the DIT programs justifies their cost. In some instances, cumulative impacts of MSFs have not been large enough to reliably estimate differences in return rates of marked and unmarked fish using DIT programs. From Regulation of MSFs and Double Index Tagging (DIT) and Planning and Assessment of MSFs. Uncertainty of fishing impacts on unmarked fish not represented by a DIT group has reduced the ability to estimate impacts of MSFs on unmarked fish. From Double Index Tagging (DIT).

Coordination among those who set fishery regulations, design the sampling protocols, use the data in models and design data warehouses is critical. From Regulation of MSFs and Coastwide Coordination of CWT Sampling Programs.

Improvements in reporting and access to information about MSF regulations and impacts on unmarked fish are needed. A prototype for electronic reporting of MSFs has been jointly developed by WDFW and NWIFC for recreational Chinook marine MSFs in Puget Sound and Washington coastal waters. From Coastwide Coordination of Reporting.

The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) Regional Mark Information System (RMIS) has been modified to accommodate reporting of data for MM releases and CWT recoveries from MSFs. Data standards have been developed by the PSC Data Standards working group and implemented by the Regional Mark Processing Center (RMPC) in the RMIS. From Coastwide Coordination of Reporting.

Agencies are providing complete MM proposals for the SFEC review by the November 1 deadline. Mass marking levels have stabilized for Chinook and coho production in Washington and Oregon. From Review of MM and MSF Proposals by the SFEC. MSF proposals are of limited value in assessing potential impacts on the viability of the CWT program because domestic fishery planning processes have not been completed, so details regarding the location, magnitude, and regulations are often unavailable for review by the SFEC and the PSC. From Review of MM and MSF Proposals by the SFEC. Post-season reporting of MSFs remains problematic. In 2013 catch year, 3 post-season reports were received out of 16 coho MSFs implemented coastwide, and 4 post-season reports out of 26 Chinook MSFs were received. SFEC continues to recommend improving compliance with post-season reporting (SFEC 2015). From Post-Season Reporting of MSFs.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Hatcheries

TREATY TRIBES RELEASE 43 MILLION HATCHERY SALMON LAST YEAR April 11, 2016 Treaty Indian Tribes in western Washington released more than 43 million hatchery salmon in 2015 according to recently compiled statistics.

Of the 43 million salmon released, 10.1 million were chinook. Significant numbers of chum (18.9 million) and coho (8.8 million) were also released in addition to almost 800,000 steelhead and 527,000 sockeye. Some of the salmon released by the tribes were produced in cooperation with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state regional enhancement groups, or other sport or community groups.

Nearly all of the chinook and coho salmon produced at tribal hatcheries were “mass marked” by removing the adipose fin – a fleshy extremity just behind the dorsal fin on the fish’s back. Clipping the fin makes for easy identification when the hatchery fish return as adults and are harvested. Many of the fish also were implanted with a tiny coded-wire tag that identifies their hatchery of origin.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels When recovered on the spawning grounds or when the fish is harvested, data from the coded-wire tag is used to determine migration patterns, contribution rates to various fisheries and other information important to fisheries management.

2015 Northwest Treaty Tribal hatchery releases

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Salmon Feedlots – Weapons of Mass Destruction, Floating Cesspools

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

It is suspected ISA in Marine Harvest farms in Red Eye.

Suspicion of ISA in Rødøy Marine Harvest suspect ISA plants Digermulen and Kvalvika in Nordland.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels - We are ready to accelerate the harvest of fish farms, if Mattilsynet samples are positive, says regional director Roberta L. Solheim said in a statement.

- There is no clinical detection of yet, but our own PCR samples are positive for ISA, she says.

The company will also consider accelerating slaughter of fish on the neighboring plant Kvalvika. The plants are located in a so-called ISA zone and is required to conduct monthly tests. It was on such samples Marine Harvest discovered the infection.

-We Immediately contacted the FSA, who visited the plant yesterday and took samples of the fish. The fish show no symptoms of ISA, but we still look seriously at the situation and has decided to take action right now, says Solheim. ¤ Marine Harvest is the largest food producer and the largest producer of farmed salmon. The company is represented in 24 countries and has 12,500 employees. Marine Harvest has headquarters in Bergen and is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). ¤ Infectious salmon anemia (ISA) is caused by a virus which is probably of the same family as the influenza virus. Virus causes disease in salmon but has no impact on public health. ¤ ISA is considered a serious infectious disease in Norway and the FSA has prepared a contingency plan for dealing with such matters from the moment the suspicion arises.

By ISA is often created a control area to combat the disease and to limit further spread of infection. (Source: FSA)

Dr. Claudette Bethune 14 April 2016: “ISA virus detected in farmed salmon showing no clinical symptoms.”

Does "accelerated harvest" mean these infected fish are off to the market?

Without a doubt, Dr. Bethune – And, of course, there will be no warning labels regarding washing and other preparation of these diseased fish (note the high fat content and off color of their flesh).

Jim

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

An AquAdvantage Salmon is pictured in this undated handout photo provided by AquaBounty Technologies

U.S. environmentalists sue to overturn approval of GMO salmon March 31, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels U.S. health regulators are facing a lawsuit from a coalition of environmental organizations seeking to overturn the government's landmark approval of a type of genetically engineered salmon to be farmed for human consumption.

The Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth and other groups allege in the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to consider all of the environmental risks of the fish when the agency approved it in November.

The FDA also cleared the product, made by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies, without having the proper authority to regulate genetically engineered animals produced for food, according to the complaint.

The agency declined to comment on the lawsuit on Thursday. Its approval of AquaBounty salmon followed a 20-year review and was the first such approval for an animal whose DNA has been scientifically modified.

AquaBounty is confident the FDA's approval will stand, Chief Executive Ron Stotish said in a statement. The agency was "extraordinarily thorough and transparent in the review and approval of our application," he said.

The company has said its salmon can grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon, saving time and resources.

However, the FDA approval process included "an extremely limited environmental assessment" that did not fully evaluate the potential for AquaBounty salmon to escape from the facilities where they are grown, among other risks, according to the lawsuit.

The legal challenge comes as the U.S. food industry is facing increased pressure from consumers to provide more information about the use of genetically engineered ingredients.

General Mills Inc and other major food companies are rolling out new disclosures on products to comply with a Vermont law that will require labels on foods made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Major retailers, including Kroger Co and Target Corp, have already said they do not plan to stock AquaBounty salmon on store shelves. It is not yet available for sale.

Activists worry the FDA's approval of the salmon will serve as a precedent for other genetically engineered food animals.

Their lawsuit seeks to prohibit the FDA from taking further action on the fish or any other genetically engineered animal for human consumption until Congress grants an agency clear authority over such products.

