Legacy - June 2013

Issue 20

June 2013

Legacy Š Wild Game Fish Conservation International

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

Wild Game Fish Conservation International Mature Subject Matter

Open pen salmon feedlots: Weapons of Mass Destruction Instruments of Death Chemical and Biological Warfare

Guilty as charged Murder in the first degree!

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

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

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

LEGACY features wild game fish conservation projects, fishing adventures, accommodations, equipment and more. Your photos and articles featuring wild game fish from around planet earth are welcome for possible inclusion in an upcoming issue of LEGACY. Your “Letters to the Editor” are encouraged.

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

Wild Game Fish Conservation International Founders

Bruce Treichler

Jim Wilcox

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

Contents Commentary ______________________________________________________________________________________ 7  WGFCI Outreach via Legacy and Facebook _____________________________________________________________ 8

Community Activism, Education and Outreach: _____________________________________________________ 9     

Leave this world better than when you found it __________________________________________________________ 9 Wild Pacific Salmon Need You – Salmon Are Sacred ____________________________________________________ 10 Salmon Confidential: View documentary, Sign up for salmon, Community outreach, Donate, More _________ 11 About Salmon Confidential ___________________________________________________________________________ 12 B.C.’s salmon farm foes want answers from NDP leader Adrian Dix after handing him petition _____________ 13

 OLYMPIA CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED ____________________________________________________________ 14

Fundraising: Wild Game Fish Conservation ________________________________________________________ 15  Wild Salmon Forever – Spirit of Wild Salmon Gala ______________________________________________________ 15  Annual Duck Dash hosted by the Lacey Rotary _________________________________________________________ 16

Seafood consumption: Food safety and health _____________________________________________________ 17      

Food for thought _____________________________________________________________________________________ Enjoy seasonal wild Pacific salmon dinners at these fine restaurants:____________________________________ PROUD TO SUPPORT WILD SALMON – Original art by Leanne Hodges __________________________________ Wild Salmon Supporters – View entire list here _________________________________________________________ In Canada, Smoked Fish Recalled for Possible Clostridium Botulinum ___________________________________ Anisakis simplex; Overview ___________________________________________________________________________

17 18 19 20 21 22

 Previously Undisclosed Documents Reveal Requests by Several Companies to Obtain Government Approval to Grow Controversial Salmon in U.S. Facilities _______________________________________________  Exposed: Why You Should Boycott Farmed Salmon ____________________________________________________  ACTION ALERT: Frankenfish Could Be Approved Today! _______________________________________________  Eat the board ________________________________________________________________________________________  Sweden sells toxic Baltic salmon to EU: report _________________________________________________________  Top 10 most unhealthy, cancer-causing foods - never eat these again! ___________________________________

24 26 26 28 29 31

Impacts of open pen salmon feedlots ______________________________________________________________ 33       

Piscine Reovirus: Part 1 – by Ray Grigg________________________________________________________________ Piscine Reovirus Pt. 2: Evolution of a New Salmon Virus ________________________________________________ Salmon Farmers Association says BC can have both wild salmon and farmed salmon ____________________ Scientists Are Divided Over Threat to Pacific Northwest Salmon _________________________________________ Resurgent Chile projects record salmon production ____________________________________________________ Dr. Alexandra Morton Talks: Video series ______________________________________________________________ Morton, Ecojustice launch lawsuit over transfer of diseased salmon _____________________________________

33 35 37 40 42 43 44

 CHILE - Sea lice spreads in salmon farms _____________________________________________________________ 45  The Rosette Agent: Monitoring a New Threat in Britain's Rivers__________________________________________ 46  Has a virus jumped species? __________________________________________________________________________ 48  Campaigners warn against rise of the 'mega-farms': Could massive pig, fish and dairy units harm the environment? ________________________________________________________________________________________ 49  Cermaq: Open pen salmon feedlot vaccination program ________________________________________________ 50  Salmon farms that shoot seals to be identified _________________________________________________________ 51  Almost 150 seals shot under licence ___________________________________________________________________ 53

Legacy – June 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Salmon!  Genetically engineered salmon company expects U.S. regulatory OK in 2013 _____________________________ 56  GM salmon's global HQ – 1,500m high in the Panamanian rainforest _____________________________________ 57

Energy production and wild game fish: Oil, Coal, Hydropower, Wind, Natural Gas ____________________ 59 Oil – Drilled, Fracked, Tar Sands _________________________________________________________________________ 60  China's largest bank in deal to finance Kitimat refinery __________________________________________________ 60  Keystone XL pipeline 'needs to go ahead,' Harper tells U.S. _____________________________________________ 62  The tyranny of the tar sands __________________________________________________________________________ 63  Harper’s Shell Game – Why Tar Sands Pipeline s are not in Canada’s National Interest ____________________ 65  West Coast oil pipelines still face hurdles after Liberals' B.C. election win May 15, 2013 ___________________ 66  Oil by rail plan aired, protesters show _________________________________________________________________ 67 Coal ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 69  Surrey coal-handling project to get more public scrutiny: Port Metro Vancouver __________________________ 69  A rancorous scrap over plans to send American coal to Asia ____________________________________________ 71  Kinder Morgan drops plans to build coal export terminal at Port of St. Helens industrial park ______________  Wyoming governor opposes Washington, Oregon push to consider global effect of coal exports __________  Environmentalist Discusses Impacts of Coal Facilities __________________________________________________ Hydropower ____________________________________________________________________________________________

73 75 76 78

    

78 81 82 83 84

Emergency dam plans need a look ____________________________________________________________________ Study of Controversial Dam Reveals Hidden Dependence on Rainforest__________________________________ China gives environmental approval to country's biggest hydro dam_____________________________________ So, is anyone listening to what dams’ owner has been saying? __________________________________________ Did a giant dam cause China’s latest earthquake? ______________________________________________________

Government action/inaction and wild game fish ____________________________________________________ 85    

Escaped farmed salmon in local rivers; 900,000 seals harvested for meat and skins_______________________ Healthy choice — farm-raised Atlantic salmon__________________________________________________________ ISA in a Chile with new solutions…and big challenges __________________________________________________ Seattle opposes genetically modified salmon __________________________________________________________

85 86 87 88

Mining and wild game fish ________________________________________________________________________ 89  Bristol Bay: Largest Salmon Fishery vs Giant Mine Proposal ____________________________________________ 89  Alaska's Bristol Bay wild salmon fishery valued at $1.5 billion ___________________________________________ 91  Fortune Minerals needs to abandon its mine plan _______________________________________________________ 93  Sea-Swallow’d _______________________________________________________________________________________ 94

Pesticides, pollution and wild game fish ___________________________________________________________ 95  Fish company investigated after salmon farm pollutes Scottish loch _____________________________________ 95  Aquaculture company ordered to pay $500K for pesticide use ___________________________________________ 97

Wild game fish management ______________________________________________________________________ 99  Debut of Fishileaks leads to lawsuit against Fish & Wildlife Agency ______________________________________ 99

Local Conservation Projects _____________________________________________________________________ 101  Petition to ban open pen salmon feedlots in British Columbia delivered with 68,000+ signatures __________ 101  Thousands of Salmon Hatching in China Creek ________________________________________________________ 102

Conservation-minded businesses – please support these fine businesses __________________________ 103  Dave and Kim Egdorf’s Western Alaska Sport Fishing _________________________________________________ 103

Legacy – June 2013 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2013 – Year of the Wild Salmon!  Riverman Guide Service – since 1969 _________________________________________________________________ 104  Charterboat Slammer – Dep Sea Charters – Westport, Washington______________________________________ 105

Attention Conservation-minded Business Owners _________________________________________________ 107 WGFCI endorsed conservation organizations: _____________________________________________________ 107 Featured Artists: ________________________________________________________________________________ 108  Leanne Hodges: “We Need Wild Salmon” _____________________________________________________________ 108  Gary Haggquist: “Lifeblood” Video ___________________________________________________________________ 109  Twyla Roscovich: Dear Marine Harvest Part 1 Part 2 _______________________________________________ 110  Calgary muzzles artists critical of tar sands ___________________________________________________________ 111

Featured Fishing Photos: ________________________________________________________________________ 112  2013 All Ages Fishing Derby _________________________________________________________________________ 112

Video Library – conservation of wild game fish ____________________________________________________ 113 Final Thoughts: _________________________________________________________________________________ 114

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

Legacy Forward The June 2013 issue of Legacy marks twenty consecutive months of our web-based publication, the watchdog journal published by Wild Game Fish Conservation International. As usual, no holds are barred in this issue.