The case is Institute for Fisheries Resources et al v Sylvia Mathews Burwell et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 16-cv-01574.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Chile algal bloom blog: Navy complains to prosecutors over dead salmon; Director asks employees to pray March 24, 2016 A deadly algal bloom has hit the world's second biggest salmon producer and exporter, Chile.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels More than 27 million fish have already died and the economic impact from lost production is seen soaring to $800 million.

Editorial Comment: Unusually high ocean temperatures, due in The ocean-based salmon feedlot industry large part to the El Nino weather phenomenon, fails to take responsibility for this algal bloom have fueled the algal bloom that has affected and subsequent mass die off of their salmon. salmon farms operating in southern Chile. Most of the farms are in ocean enclosures or in This was their doing! estuaries.

Producers Marine Harvest, Australis Seafoods, Pesquera Camanchaca, Blumar Seafoods, Multiexport Foods, Cermaq Group and Empresas AquaChile have all seen some of their salmon farms affected, according to data provided by Chile's Economy Ministry and company filings with Chile's SVS securities regulator.

The latest blow to the local industry comes as Chile's salmon farmers racked up multi-million loses, as a consequence of falling Atlantic salmon prices seen throughout 2015.

Chilean Navy complains to prosecutors over dead salmon Officials from Chile’s navy have made formal complaints to the country’s prosecutors over the risk that salmon killed in the recent algal bloom could pose if they were consumed by humans.

After receiving the complaint, prosecutors dispatched a team of environmental investigators and local police to ensure that the dead salmon were properly disposed of.

If it can be confirmed that the dead salmon were consumed by humans than the companies found responsible may find themselves before the courts, prosecutors said.

AquaChile puts algal bloom losses at $43m Empresas AquaChile has lost $43 million due to the algal bloom, it announced in a stock exchange notice.

The company explained that there were five farm areas with affected crops: Herradura, Capera, Guar Island, Huenquillahue and Sotomo.

Of these, the mortality of fish represented 18% and a value of 22% of the total biomass, with a carrying cost of $38.88m.

AquaChile said $4.5m of other costs associated with getting rid of the dead fish have to be added to this .

On Feb. 29, AquaChile said it was not insured on the losses. At the time, it gave the figure of $15m.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

‘Marine mammal massacre’ ends sea lions’ invasion of salmon pen March 21, 2016 In a highly unusual event, 15 sea lions were shot and killed at a fish farm in Clayoquot Sound after a pack of the large mammals broke into salmon pens and couldn’t be scared away.

The incident has been described as “a marine mammal massacre” by environmentalists who want the farm shut down, but a spokesman for Cermaq Canada Ltd. said it hasn’t experienced anything like the sea lion invasion before, and steps have been taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Bonny Glambeck of the group Clayoquot Action said Monday the slaughter took place over two days in December, after a pack of sea lions broke into the recently reopened Cermaq farm at Binns Island, north of Tofino on Vancouver Island.

Editorial Comment: Sea lions feed on the weakest wild salmon and other marine life.

Sea lions are the preferred diet of transient orca whales Shooting sea lions is short-sighted, greed-driven, marine mammal predation control.

Proper marine mammal predation fences are effective at keeping marine mammals out of these floating weapons of mass destruction.

Ocean-based salmon feedlots must be required to utilize and maintain adequate marine mammal predation fencing.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The group said the information was released recently by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The department could not be reached for immediate comment.

Fish farmers are authorized to kill harbour seals and California sea lions that are damaging their operations.

But Ms. Glambeck said farms shouldn’t be located in Clayoquot Sound, an area on the west coast of Vancouver Island that is recognized by UNESCO for its rich ecological values.

“This is an internationally recognized wilderness area. It’s a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and so this is a place where the natural environment and the animals should take precedence over human activities, especially one that has such a large impact as salmon farming,” she said.

“I think the open-net salmon farm sites [in Clayoquot Sound] need to be reassessed,” she added.

“They should have looked at the siting criteria in terms of what was happening in the surrounding environment – i.e., the sea lions.”

Ms. Glambeck said the Cermaq farm had been fallow for a few years, and just weeks after the farm was reopened and stocked with juvenile salmon, sea lions broke into the fish pens.

There are more than 20 fish farms in the Clayoqout Sound area, but in recent years, only three have reported sea lion problems, typically involving single animals that became tangled in nets.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s records for about 70 fish farms operated by several different companies on the B.C. coast show that, over the past three years, only one other California sea lion has been shot.

That animal was killed at Cermaq’s Plover Point farm, which is also in Clayoquot Sound.

In addition, Cermaq reported that three sea lions drowned last year after becoming entangled in nets at its Millar Channel fish farm in Clayoquot Sound, and one drowned at its Barkley farm, in Barkley Sound.

Grant Warkentin, a spokesman for Cermaq, said a pack of sea lions tore through perimeter fences and wouldn’t leave once they were inside the Binns Island farm.

He said none of the other Cermaq farms have had any similar incidents, and the site has been given additional, stronger fencing to ensure the incident isn’t repeated.

“It was quite unusual what happened,” he said. “The winter months are when the sea lions are most common in the area because they are following their food source up the coast. … Even so, we usually don’t have issues because we have predator nets that go around the perimeters of all our farms. … But in this case, for whatever reason, they were just very aggressive and were able to breach the system and do a fair amount of damage.”

Mr. Warkentin said the animals were damaging equipment and posed a safety risk to fish farm workers, and attempts were made to try to frighten the sea lions away before a decision was made to shoot the animals.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels “We try to keep them out passively, but once they get in and start wrecking things, then they kind of get a sense they can do anything they want. And with an animal that large, if it sets its mind to something, it’s pretty hard to change it,” he said.

Sea lions weigh up to 390 kilograms and grow to more than two metres in length.

“When you have animals that large that have decided they don’t want to leave a farm system, it’s pretty tough for a small human to convince them otherwise. They tried scaring them away, banging the metal pipes, that sort of thing. But once they figure nothing will happen to them, they just don’t leave,” Mr. Warkentin said.

“It’s unfortunate and we are really sad it had to come to this,” he said of shooting the sea lions.

“We are quite disappointed this had to happen.

We aim every year to have zero negative interactions with any wildlife. We don’t want to see this happen at all, ever.”

Editorial Comment: Everything about ocean-based salmon feedlots results in negative interactions with wildlife and all that rely on them

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Court Orders Safeguards To Prevent Salmon Farm Diseases May 7, 2015 The federal government must shield the Pacific Ocean from the potential spread of diseases by infected fish being farmed along the British Columbia coast, a Federal Court has ruled.

The Department of Fisheries has been ordered to shore up its regulations to prevent infections from being transferred from dozens of fish farms to the open marine environment.

The legal action was prompted by elevated concerns about one particular illness that attacks the heart and muscles of salmon, which the court heard could imperil the Fraser River sockeye.

Editorial Comment: Update: Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans along with Marine Harvest appealed this Federal Court ruling.

We are anxiously awaiting the results of this important appeal.

Transfer of diseased salmon between pens must not be permitted – risk of exacerbating disease spread and escapes is far too great.