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Treichler

James E. Wilcox Wild Game Fish Conservation International

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

Commentary Jim Wilcox, publisher Legacy is published to communicate the diverse benefits of our planet’s wild game fish and to expose issues that negatively impact them and their ecosystems.

As recreational fishermen, we at WGFCI have conservation-based biases developed over the past fifty plus years. We do, however, include articles and quotes in Legacy from corporations and elected officials that may not agree with our positions.

The following is a recent letter sent by WGFCI to the CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies (CFHS): Dear Ms. Cartwright, As CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies (CFHS), you no doubt are aware of the animal health issues associated with open pen salmon feedlots sited in British Columbia's marine environments; the same environments utilized by wild Pacific salmon of Canadian and US origin, several species of marine mammals including whales, sea lions, seals, dolphins and otters as well as a whole host of sea birds.

The conditions that feedlot salmon live in are deplorable at best - massive numbers of fish enclosed in restrictive pens, swimming in their own excrement and a combination of chemicals while dying from deadly salmon diseases and parasites (sea lice). At the same time hundreds, if not thousands of marine mammals are shot by salmon feedlot operators while other marine mammals and sea birds drown in the salmon nets.

The diseases and parasites that are greatly amplified via open pen salmon feedlots are spread to wild Pacific salmon and anadromous trout that migrate past these pens as smolts and again when they return as adults. Many do not survive this journey due directly to the impacts of these open pen salmon feedlots.

Of course, these practices are inhumane and must end. Their impacts to wild salmon and trout impact all wildlife that rely on these BC icons as well as cultures, communities and economies supported by wild salmon.

Your help to reverse the nightmare associated with open pen salmon feedlots sited in BC's uniquely productive marine ecosystems would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, Ms. Cartwright.

Jim

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

 WGFCI Outreach via Legacy and Facebook

The May issue of Legacy is being read in these countries

4,400+ WGFCI Facebook friends

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

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

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

 Wild Pacific Salmon Need You – Salmon Are Sacred

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

 Salmon

Confidential: View documentary, Sign up for salmon, Community outreach, Donate, More

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

ď ś About Salmon Confidential April 24, 2013 Apparently Mr. Roberts saw a different movie (Salmon Confidential) from the rest of us. This is consistent, as he apparently read a different version of the Cohen Commission report as well.

He says Judge Cohen concluded that the "data presented during this Inquiry did not show the salmon farms were having a significant negative impact on Fraser River sockeye". This is not one of Judge Cohen's conclusions, but is instead a comment on the available research. This comment is followed up by "However, as noted above, the statistical power of the database....was too low to rule out significant negative impact."

On the same page of the report Justice Cohen states, "Given the risk of serious harm posed by salmon farms to Fraser River sockeye, DFO needs to ensure that existing farm sites conform to the most up-to date knowledge to ensure that risks are minimal."

Apparently Mr. Roberts didn't read that statement.

Keeping in mind that the Cohen Commission was not set up to investigate the aquaculture industry specifically, but to determine the causes of the loss of salmon in the Fraser River, it still managed to get very specific in its recommendations concerning the fish farms, as follows: "Beginning immediately and continuing until at least September 30, 2020, the DFO should ensure that: -The maximum duration of any license issued under the Pacific Aquaculture Regulations for a net-pen salmon farm in the Discovery Islands ...does not exceed one year: -DFO does not issue new licenses for net-pen salmon farms in the Discovery Islands: and -DFO does not permit increases in salmon farm production at any existing net-pen salmon farm in the Discovery Islands.

The Cohen Report is adamant that we need to apply the Precautionary Principle to our approach to the fish farms.

Considering the restrictive terms of the commission's mandate, the level of the recommendations is surprising, and points to serious issues in this industry.

When faced with the potential loss of an iconic species such as Pacific salmon, and the ramifications of its demise, we must ensure that we do not careen onward on the path that will lead to destruction, simply because the data is incomplete.

Mr. Roberts, unlike those he is criticizing, has a definite financial interest in the fish farming industry.

As an employee of Marine Harvest, the giant Norwegian owned company that owns many of the fish farms on our coast, he has a vested interest in having no restrictions on the fish farms.

If his industry survives at the cost of the wild salmon and the entire ecostructure and economic system that supports, we are all major losers. See the film, read the actual Cohen Report, and make your own decisions. Do not trust information you receive from either side without questioning.

Jim Rosgen Sointula

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

 B.C.’s

salmon farm foes want answers from NDP leader Adrian Dix after handing him petition May 11, 2013

Kwanwah'tala Galis: "He's a klik'sam and a sith'lam," in my language: "He's a liar and a snake!" How could anyone trust him? In my culture, this would be considered: Dishonoring and dishonorable, when they aren't able to tell the truth. We need to watch out for the friends of Foreign Atlantic Salmon companies, businesses, corporations and governments, especially parties who accept handouts of domestic currencies from foreign entities: something's fishy here - Farm Fishy!

COQUITLAM, B.C. — Salmon farming opponents in British Columbia were disappointed with the response they received from NDP Leader Adrian Dix when they tried to make their concerns an election issue.

They presented him with a 68,600-name petition today at a campaign event in Coquitlam calling for the end to what they call the feedlot expansion of fish farming on the province’s coast.

Chilliwack First Nations elder Eddie Gardner told Dix the petition calls for a halt to coastal salmon farming licenses because many people believe salmon farming threatens wild salmon stocks by spreading deadly fish viruses and diseases.

Dix accepted the petition, but he did not make any statements about ending salmon farming.

Outside of the campaign hall where Dix was speaking and others were enjoying a pancake breakfast, Gardner says he expected Dix to say he supported their cause, but that didn’t happen.

Gardner says the anti-salmon farming lobby wants Dix to take a stronger stand on getting rid of salmon farming.

Dix later told reporters at a news conference that the federal government is largely responsible for salmon farming issues, but if British Columbians want a government that respects and protects the province’s coast they should vote NDP.

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

 OLYMPIA CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED May 22, 2013 7:00PM NORTH OLYMPIA FIRE STATION 5046 BOSTON HARBOR ROAD NE CURRENT STURGEON PROGRAM AND TUNA FISHING

Sturgeon Catch – Pacific Salmon Charters

The Sarah K – Pacific Salmon Charters

Program: Milt Gudgell of Pacific Salmon Charters in Ilwaco will be the guest speaker at the May 22, 2013, 7:00pm meeting of the Olympia Chapter of Trout Unlimited. The public is invited to hear Milt Gudgell’s two-part presentation on the “Current Sturgeon Program and Fishing for Tuna”. He will make a presentation on upto-date information on the Columbia River Sturgeon including all the issues surrounding the management efforts.

Additional discussion will identify fishing requirements based on recent legislation. He will discuss the complexity of developing and following management plans for Washington, Oregon and the federal government for our Lower Columbia River Sturgeon fishery amid concerns of a diminishing fishery resource.

A second part of his presentation will be “Tuna Fishing” Milt will present fishing techniques, locations and the appropriate gear to use when fishing for Tuna. This one could be a very exciting presentation since not many of us have fished for tuna, generally a 2-day trip out in the ocean.

Expect an opportunity to ask questions and find out why things are they way they are.

Bio: Milt Gudgell Milt Gudgell is a licensed boat captain and corporation officer with Pacific Salmon Charters who has provided acclaimed fishing charter services sturgeon, salmon, halibut, tuna, and a variety of rockfish since 1985.

Counting his personal efforts with rod and reel, Milt has logged over forty years of fishing and charter service experience. Now managing eight charter boats, ranging from 36 to 55 feet in length, his concerns for customer service is a key value to the corporation.

Milt, with his concerns for the fisheries resource, is a high level member of numerous committees concerning the fisheries resources for the recreational fisherman and the commitment to the continuation of our resource species.

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

Fundraising: Wild Game Fish Conservation

 Wild Salmon Forever – Spirit of Wild Salmon Gala

W ild Game Fish Conservation International and our associates around planet Earth welcome Wild Salmon Forever to the growing wild game fish conservation community.

We wish you tremendous success now and in the years to come.

The Spirit of Wild Salmon ~ Gala Fundraising Dinner EDDIE GARDNER, of the Chilliwack Chapter of the National Salmon Feedlot Boycott, in partnership with Salmon are Sacred, is hosting The Spirit of Wild Salmon ~ Gala Fundraising Dinner on Saturday, June 1st, 2013, at the Ch’iyaqtel Community Center, 45855 Promontory Road, Chilliwack. The proceeds will go towards supporting the Boycott and creating greater awareness of the danger of wild salmon extinction due to pollution, sea lice amplification and deadly European viruses, all stemming from open net feedlots.