The advocates hailed the Federal Court decision on Thursday that struck down a portion of the rules governing the transfer of fish between aquaculture farms. The court gave the department four months to draw up new regulations.

The case hinged on whether B.C.’s prolific coastal salmon farming industry is allowed to make the decision to move diseased fish into its netted pens in the Broughton Archipelago between Vancouver Island and the central coast, said biologist Alexandra Morton.

“Which unfortunately are along our wild salmon migration routes,” she said. “So all the viruses in the pens, of course, can get out of the pens.”

It was Morton, a vocal fish-farm opponent, who identified inconsistencies between two sets of aquaculture policies and initiated the judicial review.

“We’ve learned this with chickens and pigs and cows, with all the avian flu, swine flu, mad cow. You don’t let pathogens go back and forth like this.”

The legal action stemmed from accusations by Morton that a fish farm operator had trucked diseased salmon smolts from its Dalrymple hatchery to its Shelter Bay fish farm.

Samples of the smolts bred by Marine Harvest Canada tested positive for a virus called piscine reovirus, or PRV, in June 2013, the court heard.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In his ruling made Wednesday, Judge Donald Rennie stated the “weight of expert evidence” supported the view that PRV is the viral precursor to heart and skeletal muscle inflammation in salmon. He wrote the virus has recently been discovered in Canada.

Marine Harvest, which bills itself as B.C.’s largest salmon aquaculture company, disputed that it has ever transferred unhealthy fish. Therefore, said spokesman Clare Backman, the voided clauses aren’t important to company operations.

“We don’t find the decision changes anything in our ongoing business day-to-day.”

Backman said the company provided evidence to court of the presence of PRV along the B.C. coast existing long before salmon farms. The company also claimed it is naturally occurring and not linked to any disease at all.

The Department of Fisheries said it was reviewing the decision, but noted the ruling pertains to two subsections of 140 licence conditions.

The DFO website states that examination of hundreds of fish has found no evidence to date of the disease in wild or farmed fish along the coast.

The department’s lawyer told the court that as many as 120 licences due to expire by the end of 2015 could be affected by the invalidated regulations.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Research shows that 80 percent of lice survive treatment with hydrogen peroxide.

Did not that lice surviving chemical treatment (translated) For over 20 years it has been known that lice survive treatment with hydrogen peroxide. Still says wellboat industry that this was unknown to them until recently.

April 12, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Also Read: Removes lice aboard new wellboat Already in 1994 it was shown publicly in Norway that salmon lice just gets knocked out by hydrogen peroxide treatment, and since followed new warnings from scientists.

- Our knowledge of the hydrogen peroxide was that the killing of lice and that it certainly was not able to re-infect, however, says the chairman of Brønnbåtservice owners' association, Jan Harald Hauvik.

- That we thought at least until 2011. How much longer single vessel or well boat sector have believed in it, I dare not say.

Delousing has largely gone out of moving lice from farmed fish to drop zones in the sea. And although wellboat industry has gradually introduced filtering lusevannet, still lacks one of five boats filtration.

- 80 percent of lice survive In 2000 warned Medicines Agency that the lice do not die by peroxide, but just let go. Meanwhile, they prayed that lice are treated in well boats destroyed. In 2009 asked the National Veterinary Institute and the IMR for a regulation on filtration and NMD wrote to Environment Directorate researchers concern that lice survive treatment.

Professor of biology and head of Lusesenteret at the University of Bergen, Frank Nilsen says the knowledge that lice do not die has long been known. Research shows that 80 percent of lice survive, and quickly have started breeding.

- It appears that the egg strings that hang outside the louse dies at treatment, while the eggs are inside the lice are unaffected, says Nilsen.

- Veterinary authorities responsible But the industry has thus continued with debugging by dumping of hydrogen peroxide in cages with tarp around, or wellboats timber lusevannet in drop zones.

- Treatment in cages with tarpaulin makes the lice are in the facility. It increases the risk of reinfection, which in turn will require several treatments. With wellboat become lice taken from the plant and the risk of re-infection is minimized, says Marius Brandal Hansen, who researched the various methods for their master thesis in economics.

Brandal Hansen says he as late as in 2014 met people in the aquaculture industry believed hydrogen peroxide killed lice.

Asked whether it is well boat industry or regulatory authorities who should be responsible for checking if lice are dead, responds Chairman Brønnbåtservice owners' association Jan Harald Hauvik following:

- It must primarily be veterinary authorities

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

The aquaculture industry is characterized by denial about the serious environmental problems, and must be subject to stringent political control, writes commentator Skjalg Fjellheim.

Livestock adventure price We need politicians with backbone, who dares to stand up to the powerful economic interests in the Norwegian aquaculture industry.

March 26, 2016 Salmon prices are on the whole 55 kroner per kilogram. Fish farmers earn big money. And they can look forward to a five-fold increase in production towards 2050, if politicians get their will through. In northern Norway can be achieved on an even larger increase of biomass. But at what cost?

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Oppdrettsbaronene has become so powerful that they rise above all criticism. They are in open conflict with the country's leading research institutions. Instead of taking research on the environmental impact seriously, the method is completely consistent to cast doubt on the scientists' credibility and research results.

It is ominous when the directors of the Institute of Marine Research and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research ( NINA ), now feel compelled to scramble and tell that the big farming companies employing smear campaigns against scientists, and not at all interested in technical cooperation to deal with environmental problems.

Along the coast are growing feeling that we may be heading for a manmade ecological tragedy. The level of conflict increases. But it makes little impression on the major listed companies. There is denial and trivializing no strong.

Seafood Norway is an organization for the entire industry and has for several years done this job with great persistence on behalf of members. Communications Director Are Kvistad is an example. In Dagens NĂŚringsliv on 17 March he meets criticism of the industry by saying that "this is a large, controlled food production."

It is by no means a credible conclusion. One of the country's premier fisheries journalists, Kjersti Sandvik, has a different story to tell. Recently she released the book "Beneath the surface. A dirty story about the Norwegian salmon boom. " The principle of short-term gain has been guiding and politicians have been absent, writes Sandvik.

This is an independent story we all should take seriously. We will also listen to Sandvik because she questions the glossy tale of salmon as "the new oil."

Instead of taking research on the environmental impact seriously, the method is two cast doubt on the scientists' credibility and research results.

The reality is , according to Sandvik, the values are not taken back to the local communities through either taxes or fees. The big money goes to the owners, who often find themselves abroad.

Along the coast , there is a growing recognition that there is only crap and sea lice, fish dirt and drug residues that remain in fjords there too wild salmon and sea trout are gone.

This explains the lack of samfunnsaksepten industry meet with the possible exception of the south coast and the Oslo Fjord. Breeding cages conspicuous as we know by their absence where the Norwegian society elite have their hytteparadis.