All food retailers are being encouraged to remove Atlantic farmed fish from their shelves and menus. Consumer power makes a difference… choose WILD salmon …and support sustainable wild fisheries for the benefit of your health, and that of marine and river ecosystems. We all have a sacred trust to save Fraser River wild salmon from vanishing… extinction is forever and we cannot let that happen!

Get Involved + Make a Difference Your involvement and support through sponsoring this gala event would be most meaningful and make a valuable contribution towards preventing the extinction of wild salmon from happening.

If you wish to be the event partner or a sponsor at a level to suits you and reflects your commitment to make a difference, please download The Spirit of Wild Salmon ~ Gala Fundraising Dinner: Sponsorship Opportunities 2013, and complete the form then email it to Eddie Gardner.

For further information, contact Eddie Gardner at 604.792.0867 or by email.

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

 Annual Duck Dash hosted by the Lacey Rotary

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

Seafood consumption: Food safety and health

 Food for thought

Eating Feedlot Salmon is...

Gambling with YOUR Health What Happens in Norway Should…

Stay in Norway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Wild Salmon Supporters – View entire list here

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

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

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

 In Canada, Smoked Fish Recalled for Possible Clostridium Botulinum April 16, 2013 The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is recalling smoked fish products produced by Hooked Inc. because they may be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum bacteria. There have been no illnesses reported associated with the consumption of these products. The original warning was expanded to include more products and codes.

The first recall was for Cold Smoked Steelhead (may also be written as Cold Smoked Salmon or Cold Smoked Sockeye) with code A25 (or A-25; 04 25; 04/25; Apr 25; Apr 25, 2013; Apr 25/2013) and Cold Smoked Steelhead (may also be written as Cold Smoked Salmon or Cold Smoked Sockeye. Code on the last product is A31 (may also be written as A-31; 04 31; 04/31; Apr 31; Apr 31, 2013; Apr 31/2013). They were sold from Hooked stores at 888 Queen Street East in Toronto and 206 Baldwin Street in Toronto.

The updated warning was for Cold Smoked Salmon, Cold Smoked Steelhead, Cold Smoked Sockeye, Hot Smoked Salmon, Hot Smoked Steelhead, and Hot Smoked Sockeye. There were no UPC numbers. The products were sold at the above mentioned Hooked stores in Toronto up to and including April 10, 2013.

Toxins produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria can be fatal. Contaminated food will not have an off taste, appearance, or smell. For more information, call Kristin Donovan at 416-825-9805 or Dan Donovan at 416-880-1752. You can also call the CFIA at 1-800-442-2342.

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

 Anisakis simplex; Overview Herring Worm

learn more about names for this taxon

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

Brief Summary Read full entry Learn more about this article

Brief Summary First described half a century ago, anisakiasis (using the term in the broad sense) is caused mainly by the accidental ingestion of larvae of the nematodes (roundworms) Anisakis simplex and Pseudoterranova decipiens. Anasakiasis occurs worldwide, with a higher incidence in regions where raw fish is commonly eaten (e.g., Japan, the Pacific coast of South America, and the Netherlands).

Anisakis simplex is the most common helminth infection in humans resulting from the consumption of raw or undercooked fish (Pseudoterranova decipiens is less frequent but still common). Human anisakid infections frequently cause gastrointestinal symptoms, which may be associated with mild to severe immunological, usually allergic-type, reactions. In addition, some patients show moregeneralized hypersensitivity reactions, without any associated digestive disorders. Episodes of allergy have been described in association with exposure to even very small doses of A. simplex antigens and without the involvement of living parasites. Allergic reactions range from rapid onset and potentially lethal anaphylactic reactions to chronic, debilitating conditions. Dead, and occasionally live, nematodes were found to be not rare in a survey of fish served in Seattle sushi restaurants in the 1990s. (Audican et al. 2002; Audicana and Kennedy 2008 and references therein) Adult stages of Anisakis simplex and Pseudoterranova decipiens reside in the stomachs of marine mammals, where they are embedded in the mucosa in clusters. Unembryonated eggs produced by adult females are passed in the feces of marine mammals. The eggs become embryonated in water, and first-stage larvae are formed in the eggs. The larvae molt, becoming second-stage larvae, and after the larvae hatch from the eggs, they become free-swimming. Larvae released from the eggs are ingested by crustaceans. The ingested larvae develop into third-stage larvae that are infective to fish and squid. The larvae migrate from the intestine to the tissues in the peritoneal cavity and grow up to 3 cm in length. Upon the host's death, larvae migrate to the muscle tissues, and through predation, the larvae are transferred from fish to fish. Fish and squid maintain third-stage larvae that are infective to humans and marine mammals. When fish or squid containing third-stage larvae are ingested by marine mammals, the larvae molt twice and develop into adult worms. The adult females produce eggs that are shed by marine mammals. Humans become infected by eating raw or undercooked infected marine fish. After ingestion, the anisakid larvae penetrate the gastric and intestinal mucosa, causing the symptoms of anisakiasis.

(Centers for Disease Control Parasites and Health website)

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

 Previously

Undisclosed Documents Reveal Requests by Several Companies to Obtain Government Approval to Grow Controversial Salmon in U.S. Facilities April 25th, 2013

Center for Food Safety, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, and Food & Water Watch will join over 1.8 million people who have raised vehement objections, based on science, policy and law, to a proposal before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve genetically engineered salmon, the firstever GE animal intended for human consumption. The comment period ends Friday, April 26 at midnight.

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

The close of the comment period comes as documents disclosed through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request raise serious questions about the adequacy of the FDA’s review of the AquAdvantage Salmon application. Among other things, while the FDA has refused to look at the environmental impacts of these GE fish beyond the Canadian and Panamanian facilities proposed in the application, it appears that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already received requests to import AquAdvantage Salmon eggs into the U.S. for commercial production.

The information further reveals that scientists within the Fish and Wildlife Service questioned the FDA’s ability and authority to review the impact of genetically engineered animals, and agreed with prominent experts that a full Environmental Impact Statement must be conducted before any decision on approval is finalized.

On the Friday before Christmas last year, the FDA released its controversial Environmental Assessment, the last step before possible approval of the AquAdvantage transgenic salmon engineered by AquaBounty Technologies. When FDA first announced its intent to approve AquaBounty’s application in the fall of 2010, the public sent more than 400,000 comments in opposition. Now that opposition has grown to nearly 1.5 million people.

“The newly revealed disclosures are very troubling,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety “They raise the question of whether the whole idea of growing these genetically engineered salmon in Panama was a regulatory ruse by the company designed to get approval, while their real intent was to sell these eggs to U.S. companies to be grown in U.S. facilities. It appears as if the FDA will have to go back to step one on this approval process and assess the impact of growing these salmon not in Panama but in several locations around this country.”

“This application is the first of its kind, and precedent-setting,” said Earthjustice vice-president of litigation Patti Goldman. “It is imperative that FDA not ignore the public’s repeated calls for the careful, comprehensive, timely, and open environmental review that is promised by law.”

“The FDA process is obviously flawed, and already the market is rejecting genetically engineered salmon,” said Eric Hoffman with Friends of the Earth. “The vast majority of consumers say they won’t eat genetically engineered fish and grocery stores are rejecting it. The submission of nearly 1.5 million comments in opposition to genetically engineered fish is just another sign that there is no future for this fish in the U.S.” “Nearly 1.5 million people have commented to FDA from a broad spectrum of the public: consumers, scientists, salmon growers, doctors, students, ministers, chefs and Native American groups,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “FDA needs to put interests of the public ahead of those from the biotech industry, which appear to be GE salmon’s only proponents.

FDA must put an end to this regulatory mess and acknowledge that the environmental risks and lingering food safety issues don’t justify approving this product.”

The market has already started to reject GE salmon. More than 2,500 grocery stores are committed to not sell GE seafood should it come to market and 260 chefs across the country have signed on to a letter by Chefs Collaborative objecting to the transgenic fish. A variety of other groups also have voiced their opposition, including several indigenous groups and hundreds of fisheries and fishermen’s organizations.