The political environment t in the capital has for long had a distant relationship to the issues that are out of their sight. This cannot continue. There is now an urgent need for political control seafood industry. Lobbyists have for long had free rein in the corridors of power. They have even, until recently, had the pleasure of meeting a fisheries with interests in the industry across the board.

The last thing we need is yet more politicians who speak industry by mouth. We want decision makers who act independently on behalf of us all. This is crucial because it is obvious that the industry is not able to clean up on their own.

If politicians continue with their uncritical applause, we face an ecological collapse in the Norwegian fjords. No one should say that it was not raised the alarm in time.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Renewable Energy: Geothermal, Waves, Tidal, Solar, Wind, Hydropower

Wind and Solar are Crushing Fossil Fuels April 6, 2016 Wind and solar have grown seemingly unstoppable.

While two years of crashing prices for oil, natural gas, and coal triggered dramatic downsizing in those industries, renewables have been thriving. Clean energy investment broke new records in 2015 and is now seeing twice as much global funding as fossil fuels.

One reason is that renewable energy is becoming ever cheaper to produce. Recent solar and wind auctions in Mexico and Morocco ended with winning bids from companies that promised to produce electricity at the cheapest rate, from any source, anywhere in the world, said Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board for Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

"We're in a low-cost-of-oil environment for the foreseeable future," Liebreich said during his keynote address at the BNEF Summit in New York on Tuesday. "Did that stop renewable energy investment?

Not at all."

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Here's what's shaping power markets, in six charts from BNEF: Renewables are beating fossil fuels 2 to 1

Investment in Power Capacity, 2008-2015 Government subsidies have helped wind and solar get a foothold in global power markets, but economies of scale are the true driver of falling prices: The cost of solar power has fallen to 1/150th of its level in the 1970s, while the total amount of installed solar has soared 115,000-fold.

As solar prices fall, installations boom

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The reason solar-power generation will increasingly dominate: It’s a technology, not a fuel. As such, efficiency increases and prices fall as time goes on. What's more, the price of batteries to store solar power when the sun isn't shining is falling in a similarly stunning arc.

Just since 2000, the amount of global electricity produced by solar power has doubled seven times over. Even wind power, which was already established, doubled four times over the same period. For the first time, the two forms of renewable energy are beginning to compete head-to-head on price and annual investment.

An industry that keeps doubling in size

Renewables’ share of power generation. Scale is shown in doublings.

Meanwhile, fossil fuels have been getting killed by falling prices and, more recently, declining investment. It started with coal—it used to be that lower prices increased demand for fossil fuels, but coal prices apparently can't fall fast enough. Richer OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries have been reducing demand for almost a decade. In China, coal power has also flattened. Only developing countries with rapidly expanding energy demands are still adding coal, though at a slowing rate.

Coal phases out in wealthier countries first

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels What does that look like on a country-level basis? The world's first coal superpower, the U.K., now produces less power from coal than it has since at least 1850.

Canary in the coal mine: U.K.

More recently it's the oil and gas industry that's been under attack. Prices have tumbled and investments have started drying up. The number of oil rigs active in the U.S. fell last month to the lowest since records began in the 1940s. Producers—from tiny frontier drillers to massive petrolproducing nation-states—are creeping ever closer to insolvency.

"What we're talking about is miscalculation of risk," said BNEF's Liebreich. "We're talking about a business model that is predicated on never-ending growth, a business model that is predicated on being able to find unlimited supplies of capital."

The chart below shows independent oil producers and their ability to pay their debt.1 The pink quadrant at the bottom right represents the greatest threat to a company's solvency. By 2015, that quadrant starts to fill up, and Liebreich warned, "It's going to get uglier."

U.S. oil patch heads to the insolvency zone

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Oil and gas woes are driven less by renewables than by a mismatch of too much supply and too little demand. But with renewable energy expanding at record rates and with more efficient cars— including all-electric vehicles—siphoning off oil profits at the margins, the fossil-fuel insolvency zone is only going to get more crowded, according to BNEF. Natural gas will still be needed for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, but even that will change as utility-scale batteries grow cheaper.

The best minds in energy keep underestimating what solar and wind can do. Since 2000, the International Energy Agency has raised its long-term solar forecast 14 times and its wind forecast five times. Every time global wind power doubles, there's a 19 percent drop in cost, according to BNEF, and every time solar power doubles, costs fall 24 percent.

And while BNEF says the shift to renewable energy isn't happening fast enough to avoid the catastrophic legacy of fossil-fuel dependence—climate change—it's definitely happening.

Watch Next: Southern Company CEO is Bullish on Solar, Wind

Southern Company CEO is Bullish on Solar, Wind

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Geothermal

Green Scene: Shutting Burrard Thermal makes no sense This week, with essentially no fanfare, BC Hydro’s Burrard Thermal generating plant on Port Moody’s north shore is quietly shutting its doors.

March 31, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels This week, with essentially no fanfare, BC Hydro’s Burrard Thermal generating plant on Port Moody’s north shore is quietly shutting its doors.

Now a victim of misguided public policy, this plant opened in the 1960s and has played an essential role in providing electricity through the combustion of natural gas. With a capacity of 900 MW and the ability to produce up to 7,000 GWh per year, it has the potential to provide almost 10% of the province’s electricity.

In recent years, it has been a valuable standby plant to provide emergency power or peaking power in the winter, when cold weather and short daylight hours result in the highest daily consumption of electricity. It’s important to note Burrard is not closing entirely; its function to maintain voltage will be kept and so will a few jobs.

A fatal blow was struck to BC Hydro with the announcement of the Gordon Campbell government’s Energy Plan in 2002. BC Hydro was prohibited from developing any new sources of electricity (with the exception of Site C) and Burrard Thermal was scheduled to be shut down after the completion of the lengthy Interior-to-Lower Mainland transmission line.

Although Hydro was required to generate 93% of its electricity from renewable resources such as dams, this still provided ample room for the operation of Burrard. As the major electricity provider to much of B.C., BC Hydro also has a responsibility to maintain the ability to provide electricity during emergency conditions such as forest fires, earthquakes or ice storms.

In the 1990s, during the California electricity crisis (which later turned out to have been purposely created to generate high profits for Enron), BC Hydro was running Burrard Thermal during the summer months to export electricity to California. Because this created local air quality concerns with regard to smog generation, BC Hydro installed selective catalytic reduction units to reduce nitrogen oxides production by more than 90%. As a result, Burrard Thermal became the cleanest operating standby natural gas fired plant in North America.

With these improvements plus its strategic location in the Lower Mainland, it is an ideal plant for use as a vitally important backup to provide electricity during emergencies and peak demand periods.

Unfortunately, the lingering misimpression remained that it was a “dirty” power plant, a falsehood frequently bolstered by misleading statements from government officials.

Throughout its lifetime, Burrard Thermal was used very little because large hydro reservoirs in the Interior came on stream and were able to provide much of the electricity needed. As a result, Burrard remained in good working order and has been well maintained.

Nonetheless, government policies that favour private power producers over in-house electricity generation have led to the demise of Burrard Thermal. It costs BC Hydro only $20 million a year to keep Burrard in operation.

Despite this, BC Hydro is now paying a private operator in Campbell River $55 million a year to maintain another natural gas-fired plant on standby. This plant’s maximum output is only 275 MW and it does not have the selective catalytic reduction units to prevent the generation of nitrogen oxides. As well, Campbell River isn’t especially close to the Lower Mainland; for example, transmission of electricity from this plant to Metro Vancouver could be interrupted by a major earthquake.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels In Ontario, Ontario Power pays $85 million to a gas-fired plant near Kingston to remain on standby.

At only $20 million, Burrard is a truly a bargain. To my mind, its location next to most of B.C.’s population makes it a priceless asset.

And how often do emergencies arise when we need such emergency power?

In 2008, during the winter months of peak demand, there were ice jams on the Peace River that curtailed electricity operations there. At that time, Burrard was fired up on five of six units (83% capacity) and it ran for several weeks.

In 2009, extensive forest fires threatened the Kelly Lake transmission substation and Burrard was put on alert again. Fortunately, these forest fires were brought under control and Burrard was not needed — but it was ready.

In 1999, heavy snow storms on Vancouver Island toppled several 500 kV transmission towers and damaged 30 others. Such emergencies seem to happen on a regular basis.

It’s quite bizarre that Premier Christy Clark, first elected as a Port Moody MLA on a promise to close Burrard Thermal, considers the LNG industry to be clean and green but calls Burrard a “major polluter,” which it is not. It’s a big mistake to be mothballing Burrard.

Now, the recently approved Woodfibre LNG Plant in Howe Sound will be exporting the supply of natural gas that once helped to keep our lights on in the winter. As that old folk song goes,

When will we ever learn?

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Marine Hydrokinetics (Wave Energy)

New Swedish wave energy buoy boasts 5x the output of existing technology April 7, 2016 We already harness energy from the sun, the wind, and many other natural processes for our own uses, and electricity generated from ocean waves could be the next big thing in renewables. Known as wave energy, the concept is relatively new and technologies are still a bit rudimentary (and expensive), especially when it comes to large-scale energy generation. CorPower Ocean, based in Sweden, has developed a buoy that is surprisingly productive. One small buoy can generate enough electricity from the ocean to power 200 homes. Imagine what a farm full of floating buoys could do.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels At just 26 feet wide, CorPower’s buoy is small in comparison to other wave energy generators. The company says their floating orange buoys are five times more efficient than the next competing technology, due to the addition of phase-controlled oscillation which makes high energy density possible. By setting up farms where hundreds of buoys would simultaneously generate clean electricity, CorPower estimates as much as 20 percent of the total electricity on Earth could be supplied through wave energy.

Related: Apple invests $1.5 million in sustainable wave energy projects in Ireland

Because the ocean is always in motion, wave energy could potentially be more efficient than solar or wind, both of which suffer in less-than-reliable conditions. Wave energy generation is just as clean as solar and wind, too, with zero carbon dioxide emissions. So far, a one-half scale model of the wave energy converter has passed tank tests with flying colors, and the CorPower team is heading out to open waters later this year for field tests of its game-changing technology.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Wind

Some of the leading oil producers in the United States are also behind advances in wind energy installations, federal report finds.

U.S. oil states leading in wind power Texas leads the nation in new installations of wind energy, federal report finds.

March 23, 2016 WASHINGTON -- Some of the top oil-producing states in the nation are behind a rise in new electricity generated from wind, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports.

An electricity distribution report from the EIA finds wind power accounted for 41 percent of all new electric generation capacity last year.

According to the World Wind Energy Association, China and the United States combine for more than 70 percent of the global market for small-scale wind energy installations. China got a head start in the sector with a launch in the early 1980s, while, despite fits and starts, the United States is "well ahead" of its peer economies.

EIA said wind energy developments ebbed and flowed in response to uncertainty surrounding federal tax credits supporting the industry. Installations have increased since 2014 and the industry report finds that trend should continue through the rest of this year.

On a state-by-state basis, EIA found Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa and North Dakota were leading the way in terms of new installations. Three of those states -- Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota -are oil-rich states facing economic pressures for a slumping energy market.

EIA said those five states are in the central part of the United States, where wind currents are the most supportive to energy development. Texas added the most wind capacity of any state last year.

Last week, the U.S. government announced it was opening up about 81,000 acres of federal waters off the coast of New York for potential large-scale wind energy operations. The country has no offshore wind energy components in commercial operations.

The federal U.S. government said the cost of wind power is moving closer to parity with conventional energy resources.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Gov. Branstad joins MidAmerican Energy in announcing $3.6 billion investment in additional wind generation capacity April 15, 2016 DES MOINES – Today, Governor Terry Branstad announced the largest economic development project in the state’s history – Wind XI. Branstad joined MidAmerican Energy Company officials in announcing the major project that will provide a cleaner energy future for Iowa. This proposed Wind XI project will increase company’s wind energy equal to 85 percent of annual customer use.

MidAmerican Energy is filing a request with the Iowa Utilities Board to build Wind XI, a project that will add up to 2,000 megawatts of wind generation in Iowa. The proposed $3.6 billion project is being done without asking for an increase in customer rates or financial assistance from the state to pay for it. The announcement is a big step toward realizing the company’s vision of 100 percent renewable energy for customers in the state.

Branstad said he is proud of MidAmerican Energy’s long-standing and ongoing commitment to clean energy, which has helped make Iowa a national leader in renewable energy.

“This project puts Iowa on track to be the first state in the nation to generate more than 40 percent of its energy needs from wind power – far ahead of any other state. Today, Iowa is the only state to have crossed the 30 percent mark,” he said.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels “We welcome this opportunity to expand Iowa’s renewable energy and thank MidAmerican Energy for making this investment in our great state. Every wind turbine you see in Iowa means income for farmers, revenue for counties and jobs for Iowa families.”

Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, while on an overseas Republican Lt. Governors Association economic development delegation, added her thoughts as well.

“The announcement today shows the level of commitment MidAmerican Energy has for providing an even greater amount of renewable energy to their customers,” said Reynolds. “Companies that we recruit from all over the world cite our reliable cost of renewable energy as one of the top reasons for locating in Iowa. This project will go a long way in attracting more high-paying quality jobs to Iowa.”

“We have a bold vision for our energy future,” said Bill Fehrman, CEO and president of MidAmerican Energy. “We don’t know of another U.S. energy provider that has staked out this 100 percent position. Our customers want more renewable energy, and we couldn’t agree more. Once the project is complete, we will generate wind energy equal to 85 percent of our annual customer sales in Iowa, bringing us within striking distance of our 100 percent renewable vision.”

Director Durham added that wind power supports as many as 7,000 jobs in Iowa. She said the industry’s growth, its cost competitiveness and job creation have been driven by the wind production tax credits.