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

April 25, 2013

 Exposed: Why You Should Boycott Farmed Salmon British Columbia’s pacific salmon, considered an essential species for the ecosystem, have been disappearing since the early 1990s. Biologist Alex Morton, who has followed and studied the decline for nearly 30 years, knows who’s to blame: fish farms. It seems that when commercial fish farms moved into the area, the wild salmon became infected with a number of life-threatening conditions, including parasitic sea lice, the highly lethal “salmon influenza” and other viruses.

The Canadian government is covering up Morton’s research and trying to silence her.

Today, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is set to approve the first genetically engineered salmon for sale in the U.S. Over the objections of more than 40 members of Congress and half a million U.S. consumers, the FDA says the GE salmon poses no threat to the environment, because the fish will never escape their “farms.”

Watch this full-length documentary, and you’ll know why this is a dangerous decision. And why you want to avoid factory-farm fish. Watch the documentary

 ACTION ALERT: Frankenfish Could Be Approved Today!

Flawed studies. Opposition from more than 40 members of Congress. More than half a million public comments from outraged citizens. Still, the FDA today could approve the first genetically engineered animal destined for our dinner plates, a salmon now widely referred to as “Frankenfish.”

Scientists say Frankenfish hasn’t been adequately tested for human health or environmental safety.

AquaBounty, creator of the AquAdvantage GE salmon, claims that the company’s process for raising GE fish is safer than traditional aquaculture. Yet documents released by the Canadian government show that a new strain of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), the deadly “flu” that has been devastating fish stocks around the world, contaminated the company’s Prince Edward Island facility in 2009. As a result, AquaBounty lost its “fish health” certificate, and was barred from exporting fish until the certificate was reinstated in November 2011. Conveniently, this information was missing from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s environmental assessment, released in December 2012.

If AquaBounty gets the green light for its Frankenfish, how many more GE animals will be on the menu? Untested? And unlabeled? Please sign the petition below. We’ll deliver the signatures before tonight’s deadline.

READ ENTIRE ORGANIC BYTES NEWSLETTER HERE

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

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

 Eat the board

Despite what people think about farmed salmon containing PCBs and various dioxins it is possible to make quite an appetizing dish from it if you follow these instructions very carefully.

Take two farmed salmon steaks - it must be farmed as the dioxins in it form an integral part of the recipe.

Marinate the steaks in a heaped teaspoon of the following herb/spices. garlic, ground whole peppercorn, oregano, basil, dill weed, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, rosemary, saffron, sage, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, tarragon, chili powder, celery seed and finally arrowroot. Marinate for two days.

Now carefully wire the fish steaks to a piece of pinewood and cook at gas mark 6 for approx two hours.

Now your dish is ready to be served. Remove the fish, throw it away and EAT THE BOARD.

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

 Sweden sells toxic Baltic salmon to EU: report May 8, 2013

Sweden is exporting hundreds of tonnes of potentially dangerous Baltic Sea salmon to EU neighbours, a new report has revealed.

Since 2002, Swedish authorities are required by law to inform consumers about dangerous dioxins found in salmon. Exporting Baltic Sea salmon to other EU member states was also banned at the time.

Yet an episode of Sveriges Television's (SVT) investigative news programme Uppdrag granskning set to air on Wednesday night reveals that the salmon is still being shipped out to EU consumers.

When sold across Europe, health authorities in the recipient countries are not required to publish information about how much of the fish a consumer can eat without potential health implications.

"The difference when compared to the horse-meat scandal is that this fish has long-term effects on people's health, which makes it a serious issue," Pontus Elvingsson, at the National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket), told SVT.

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

The 2002 laws came about after the EU introduced rules on how much dioxin is permissible in different foods. Dioxins have been linked to cancer, and research shows the toxin may affect human reproduction.

The EU, however, issued an exemption to Sweden as long as its authorities made an effort to inform the public about potential health risks.

One such guideline was to warn pregnant woman and children from eating Baltic Sea salmon more than twice or three times a year.

Yet while restrictions are in place, fishermen have continued to pull up bountiful catches of salmon from the Baltic Sea. In 2012, an estimated 250 tonnes of salmon was fished in Sweden alone, prompting SVT reporters to ask where the surplus was ending up after Swedish consumers had had their share.

SVT found that two Swedish whole-sellers had been reported to the authorities and that a stash of invoices proved that the salmon was being illegally exported to France and Denmark. The supply chain from there meant the fish would likely end up across the continent, both in supermarket aisles and on restaurant plates.

Wednesday's television show is set to air an interview with an employee at one of the two Swedish firms that have now been reported to the authorities. The man said the company had discussed whether the exporting was legal or not.

"But management said we'd keep selling and run the risk," the man reportedly told SVT. While a representative from one of their French buyers said the company ordered tests on the fish it brought in to France, Elvingsson at the Swedish National Food Agency said thorough analyses were both costly and time consuming, making him doubt the French claim.

"It sounds highly improbable," he told SVT. It is not the first time suspicions of illegal exports have been raised with the authorities. Two years ago, the Association of Leisure Fishers (Sportfiskarna) reported that a large catch of Baltic Sea salmon had been sold at auction in Gothenburg.

Secretary-General Stefan Nyström on Wednesday said the association's information had not been dealt with properly at the time.

"We raised the alarm with the Rural Affairs Ministry, the National Food Agency and with the municipality, but they brushed it off," Nyström said.

"Now we're talking about gigantic volumes of fish that is dangerous to eat. Dioxin isn't something to take lightly, it's one of the most dangerous poisons."

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

ď ś Top 10 most unhealthy, cancer-causing foods - never eat these again!

April 18, 2013 The statement "everything causes cancer" has become a popular hyperbole, and one that some people use as rhetorical fodder to excuse their own dietary and lifestyle failures, particularly as they pertain to cancer risk. But the truth of the matter is that many common food items have, indeed, been scientifically shown to increase cancer risk, and some of them substantially. Here are 10 of the most unhealthy, cancer-causing foods that you should never eat again: 1) Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

It goes without saying that GMOs have no legitimate place in any cancer-free diet, especially now that both GMOs and the chemicals used to grow them have been shown to cause rapid tumor growth. But GMOs are everywhere, including in most food derivatives made from conventional corn, soybeans, and canola. However, you can avoid them by sticking with certified organic, certified non-GMO verified, and locally-grown foods that are produced naturally without biotechnology (http://www.naturalnews.com).

2) Processed meats. Most processed meat products, including lunch meats, bacon, sausage, and hot dogs, contain chemical preservatives that make them appear fresh and appealing, but that can also cause cancer.

Both sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate have been linked to significantly increasing the risk of colon and other forms of cancer, so be sure to choose only uncured meat products made without nitrates, and preferably from grass-fed sources (http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/processedmeat050305.cfm).

3) Microwave popcorn. They might be convenient, but those bags of microwave popcorn are lined with chemicals that are linked to causing not only infertility but also liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes the perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in microwave popcorn bag linings as "likely" carcinogenic, and several independent studies have linked the chemical to causing tumors. Similarly, the diacetyl chemical used in the popcorn itself is linked to causing both lung damage and cancer (http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400701/Microwave-Popcorn-Threat.html).

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

4) Soda pop. Like processed meats, soda pop has been shown to cause cancer as well. Loaded with sugar, food chemicals, and colorings, soda pop acidifies the body and literally feeds cancer cells.

Common soda pop chemicals like caramel color and its derivative 4-methylimidazole (4-MI) have also specifically been linked to causing cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/031383_caramel_coloring_cola.html).

5) 'Diet' foods, beverages. Even worse than conventional sugar-sweetened soda pop, though, is "diet" soda pop and various other diet beverages and foods. A recent scientific review issued by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of more than 20 separate research studies found that aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, causes a range of illnesses including birth defects and cancer. Sucralose (Splenda), saccharin and various other artificial sweeteners have also been linked to causing cancer (http://www.dailymail.co.uk).

6) Refined 'white' flours. Refined flour is a common ingredient in processed foods, but its excess carbohydrate content is a serious cause for concern. A study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Mile Markers, and Prevention found that regular consumption of refined carbohydrates was linked to a 220 percent increase in breast cancer among women. High-glycemic foods in general have also been shown to rapidly raise blood sugar levels in the body, which directly feeds cancer cell growth and spread (http://www.naturalnews.com/001812_cancer_prevention.html).

7) Refined sugars. The same goes for refined sugars, which tend to rapidly spike insulin levels and feed the growth of cancer cells. Fructose-rich sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are particularly offensive, as cancer cells have been shown to quickly and easily metabolize them in order to proliferate. And since cookies, cakes, pies, sodas, juices, sauces, cereals, and many other popular, mostly processed, food items are loaded with HFCS and other refined sugars, this helps explain why cancer rates are on the rise these days (http://www.naturalnews.com/038071_cancer_sugar_sweets.html).