“Investments of this scale are viable because federal production tax credits are at their highest level.

It makes sense to leverage that benefit to solidify Iowa’s leadership in wind energy. Today’s announcement continues to build Iowa’s legacy in the renewable energy space – and in a very real way, provides economic benefits to all Iowans,” she said.

Fehrman detailed some of the many economic benefits Wind XI will generate in the state: approximately $12.5 million per year in property tax payments, $18 million per year in landowner payments, and $48 million per year in state and local expenditures associated with the project.

MidAmerican Energy has been able to build renewable energy over the past decade while keeping its customer rates among the lowest in the nation, Fehrman said. “Our progress would not have been possible without visionary state leaders and regulators and the tremendous support for renewable energy we have received from our customers, supplier partners and community leaders throughout the state of Iowa. We now have wind farms in operation or under construction in 23 Iowa counties and have partnered with more than 2,400 Iowa landowners – and we are prepared to do much more in pursuit of our 100 percent renewable vision.”

MidAmerican Energy will work to finalize locations for its Wind XI development while the Iowa Utilities Board considers the project filing request. The company has asked the IUB to approve its ratemaking principles by September so it can take full advantage of the extended production tax credit available for the construction of new wind projects. Without PTCs to help fund the cost of wind development, Iowans will pay more for building wind turbines in the future. The Wind XI project has been timed to allow MidAmerican Energy to make maximum use of available wind PTCs for the benefit of customers.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Hydropower

The St. Francis Dam in California, pictured after it collapsed in 1928, released 12 billion gallons of water onto the surrounding countryside and killed hundreds in the resultant flooding.

AN ENGINEERING DISASTER ON EDGE OF L.A. OFFERS AN OMINOUS WARNING April 10, 2016

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The remnants of the worst engineering disaster of 20th-century America sit about an hour’s drive from downtown Los Angeles. You head north on the 5, past the Hollywood Hills, into the San Fernando Valley, through the placid suburb of Santa Clarita. The familiar landscape of strip malls and palm trees gives way to something far more dramatic, a true West of roads cutting through narrow canyons. You feel small beneath the rising cliffs; you would feel smaller yet if nearly 15 stories of water were coming your way, the result of a public works project failing as few others have in the nation’s history.

Eighty-eight years ago, the St. Francis Dam burst in the middle of a March night, killing nearly 500 people. There are some images of the aftermath, but numbers tell the story better: 12.4 billion gallons of water rising to the furious height of 140 feet, surging 54 miles to the Pacific Ocean, an inland tsunami 2 miles wide leveling towns in its path. Some thought a saboteur had dynamited the dam.

This would be easier to believe than the dam failing and people dying senselessly. But that was the case. And given the sorry state of American infrastructure, something similar could be the case again: the St. Francis Dam as portent, not aberration.

Whether there’s anything to be learned from the St. Francis Dam disaster is nearly immaterial, since so few people even know it took place. Two people are trying to change that: Alan Pollack, who runs the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society, and Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel, who is behind the legislative push to have the dam site memorialized as a national monument and the surrounding federally managed forest turned into parkland. Back in January, they agreed to show me what remained of the dam. I was told not to wear good shoes.

The hills were turning orange in the rich winter light when we met, late in the afternoon of the appointed day. We wound through San Francisquito Canyon, on a sinuous road where there was no evidence of the notorious Los Angeles evening rush, then pulled off and started walking down another road, which had been abandoned about a decade ago. The forest had grown thick and unruly on either side, like a crowd held barely back from a Hollywood red carpet. We kept walking until the trees gave away. We were now on the canyon floor, on the spot where, in the waning minutes of March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam did precisely what it was engineered never to do.

The dam burst on its sides, so that a strangely picturesque center section remained, standing there as a lone man might on a deserted train platform. Morbidly nicknamed “the Tombstone,” this vertical slab of concrete was dynamited to bits after a boy climbing the structure fell and died (another boy had thrown a snake at him). The stated reason for the demolition was public safety, but as Jon Wilkman wrote in his excellent book on the St. Francis Dam disaster, Floodpath, “it was a memorial to a failure the leaders of Los Angeles preferred to forget.”

The flanks of the dam remain, misshapen concrete protrusions emanating from the canyon face, pale outgrowths in weird shapes. We climbed one of these, the remnant of a structure that once stood 205 feet high and 700 feet long. The concrete had rocks embedded in it, which gave it the feel of an ancient wall: 880 years old, not 88, the ruined battlements of some medieval siege. Strands of rebar rose in twisting shapes like a pernicious desert weed. It was impossible to tell what had been destroyed by the water, by the dynamite that followed and by the vandals who came after that.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The dam was intended to hold 32,000 acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover a single acre of land with water to the depth of a single foot: about 326,000 gallons). But once the dam broke and the water fled, the land returned to what it had once been, a thick forest receding into the northern horizon. The beauty was great but terrible—the haunting beauty of a graveyard.

Pollack and Erskine-Hellrigel have taken politicians, journalists and tourists to this vantage point, and I suspect they are accustomed to the newcomer’s awe: that this place exists, that it is so little known, that it is just... this. To them, though, it is more than a quirky relic of the past. Rather, it is a lesson about hubris, memory and will, not to mention the great cost of making the Southern California desert a vast oasis populated by millions who take it for granted that water is there for their faucets, lawns and swimming pools.

Pollack looked out over the land in the way that historians probably look at all land, which is to see time past, time present and time future all at once, a canvas with imbricated layers of paint, a painting that should not work but somehow does.

“This is the story of Los Angeles,” he says.

‘What Are You Sons of Guns Going to Do Here?’

Nothing drives serious historians of Los Angeles nuts quite like references to Chinatown, the 1974 Roman Polanski film about the Southern California water wars of the early 20th century. No matter how many times you remind people the film is fiction, they insist on treating it as fact. Maybe it’s the case that a place as unreal as Los Angeles is best explained by a work of fiction.

Near the film’s beginning, civil engineer Hollis Mulwray is presenting plans for an aqueduct at a raucous meeting of public officials. “In case you've forgotten, gentlemen,” he says, “over 500 lives were lost when the Van der Lip Dam gave way.” Mulwray is based on William Mulholland, the Bureau of Water Works and Supply potentate who nurtured the dry soil of Los Angeles with water from the Owens Valley, via a 233-mile aqueduct that remains one of the nation’s great engineering feats. As for the Van der Lip Dam, it could only be the St. Francis.

A self-made Irish immigrant who never went to college, Mulholland was not the milquetoast civil servant suggested by Mulwray. Known as “the Chief,” he made his agency (today, the Department of Water and Power) into the kind of unchecked fiefdom that New York City urban planner Robert Moses would carve out with his Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. Just like his East Coast counterpart, Mulholland had plenty of enemies. His tended to come from the Eastern Sierra, where the Los Angeles Aqueduct begins and where residents regarded Mulholland as a big-city bully and outright thief. City-country tensions run throughout American history; the farmers of the Owens Valley were on the losing side but also in the right. The aqueduct was necessary for the flowering of Southern California, but it was built on lies—and its construction profited not just the people but also a small group of elite Angelenos. That was another truth of Chinatown.