8) Conventional apples, grapes, and other 'dirty' fruits. Many people think they are eating healthy when they buy apples, grapes, or strawberries from the store. But unless these fruits are organic or verified to be pesticide-free, they could be a major cancer risk. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that up to 98 percent of all conventional produce, and particularly the type found on its "dirty" fruits list, is contaminated with cancer-causing pesticides (http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/list/).

9) Farmed salmon. Farmed salmon is another high-risk cancer food, according to Dr. David Carpenter, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany.

According to his assessment, farmed salmon not only lacks vitamin D, but it is often contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), flame retardants, pesticides, and antibiotics (http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/pressrelease.html).

10) Hydrogenated oils. They are commonly used to preserve processed foods and keep them shelfstable. But hydrogenated oils alter the structure and flexibility of cell membranes throughout the body, which can lead to a host of debilitating diseases such as cancer. Some manufacturers are phasing out the use of hydrogenated oils and replacing them with palm oil and other safer alternatives, but trans fats are still widely used in processed foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/010095_hydrogenated_oils_unhealthy.html).

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

Impacts of open pen salmon feedlots

 Piscine Reovirus: Part 1 – by Ray Grigg May 8, 2013 If the “research” recommendations of the Cohen Commission Report are to be implemented, then the study of “pathogens” emanating from net-pen salmon farms would be a useful place to begin.

Indeed, Justice Cohen is quite explicit that rigorous testing be undertaken on “the hypothesis that diseases are transmitted from farmed salmon” to wild species (Chapter 4, #68, p. 113B).

This is a fertile area for study. For example, Justice Cohen learned during a special reconvening of his Commission in December, 2011, that infectious salmon anemia (ISAv), is a lethal viral infection in wild salmon linked to the arrival of salmon farms to BC’s West Coast. Had he chosen to reconvene again four months later at the urging of Alexandra Morton, he would also have learned of another debilitating affliction likely brought to the West Coast by the salmon farming industry. A piscine reovirus (PRV), known to cause heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI), is a disease that so weakens wild salmon that they may be unable swim the oceans or migrate to their spawning grounds.

Although Justice Cohen didn’t receive evidence on PRV-HSMI, he already knew enough from his hearings to warn that “devastating disease could sweep through wild [salmon] populations… .”

Just as Justice Cohen anticipated in his Report, the presence of PRV-HSMI in BC’s wild salmon was not revealed by the provincial government or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the two agencies that are supposed to be monitoring the condition of marine health. Once again disclosure of PRV-HSMI came from Morton.

The credibility of her April, 2012, findings were supported by Professor Rick Routledge, a Simon Fraser University fish population statistician, whose research team found the piscine reovirus in 13 of 15 Cultus Lake cutthroat trout, a salmonid species (The Vancouver Sun, July 19/12). Such a virus might explain the mysterious collapse of Cultus Lake salmon runs.

Morton discovered PRV-HSMI when she purchased 45 BC-grown farmed Atlantic salmon from supermarkets in Vancouver and Victoria during February, 2012, and sent samples to PEI’s Atlantic Veterinary Lab for testing. Of the 45 samples, 44 tested positive for the piscine reovirus known to cause HSMI. The sequenced profile of the virus indicated it was 99 percent identical to the one found in Norwegian farmed salmon. If this reovirus is in BC farmed salmon in such high proportions, it is almost certainly in the wild salmon that swim past the farms on their migration routes, providing the most likely explanation for how the virus got to Cultus Lake cutthroat.

The implications for all salmonids are significant. As Morton explains, “The obvious potential that piscine reovirus is killing Fraser sockeye by weakening their hearts, rendering them less capable of fighting their way through white water rapids like Hell’s Gate, was never raised at the [Cohen Commission] Inquiry.

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

Despite the Province of BC apparently knowing it was common in salmon farms.” As Morton contends, this information about PRV-HSMI is vital if we are to explain why “over 90 percent of the Fraser sockeye die as they are swimming upstream.”

Notably, when Dr. Kristy Miller was giving evidence at the reconvened hearings of the Cohen Commission in December, 2011, she did mention that preliminary indications — made independently by her in defiance of DFO instructions to cease investigations — identified piscine reovirus in Chinook salmon in a farm in Clayoquot Sound and in some Fraser River sockeye. Since the focus at the time was on infectious salmon anaemia (ISAv), the evidence of PRV-HSMI seemed to pass as merely incidental information.

But it wasn’t incidental information.

It was and is extremely relevant, even though the presence of PRV doesn’t technically mean the clinical symptoms of HSMI are present. Reports from the provincial veterinarian pathologist lab as early as 2008 showed “congestion and hemorrhage in the stratum compactum of the heart” in farmed salmon, symptoms consistent with PRV-HSMI. And both the pathologist and the industry were aware of 75 percent infections rates of PRV in farmed salmon in 2010. Apparently this information was not conveyed to the Cohen Commission because the pathologist and industry did not consider the reovirus to be a health concern to wild salmon.

However, as Morton has pointed out in her website (alexandramorton.typepad.com), this opinion is contradicted by “a joint scientific publication by the Center for Infection and Immunity, Columbia University, New York, and by Norwegian government scientists” who warn, “It is urgent that measures be taken to control PRV not only because it threatens domestic salmon production but also due to potential for transmission to wild salmon populations.”

This threat was not new information. HSMI was first identified in 1999 in Norwegian salmon farms, according to Brandon Keim, writing in Wired Science on July 13, 2010 (“Salmon Killer Disease Mystery Solved”). He reported that a two year study had determined the cause of HSMI to be a 10gene piscine reovirus. “Infected fish are physically stunted,” Keim wrote, “and their muscles are so weakened that they have trouble swimming or even pumping blood. The disease is often fatal, and the original outbreak has been followed by 417 others in Norway and the United Kingdom. Every year there’s more of the disease and it’s now been seen in wild fish, suggesting that farm escapees are infecting already-dwindling wild stocks.” The disease, he noted, spreads like “wildfire” where fish are concentrated in high densities like salmon farms.

From the evidence presented to Justice Cohen, he concluded that such warnings are real and justified, and “that salmon farms along the sockeye migration route have the potential to introduce exotic diseases and to exacerbate endemic diseases…” (Chapter 2, p. 22A). “I therefore conclude,” he writes ,“that the potential harm posed to Fraser River sockeye salmon from salmon farms is serious or irreversible” (Ibid.) — a damning finding considering that, in his terminology, “Fraser River sockeye” usually means “all wild salmon”.

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

 Piscine Reovirus Pt. 2: Evolution of a New Salmon Virus Read part 1 of this story here May 16, 2013 Strange things can happen when salmon eat chickens. Such a diet is unprecedented and bizarre, a violation of the biological order that has occurred over millions of years of evolutionary history.

Nature, it seems, does the unusual when human ingenuity tampers with its traditions. And the consequences can be dire. But this is a complex subject that requires some context — an understanding of details first requires an understanding of principles.

Evolution is not as simple as we thought. Darwin's theory of natural selection only describes the slow “vertical” transfer of genetic material from parent to offspring used by large animals and plants. But the microbial world of bacteria and viruses also does a “horizontal” transfer of genetic material between similar and different organisms by a non-sexual means. This microbial capability — operating since early life on our planet billions of years ago — is a genetic free-for-all in which DNA is exchanged like goods at a swap-meet. These opportunistic organisms use this genetic process to optimize change in their individual traits and thereby accelerate evolution. Their only requirement is that they be brought together in close proximity.

We've already experienced the consequences. Many of our common human diseases have come to us from farmed animals through the horizontal transfer of novel genetic material — thanks to globalization and industrial agriculture, at least 30 have occurred since 1970. So the crowded conditions in poultry or salmon farms provide the perfect combination of density and stress that allows viruses to exchange genetic material with each other. The result can increase their virulence, allow them to infect a new species, or even create an entirely novel version of themselves — in taxonomy, a new genus. Which brings us to salmon and viruses.

The fish in the salmon farm in Norway that first began to exhibit strange symptoms in 1999 were infected with a new disease later identified as heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI). The symptoms were a pale and soft heart muscle, yellowish liver, swollen spleen and other swellings.

Infection rates in pens were as high as 20%, with morbidity close to 100%. HSMI was extremely infectious, soon spreading to 417 other salmon farms in Norway, then to facilities in the United Kingdom. Indeed, HSMI was discovered to be so infectious that it threatened wild fish that came in contact with the farms or with infected fish that escaped from them. Tests indicate HSMI has arrived in British Columbia.

PLOS One published a scientific article on July 9, 2010, entitled “Heart and Skeletal Muscle Inflammation of Farmed Salmon is Associated with Infection with Novel Reovirus” (Gustavo Palacios, W. Ian Lipkin, et al.), linking HSMI with this “novel” piscine reovirus (PRV). The article's Abstract claims to “provide evidence that HSMI is associated with infection with piscine reovirus”, presumably the way AIDS is associated with HIV — one is a full-blown version of the other.

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

The article claims that “PRV is a novel reovirus identified by unbiased high throughput DNA sequencing”, that “PRV is the causative agent for HSMI”, and that “measures must be taken to control PRV not only because it threatens domestic salmon production but also due to the potential for transmission to wild salmon populations.” Indeed, as Veterinary Research (4.06, Apr. 9/12) finds, “PRV is almost ubiquitously present in Atlantic salmon marine farms, and detection of PRV alone does not establish an HSMI diagnosis.”

If PRV is so prevalent and it does develop into HSMI as research suggests, this is a problem for salmon farming. But it strikes terror in those concerned about the health of wild salmon and the ecologies than depend on them. Indeed, PRV and HSMI may already be doing enough damage to be imperiling BC's wild salmon runs.

The clue to the origin and virulence of the PRV/HSMI virus and disease comes from the PLOS One article and the word “novel”. Two general kinds of the family of “Reoviridae” virus occur in the fauna community. One is an orthoreovirus, which includes both a mammalian and an avian strain. The other is an aquareovirus which is exclusive to aquatic animals. An analysis of the genetic material of the piscine reovirus identifies it as distinctly different from the two general groups, but situates it exactly between them, embodying half the attributes of the avian orthoreovirus and half the attributes of the aquareovirus. In other words, PRV is a new genus, designated GU994015 PRV, that has combined the traits of a bird virus and an aquatic virus. This probably explains why it is so infectious. But how did it become so “novel”?

The answer may be found in the chicken wastes that the salmon farming industry has been adding to its salmon feed — just the conditions that would provide viruses with the perfect opportunity to transfer genetic material horizontally. This would explain how the aquareovirus was able to exchange useful DNA with the avian orthoreovirus to develop a new virulent version of itself to infect fish, manifesting as the novel piscine reovirus and then with the clinical symptoms of HSMI. This suspicion is confirmed by a related article in PubMed (May, 2013) entitled “Piscine reovirus encodes a cytotoxic, non-fusogenic, integral membrane protein and previously unrecognized virion outer-capsid proteins”. According to the article, “Recent sequence-based evidence suggests that PRV is about equally related to members of the genera Orthoreovirus and Aquareovirus.” In other words, PRV seems to be a unique or “novel” virus created by combining the genetic material from two distinctly different viruses, one related to birds and the other related to aquatic animals — the first such amalgamation that has occurred since the divergence of the virus 49 to 52 million years ago (Journal of General Virology, Aug. 2002, vol. 83, no. 8, 1941-1951).

The discoverers of this virus, Gustavo Palacios, W. Ian Lipkin et al., are so confident of the causative relationship between PRV and HSMI that they have applied for a patent on the “immunogenic compositions and methods for inducing an immune response against Piscine reoviruses” (Pub. No.: US 2013/0058968 A1, March 7, 2013).

This preventative option might provide some hope for farmed salmon, but how exactly wild salmon would be immunized is a mystery. And a worrisome sentence occurs in another PLOS One article (June 5/12) entitled, “Atlantic Salmon Reovirus Infection Causes a CD8 T Cell Myocarditis in Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar L.). “The etiology of myocarditis (cause of heart inflammation) in humans remains unknown in most cases but an association with a viral infection has attracted a lot of attention over the years.”

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

 Salmon Farmers Association says BC can have both wild salmon and farmed salmon May 11, 2013

Salmon farming, its importance as a sustainable food supply and the important contribution we make to BC’s economy – are important discussions to have.

Unfortunately, Alexandra Morton’s recent Vancouver Observer column concludes that the price to pay for salmon farming in BC is the end of the wild salmon fishery. This is a false choice – we do not have to have one or the other, we can and do have both.

We care about wild salmon deeply. We are British Columbians and the people who work in wild fisheries are our neighbours.

Mary Ellen Walling Executive Director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association

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

We have made many proactive steps in 30 years of salmon aquaculture in BC to protect the natural environment where we operate.

The choice is not an either-or. We want to see the wild fishery and aquaculture in BC thrive and grow into the future. All jobs are valuable in BC, be they in aquaculture, agriculture, tourism or fishing. All help to enrich our province.

BC produces about 75,000 metric tonnes of farm-raised salmon per year. It’s a significant sector for British Columbia. BC represents about 3.5 per cent of the world’s farm-raised salmon production.

Norway and Chile represent between 30 and 35 per cent each.

While salmon farm production has stayed the same in BC, wild salmon populations have continued to vary year to year. Justice Bruce Cohen’s report, released in 2012 after years of investigation, clearly said there is no smoking gun when it comes to explaining what is causing Fraser River sockeye populations to vary.

The column raises a number of concerns about the impact of salmon farming on wild stocks. Salmon farmers take great care to protect the marine environment, including diligent monitoring of the benthic environment (seabed) as regulated by DFO as well as a commitment to using as few antibiotics and chemicals as possible.

These methods are working – the Cohen Commission noted that “wastes and chemicals discharged at salmon farms are unlikely to have any population level effects on Fraser River sockeye.”

Morton makes extensive mention of the possibility that viruses and diseases from farmed salmon may impact wild salmon. What she fails to mention is that fish health on salmon farms is excellent, with very low mortality.

As the Cohen Commission reported, “there is no evidence before me that diseases on fish farms are out of control or unusually high by industry standards.”

The column focuses on Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA virus) and suggests that it is here in BC but its presence is being hidden. It’s important to be clear here: ISA has never officially been found in BC. This is the conclusion of thousands of tests run by both independent and government laboratories.

It’s not unlikely that it could appear though –as the oceans are all connected and all kinds of animals and ships move around within them.

The rigorous screening that is going on means that should it ever occur it will be found early and dealt with.

As well, if it was here, salmon farmers would be the first to know because the virus has proven to be highly dangerous to farmed Atlantic salmon (while Pacific salmon have proven to be resistant).

But what about the “positive” tests mentioned in the column?

This is the most misleading part of the column because the tests mentioned were only preliminary tests. These preliminary results always require further follow-up tests to confirm the actual presence of the virus.

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

This is the world standard for detection set by the World Organization for Animal Health and it is extremely misleading to claim preliminary results as proof, while ignoring negative follow-up results.

This follow-up testing has never found ISA in BC. The column argues that importing Atlantic salmon eggs was playing “Russian Roulette with exotic disease”. We’ve had strict importation rules on salmon eggs for many years.

We want to follow the best possible precautions to ensure our fish are healthy.

That’s why biosecurity at every stage of rearing is so critical to our farmers.

The fish on our farms are very healthy – we have a high survival rate that is the result of close health monitoring, the development of vaccinations, the daily involvement of veterinarians in every stage of the production cycle and more.

Testing of our fish is routinely done by our companies, our regulators and independent laboratories.

We know very well what is on our farms.

What British Columbians don’t know well is what is in our wild fish, and that’s a gap in knowledge we’ve been advocating for more research on for many years.

The ongoing CFIA wild and farmed salmon monitoring program will hopefully help answer some of these persistent questions.

The column states, “Wild salmon are the bloodstream to the BC coast … However, wild salmon are also an unrecognized economic powerhouse.” We agree, but we disagree with the assertion that people have to choose one or the other, a wild fishery or salmon farming. We believe both industries can and do thrive, together, on BC’s coast.

In terms of economic impact, salmon farming generated $58.5 million of the province's GDP in 2011, and directly employs 1,700 workers.

That does not include secondary benefits and impacts, which are estimated to be over $800 million dollars and more than 6,000 jobs.

We are proud of this contribution to our province and our communities.

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

 Scientists Are Divided Over Threat to Pacific Northwest Salmon May 2, 2013 SEATTLE — Like mariners scanning the horizon from the crow’s nest, scientists have for years been on the lookout in the Pacific Northwest for signs that a dreaded salmon-killing disease, scourge to farmed salmon in other parts of the world, has arrived here, threatening some of the world’s richest wild salmon habitats. Most say there is no evidence.