Mulholland wanted vast reservoirs close to Los Angeles in case either earthquakes or saboteurs severed the city’s aqueous lifeline. The Mulholland Dam went up in 1924, creating the Hollywood Reservoir. Construction on the St. Francis Dam started that same year. It was finished in 1926 and promptly put into service.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels A few days before the dam’s collapse, the water level was only 3 inches from the top of the dam, according to Wilkman’s Floodpath. One rancher in San Francisquito Canyon posed the question bluntly to a dam manager: “What are you sons of guns going to do here, going to flood us out down below?” The Mulholland mandarin answered sarcastically that he “expected this dam to break at any minute.”

Two days later, a dam keeper noticed that brownish water was seeping through the dam. He knew this could mean the dam’s foundation was eroding. The chief drove out to Santa Clarita with a trusted deputy and, after an inspection, concluded that there was no reason to worry. Satisfied, Mulholland returned to Los Angeles.

A few minutes before midnight, Ace Hopewell was riding his motorcycle through San Francisquito Canyon, on a road above the dam. He was about a mile past the dam when he heard a “rumbling noise.” This was still wild country, never more wild than in the night. Hopewell continued on his way.

The sound he heard was the St. Francis Dam giving way, billions of gallons of water hurtling south through San Francisquito Canyon. The deluge turned west upon reaching the Santa Clara River Valley, a funnel that would direct the water toward unsuspecting settlements that included Saugus, Piru, Fillmore, Saticoy and Santa Paula.

In his meticulous re-creation of the deadly hours after the breach, Wilkman described the flooding water as “a battering ram of rocks, mud, debris, and mangled bodies.” Castaic Junction, a town near the dam, was “swept as bare as a pool table,” he wrote.

The water traveled toward the ocean at a rate of about 12 miles per hour, reaching the coast at 5:25 a.m., emptying into the Pacific near the city of Oxnard. San Francisquito Canyon had been, until recently, the symbol of Mulholland’s engineering might. Now it was, in Wilkman’s words, “a mudshrouded graveyard.”

Learn the Hard Way “I have been suspicious from the beginning that the dam may have been tampered with,” said the mayor of Los Angeles right after the disaster. Conspiracy theories can be calming; like most, this one proved untrue, for no revolutionary or Owens Valley malcontent had blown up the dam. The canyon walls, composed of schist, were probably unsuited to the task assigned them by Mulholland; hubris may have also led Mulholland to build the dam taller than it should have been.

Mulholland took responsibility in a way that no public figure would today. During the official inquest, he claimed the mistake as entirely his own. “The only ones I envy about this thing are the ones who are dead,” the crestfallen chief announced. He lived another seven years but spent most of them in brooding anonymity, not seeking that second act that is supposedly an American birthright. It was too late for that.

The chief’s legacy, though, appears to have outlasted that of the St. Francis Dam. His name still graces one of the most famous thoroughfares in Southern California—Mulholland Drive—while his aqueduct continues to bring water into the city. As for the St. Francis Dam, it is just a pile of broken rock and twisted steel.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels Alan Pollack grew up in North Hollywood but moved to Santa Clarita in 1991 and immediately became interested in the area’s history. Some years later, he went to Pittsburgh for a medical convention (when not exploring local history, he is a doctor). While there, he took a trip to Johnstown, where more than 2,000 people were killed by a dam failure in 1889. Pollack was struck by the similarities between the Johnstown and St. Francis disasters, except while Johnstown was properly memorialized, the St. Francis Dam has remained in obscurity.

Pollack enlisted the help of Erskine-Hellrigel, who was recently involved in the successful push to have President Barack Obama declare 350,000 acres of federal land in the San Gabriel Mountains a national monument. Erskine-Hellrigel grew up in Santa Clarita and first heard about the dam disaster from her mother when she was 6. Her mother had been 6 herself when the dam broke, and she often told her daughter stories about the disaster. Together, Pollack and Erskine-Hellrigel have prevailed on U.S. Representative Steve Knight of California to propose a bill that would turn the St. Francis Dam into a national memorial surrounded by parkland. When I spoke to Knight, he was confident about the memorial, even as The Santa Clarita Valley Signal reported his bill had “little traction.”

It’s telling that the St. Francis question finds its way to Congress at a time when the nation’s infrastructure is coming to resemble that of a Third World nation not quite recovered from a lengthy bombing campaign. Most of the 84,000 dams in the United States are now firmly in middle age, having withstood water and gravity for an average of 52 years. In the latest version of its quadrennial national infrastructure report, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued the nation’s dams a collective grade of D. The cost to repair them is estimated to be $21 billion. So maybe we will have to learn the hard way.

Visiting the St. Francis Dam today is not unlike visiting the Mayan ruins of Mexico. More people should have the sensation, which is partly wonder at what civilization can accomplish and partly terror at how easily nature can wipe away those accomplishments. “To celebrate the power of human technology,” Wilkman wrote in Floodpath, “stand in the shadow of a great dam. To suddenly feel helpless, do the same.”

Editorial Comment: Given the catastrophic loss of lives and property following large dam failures around planet earth, it is no wonder that ageing dams are undergoing engineering and environmental assessments to determine their future viability. More and more of these problematic dams are being removed.

Similarly, proposed dam projects are undergoing unprecedented scrutiny regarding necessity, benefit vs. cost, design, safety, health and environmental impacts, longevity and much more.

These proposed dams are often delayed or denied for one or more significant reasons.

As we transition away from electrical power generated from hydro power and fossil fuels, we will live healthier lives on a healthier planet.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Raping and pillaging at proposed Site C location

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Clearcutting has begun in the Peace Valley to make way for Site C dam

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Sediment trapped by dams has been making its way down the Elwha River, pictured in June 2014, to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Washington's Olympic Peninsula loses 2 dams and gains a wild river – plus a new beach April 7, 2016 The United States is expanding.

That was not among the goals when the Elwha River was set free. With the removal of two concrete dams that blocked the river for a century, the Elwha has released a wave of sand that has pushed the shoreline here north toward Canada.

Acres of new land stand between surfers and the chilly shore break. Eagles feed in a growing estuary at the mouth of the river. Families and their dogs stroll where not long ago they would have been submerged in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Across the water, Vancouver Island is not quite as far away as it used to be.

"You can see it a little bit better now," said Andy Ritchie, a hydrologist with Olympic National Park here on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels When the largest dam-removal project in American history — and maybe world history — began here nearly five years ago, the principal beneficiaries were expected to be the salmon that would once again be able to spawn in the Elwha's headwaters. That is proving true, with more fish and wildlife filling the river and surrounding forest.

But along the way, a beach was born, too.