A technician prepared salmon samples to be tested for viruses at a laboratory in Olympia, Wash.

But for years, a biologist in Canada named Alexandra Morton — regarded by some as a visionary Cassandra, by others as a misguided prophet of doom — has said definitively and unquestionably that they are wrong. Wild Pacific salmon, she has said, are testing positive for a European strain of the virus that causes the disease, infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A.

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

The virus, which has struck farmed salmon populations in Chile, among other places, is not harmful to humans who eat the fish, but could potentially pose grave threats in a part of the world where salmon plays a huge role in local economies and ecosystems.

If the virus, which is in the influenza family, mutates into a virulent Pacific strain in the crowded fish farms in British Columbia, where wild and farmed salmon are sometimes in proximity, fish populations on both sides of the farm/wild divide, Ms. Morton believes, could be devastated.

“It’s an uncomfortable truth,” she said.

But scientists and government testing groups in Canada and the United States have said repeatedly over several years that Ms. Morton’s findings were not sufficient to sound an alarm, and that the risks to wild salmon, even in the event of a fish-farm outbreak, are unclear. After rounds of government hearings and millions of dollars spent on research, the two sides are in an increasingly bitter standoff.

“We’re trying to re-create the situation that she’s saying is out there, and to date we cannot re-create the results,” said Dr. Penny Greenwood, national manager of the domestic disease control program at Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Now, Ms. Morton has new test results that she said are positive for the infectious salmon anemia virus — though not necessarily the disease — in farmed salmon she bought at a fish market in Vancouver late last year. At the same time, the biggest effort ever on the American side of the border to find the virus is shifting into high gear, with fish samples arriving in labs in Idaho, Alaska and here in Washington State.

“I think we’re probably pretty close to having a definitive answer,” said Martin Krkosek, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto.

The stakes are enormous, and not least for reputations. Salmon, in all their varied and usually pinkhued glory, have been an ecological anchor from Alaska to Oregon, intertwined with the region’s culture and economy since long before the arrival of Lewis and Clark.

The search for the virus raises questions that have swirled through commercial fishing and oceanography: Has the growth of open-ocean fish farming over the last three decades and the vast netted pens of Atlantic salmon from Chile to Maine and Norway to Canada created a reliable source of sustainable, inexpensive protein? Or, as critics contend, are the farms unsustainable because they pollute the seabed and because the close confinement of the fish raises the risk of disease?

Salmon farmers say that the broader controversy over aquatic farming has informed the narrower discussion of the salmon disease, and that Ms. Morton in particular has been out to get them, whether a virus is involved or not.

Adding further fuel — or at least, smoke — to the fire is a new documentary that accuses the Canadian government of deliberately covering up evidence that would support Ms. Morton’s conclusions. A Web site has since emerged that tries to debunk to the documentary.

“She says one thing, everybody else says something different, and therefore, in her view they’re all in collusion, and not doing a good job,” Ian Roberts, a spokesman for Marine Harvest Canada, the biggest salmon farming operation in British Columbia, said of Ms. Morton. He said his industry had sent upward of 8,000 samples for testing in recent years, without a single confirmed finding of the I.S.A. And he said the survival rate at his company’s salmon farms was better than 90 percent.

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

 Resurgent Chile projects record salmon production March 28, 2012

Just four years after a devastating outbreak of infectious salmon anemia (ISA), Chilean salmon farmers are expecting a new production record in 2012 — more than 700,000 metric tons (roundweight) of Atlantic and Pacific salmon. Ricardo Grunwald, chairman of the trade group Salmon of the Americas, made the projection during a tour of the Chilean farmed salmon industry earlier this month.

Farmed salmon companies based in Puerto Montt expect to produce 350,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon, 200,000 metric tons of trout (steelhead) and 150,000 metric tons of coho this year. This represents a dramatic shift from earlier production that was dominated by Atlantic salmon.

Nearly 30 years of dramatic production growth in southern Chile was interrupted in 2008 when the ISA virus was discovered in net pens around Chiloe Island, an aquaculture area south of Puerto Montt. Atlantic salmon production, which had been growing at an average rate of 25 percent per year, peaked at 650,000 metric tons in 2008.

Two years later, that total had been halved, as producers harvested fish early or shut down operations altogether to clear the waters of the virus.

While the ISA virus appears to have arrived with salmon eggs imported from Norway, critics both inside and outside the industry blamed it on the exponential growth, which led to overcrowded pens that created an environment susceptible to the virus.

“We weren’t paying attention to the long-term effects of these mega-farms,” said Adolfo Alvial, a highly respected marine biologist and consultant who has worked with the industry for three decades.

However, the industry has recovered with amazing speed. Many farms switched to coho and trout, which are less vulnerable to the virus. New government regulations were imposed, with industry support, halving the density at fish farms and instituting a broad range of bio-security measures designed to prevent the spread of any future outbreaks.

The number of farms in the Puerto Montt area has been frozen, and any future development will take place in areas further south, said Alvial.

“We were so arrogant,” he explained. “This little country in South America showing the world how to build a world-class aquaculture system. And we weren’t listening to the people who were telling us, ‘You’re taking too many risks, not enough research, not enough regulation.’”

Fortunately, he said, the same entrepreneurial spirit that fueled the rapid growth of the industry has been marshaled to respond to the crisis, allowing the farms to recover and set new production records in less than four years.

Alexandra Morton: “We weren’t paying attention to the long-term effects of these mega-farms,” said Adolfo Alvial, a highly respected marine biologist ... “We were so arrogant,” he explained. “This little country in South America showing the world how to build a worldclass aquaculture system”. And we weren’t listening to the people who were telling us, “You’re taking too many risks, not enough research, not enough regulation.’”

Which government is going to stop this from replaying in BC, because once again they are not listening to a highly respected biologist telling them you are taking too many risks. The tragedy in BC is that wild salmon are caught up in this stupid greedy myopic replay. There is no excuse.

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

 Dr. Alexandra Morton Talks: Video series

Dr. Alexandra Morton Marine Biologist

Alex Talks 1

Alex Talks 2

Alex Talks 4

Alex Talks 3

Alex Talks 5

Watch “Salmon Confidential” Here It’s important that YOU share this video with others http://salmonconfidential.ca/

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

 Morton, Ecojustice launch lawsuit over transfer of diseased salmon May 8th, 2013 Transfer of salmon infected with PRV virus into open-pen fish farm violates Fisheries Act, lawyers say VANCOUVER - The transfer of diseased salmon into to an open-pen fish farm operated by Marine Harvest appears to have violated federal law, Ecojustice lawyers said today.

Ecojustice, acting on behalf of well-known biologist Alexandra Morton, has launched a lawsuit seeking a Federal Court order declaring that the transfer of diseased farmed Atlantic salmon into waters shared with wild fish is unlawful.

“The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is standing by, while private companies put fish carrying disease agents into the ocean,” said Margot Venton, Ecojustice staff lawyer. “We think this is unlawful. It’s definitely a serious abdication of DFO’s mandate to protect the fish and the marine environment.”

Morton alleges that in March 2013, Atlantic salmon infected with piscine reovirus (PRV) were transferred into an open-pen fish farm operated by Marine Harvest in Shelter Bay, B.C., located along the Fraser River sockeye migration route. Marine Harvest was operating under the terms of a federal aquaculture licence that purports to give them the power to make decisions about transferring diseased fish into the ocean.

Heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI) is a severe disease that affects the muscles and heart of salmon. HSMI can weaken salmon to the point they are unable to swim up a river and reproduce. HSMI was first observed on Norwegian salmon farms in 1999 and spread quickly. HSMI is now thought to have spread to virtually all fish farms in Norway, affecting close to 100 per cent of farmed fish sampled. PRV has been recently identified in farmed Atlantic salmon in B.C. Scientists report that piscine reovirus is associated with and thought to cause HSMI. Scientists warn that PRV must be contained to prevent widespread infection of wild fish populations.

“PRV is an emerging and exotic virus, red-flagged by scientists in the U.S. and Norway as a pathogen that must be contained because it spreads so easily” said Alexandra Morton. “The Minister of Fisheries should have responded to the discovery of this virus in BC with measures to protect wild salmon, but instead he has given this Norwegian company permission to expose BC’s wild salmon to an exotic virus with a nasty reputation.”

The emergence of PRV comes in the wake of the Cohen Commission’s final report, which concluded that “salmon farms along the sockeye migration route have the potential to introduce exotic diseases and to exacerbate endemic diseases that could have a negative impact on Fraser River sockeye.”