"See all that?" asked Dan Callahan, a 34-year-old surfer, as he pointed to the wide ribbons of sand that have formed where the Elwha meets the strait. "Wasn't there before. Used to be nothing but rocks. When you were surfing, you'd hit rocks. Now you hit sand."

A century's worth of sediment — about 21 million cubic feet — was trapped behind the two dams that blocked the river. One, Elwha Dam, was just five miles from its mouth. The other, Glines Canyon, was further up the 45-mile stream and more than 200 feet tall.

Built in the early 1900s, the two dams once were viewed as essential to the growing population of the peninsula's northern coast. But over time, the relatively modest amount of electricity they produced — enough to power about 14,000 homes — no longer seemed to justify the cost of maintaining them.

And unlike many other dams in the region, they provided no way for fish to pass, blocking one of the nation's richest historical salmon runs.

The push to remove the dams gathered momentum in the 1980s, and in 1992, Congress passed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act, allowing for their removal. Two decades passed before stimulus funds approved under President Obama helped pay the $325-million cost.

Since removal began in 2011, Ritchie said, nearly 60% of the sediment behind the dams has made its way down the river, most of it in the fall of 2013, about a year before the last pieces of concrete were hauled away. Nearly a third of that has settled at the mouth, instantly reversing a long-standing pattern of erosion on the coastline.

It may be Washington's newest beach. Or maybe it was only misplaced. For a century. Behind the dams.

That, Ritchie said, made for "a pent-up beach."

But nothing about the Elwha is pent-up any longer.

The flow of sediment is smaller now and much of the sediment remains in the riverbed, raising the water level. Scientists predicted that would happen. They also predicted that they would not be able to predict everything.

In November, the river rushed past its banks in a big storm, washing out a crucial road inside the park and two campgrounds that probably will not be rebuilt.

Until the road is repaired — a temporary fix is expected by this summer — reaching a new overlook that the park built at the site of the former Glines Canyon Dam requires hiking or bicycling at least six miles each way.

Thus setting the Elwha free has made it harder to reach in places, and for the National Park Service to show off one of the boldest and most expensive endeavors in its 100-year history.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels "We really want to get the road open because we really want people to see this," said Barb Maynes, a spokeswoman for the park.

But Maynes and others noted that restoring wildness — and accepting the consequences — was the idea from the beginning.

"It's definitely a counterpoint to the trend you see in a lot of other places, including on the peninsula," Ritchie said. "It's nice to see that sometimes nature wins."

About 80% of the river's course is in the park, but not the very last of it — not the newly formed beach. Where it meets the strait, the river also meets the small coastal reservation of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

The tribe, which has fished here for centuries, has opposed the dams since they were built. Now that its eroded coast is being replenished, prompting new interest and new visitors, the tribe has joined other groups that are planning to build permanent public access to the beach, away from the reservation and do restoration work.

The effort is led by the Coastal Watershed Institute, a nonprofit based here that recently received about $1.5 million in grants to help buy land on the east side of the river mouth to provide access and remove large rocks put in place long ago, ostensibly to protect the shore. Now sediment delivered by the Elwha will help do that.

Anne Shaffer, the institute's executive director and lead scientist, stood on the new beach on a recent weekend and recalled the many years of studying and modeling and imagining before the dams came down.

"We knew this was supposed to happen," she said. "But seeing it was completely different. It's going to be a very dynamic place for a while."

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels

Removal of 4 Dams to Reopen 420 Miles of Historic Salmon Habitat on Klamath River April 7, 2016 It’s been 115 years since the first of six dams began regulating flows on the Klamath River, which runs from the high desert of eastern Oregon to the northern California coast.

By 2020 most of them will be gone—and the river’s once-abundant salmon runs hopefully on the rebound—if two new agreements between tribal, state and federal governments, the operator and other stakeholders work out as planned.

On Wednesday, standing before the mouth of the Klamath River on the Yurok Reservation in California, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that the federal departments of the interior and commerce, along with the states of Oregon and California and the Karuk and Yurok tribes, have signed a new agreement with electric power company PacifiCorp to decommission and remove four hydropower dams along the Klamath River.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels The agreement creates a “path forward for the largest river restoration in the history of the United States,” along with “the largest dam removal project in the history of our nation,” Jewell said.

The new pact will allow PacifiCorp to take three dams in California—Copco 1, Copco 2 and the Iron Gate Dam—and the John C. Boyle Dam in Oregon out of service by using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s established licensing process for hydropower.

PacifiCorp’s license to operate the dams expired in 2006. An earlier agreement to authorize their removal, created in 2010, required Congressional approval and expired at the end of 2015 after Congress adjourned without enacting it.

“From the company’s point of view, we have the same agreement [today] that we negotiated since 2008,” said Bob Gravely, a spokesperson for PacifiCorp. “This is simply a way to continue pursuing it without needing involvement from Congress.”

The second agreement commits the state and federal governments to assisting farmers and ranchers in the river’s upper basin with the likely financial and regulatory impacts of returning fish runs, which will need to be protected from irrigation infrastructure.

While the Klamath River’s runs of spring and fall Chinook salmon have not been formally declared endangered, they have been faltering for years. And since 1997, the Klamath River run of coho salmon has been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Southern Oregon’s John C. Boyle Dam is one of four Klamath River dams that will be removed by 2020.

May 2016 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2016– Transitioning from Fossil Fuels This year’s salmon runs are expected to hit historic lows, as drought and the impacts of climate change intensify the effects of poor river conditions created by the dams.

“By removing dams we’re reopening hundreds of miles of spawning habitat and dramatically improving water quality,” said Craig Tucker, natural resources policy advocate for the 4,000-member Karuk Tribe of California, which has signed on to the new agreement. “The Karuk, and the Yurok and other people in this basin are salmon people. Their cultures, their economies, their religion, all rely upon the return of the salmon.”

The removal of the four dams will be the necessary first step in restoring the river’s fish habitat, Tucker said, but much more will need to be done, including restoration of marshes and other wetlands in the upper basin.

Lack of salmon has led many Karuk to consume a more Western diet, Tucker said, leading to rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity in the tribe that outpace national averages. “Historically, research shows that Karuk consumed 1.2 pounds of salmon per person per day. Now we’re lucky if each person gets four pounds a year,” he said.

The absence of the salmon has also harmed the tribe’s religious practices, including one ceremony tied to the arrival of the first spring Chinook. “The spring salmon is probably the most at-risk run of salmon in the river,” Tucker said. “You can’t have that ceremony without salmon.”

Hosts of other important ceremonies traditionally “feed everyone with salmon who comes and if there are no fish, they can’t meet that obligation,” Tucker added. “It would be like if the Pope didn’t have enough wine and crackers for mass.”

“We see removal of these dams as the single biggest act of restoration that can be carried out on the Klamath,” Tucker said. “I would assert that it’s the biggest salmon restoration project in U.S. history.”