Permitting Marine Harvest to place highly infectious Atlantic salmon on the Fraser sockeye migration route runs contrary to the recommendations of the $26-million Cohen Commission.

B-roll and photos are available for media use at www.salmonconfidential.ca/lawsuit A summary of key facts on PRV and HSMI can be found at: http://www.ecojustice.ca/files/prv-hsmi-summary-of-facts-may-2013/

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

 CHILE -

Sea lice spreads in salmon farms

April 19, 2013 The National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) confirmed the existence of 68 Atlantic salmon and trout farms with high caligus (sea lice) spread rate.

Under the Specific Caligidosis Health Surveillance and Control Programme (PSVEC Caligidosis), these centres had an average weekly load higher than nine caligus parasites per specimen.

Out of that total, 10 centres were farming rainbow trout and the remaining ones, Atlantic salmon.

Out of all the centres that were reported to have high caligus spread (CAD), seven were found to be undergoing the harvest phase while the remaining ones were in the fattening phase.

Out of all the centres, 51 are located in the Aysen Region while Los Lagos Region reported 17 facilities.

Among the companies that presented a higher amount of CAD are: AquaChile, with 15 of its reported centres; Australis Mar, with eight centres; and Los Fiordos, with seven centres, among others.

The report issued by Sernapesca reads that 61 centres were in the fattening process and only 7 were undergoing the harvesting process: Betecoi, Chidhuapi, El Pino, Fresia Weste and Lagreze Norte, owned by AquaChile; Benjamin, belonging to Camanchaca and Chillidque, to Congelados Pacífico.

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

 The Rosette Agent: Monitoring a New Threat in Britain's Rivers April 11, 2013

There are more than four million anglers in the UK and the sport generates an estimated £3.5 billion for the economy. But research by Dr Demetra Andreou and her colleagues at Bournemouth University's Centre for Conservation Ecology & Environmental Change has uncovered a new threat that could put many of the native fish species UK anglers rely on at risk.

The culprit is a single celled parasite called Sphaerothecum destruens; also known as the Rosette Agent. Dr Andreou's work has revealed that the parasite has the potential to cause widespread harm to many popular species of UK fish, including salmon, bream, carp and roach. With her results suggesting mortality levels of up to 90% in native salmon and 53% in bream, it could prove a nightmare scenario for the angling community. If the parasite got into the UK's aquaculture industry, the impact could be devastating.

Dr Demetra Andreou Evolutionary Ecologist Bournemouth University

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

"Here we have a parasite that could cause massive decline in native fish," says Dr Demetra Andreou. "Yet no one even knows which rivers it is in."

The problem, she explains, is that the fish die in small numbers, just a few each day. Such small losses in a river can easily go unnoticed as the sick individuals get picked off by predators, or the bodies get washed away.

"These parasites looked like one that had been found before in salmon in the US aquaculture industry," explains Dr Andreou.

Watch this here In the US the Rosette Agent had devastated salmon populations, causing up to 90% of salmon stocks to die.

Using laboratory studies, Dr Andreou and her colleagues set about trying to determine whether the sub-type of the parasite found in the UK could cause similar harm to UK fish species.

By infecting salmon, trout, bream, carp and roach with the parasite, they were able to accurately determine the impact the parasite could have on the fish without having to account for other changes in environment such as temperature and food, which can complicate studies in the wild.

They found that UK Atlantic salmon is just as susceptible to the parasite as their American cousins and coarse fish like bream, carp and roach were also susceptible to the parasite.

Despite this, very little is known about how many UK lakes, rivers and fisheries the parasite is present in. It does not feature on a list of parasites that the Environment Agency routinely tests for, but Dr Andreou and her colleagues hope to change that.

"One of the things we are trying to do is to get it listed on the Environment Agency's Novel and Category 2 parasites. This means that when fish are moved from one water body to another, they will check for this parasite as part of the health check."

The Environment Agency is already attempting to eradicate topmouth gudgeon, an unaffected carrier of the Rosette Agent, from UK waterways. The Agency has already removed hundreds of thousands of the three-inch long fish from English rivers.

"We are also developing a way of testing for the parasite in the water," says Dr Andreou. "By filtering the water we can extract DNA onto the filter paper and using PCR, we can detect whether the parasite's genetic information is in the water. It can help to narrow down the places where we should look in the fish community for the parasite."

Dr Andreou is also now focusing on understanding what conditions are needed for the Rosette Agent to cause an outbreak. She believes that as some species of fish are less affected than others, it is important to determine how different species compositions can influence disease emergence.

For more information on the parasite visit TheRosetteAgent.org

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

 Has a virus jumped species?

Watch Video Here

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

 Campaigners

warn against rise of the 'mega-farms': Could massive pig, fish and dairy units harm the environment?

May 12, 2013

Farming in the British Isles is on the verge of a dramatic step towards industrialisation with the establishment of "mega-farms" for salmon, pigs and cows, which opponents claim put the environment and human health at risk. The Government signaled its backing yesterday for largescale farms ahead of an announcement this week of a timetable for plans for a 25,000-capacity pig farm in Derbyshire. A decision on a planned 1,000-cow dairy unit in Wales is also imminent.

Pressure to meet growing demand for protein by radically increasing the size of farms has also spread to Ireland, where the authorities are backing plans to build one of the biggest salmon farms in the world in Galway Bay, doubling Irish salmon production at a stroke.

Farmers and officials insist the introduction of modern facilities offers a solution to Britain's voracious appetite for cheap meat by increasing production while maintaining or improving animal welfare standards and without affecting the environment.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "Increasing the efficiency of food production will help us meet rising demand for food. This can be done on any scale and in ways that actually deliver environmental benefits. Large-scale farms are required to meet the same environmental and animal welfare standards as all UK farms."

READ ENTIRE INDEPENDENT ARTICLE HERE

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

 Cermaq: Open pen salmon feedlot vaccination program

Don Staniford (GAAIA): “New from Cermaq's 'Sustainability Report' - Mainstream Canada vaccinates farmed salmon in BC against IHN, Furunculosis, Mouth Rot etc but NOT ISA or HSMI/PRV!”

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

 Salmon farms that shoot seals to be identified April 28, 2013 A last-ditch attempt by Scottish ministers to keep secret the identities of salmon farms that shoot seals has been rejected by Scotland's freedom of information watchdog, Rosemary Agnew.

A last-ditch attempt by Scottish ministers to keep secret the identities of salmon farms that shoot seals has been rejected by Scotland's freedom of information watchdog, Rosemary Agnew.

Salmon farms can apply for a licence to shoot seals to prevent them from taking fish The Sunday Herald can reveal that she has ordered the Government to name the individual fish farms by May 7. The argument that identifying the farms would put those shooting the seals at increased risk of attacks by animal-rights campaigners was not "compelling", she concluded.

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

Agnew's decision has been welcomed by environmental and animal-welfare groups, but attacked by the fish-farming industry. The Scottish Government said it was "disappointed" with the decision but would have to comply.

According to official figures, fish farmers shot 449 seals in 2011 and 2012 to prevent them from eating salmon. A further 443 seals were killed around the coast by salmon netting firms and river fisheries.

The Scottish Government last year refused to name the specific fish farms responsible for the shootings, claiming that shooters could be put at risk of direct action by protesters. In December, its arguments were dismissed as "tenuous" by Agnew, the Scottish Information Commissioner.

But in an unprecedented move in January, she reopened her investigation due to new evidence from salmon-netting companies. They claimed to have received threats from animal-welfare groups, including a death threat.

Now, however, Agnew has concluded that the evidence was not enough to deter her from enforcing her original decision.

She said: "The evidence does not provide a compelling argument that the threats are any more likely to occur or be acted upon because of the information being disclosed."

She added: "Retrospective information is unlikely to provide sufficient detail for threats to be the result of targeted action."

And she pointed out those who had made threats in the past were aware who shot seals and where.

The names of the fish farms licensed to shoot seals were requested by Don Staniford, from pressure group the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture.

He said that Agnew should be applauded for rejecting "government censorship". He called on fish farmers to stop shooting seals, and instead install anti-predator nets.

According to the Scottish Government, only one in five of Scotland's 215 active fish farms have predator nets. The government has not insisted on the nets because they can trap and kill other animals, such as otters and dolphins.

Libby Anderson, the policy director of the animal-welfare group, OneKind, said: "Public concern about the extent and nature of seal shooting is both justified and legitimate, and Scottish ministers have not advanced any evidence to convince the commissioner of a real risk to public safety if this information is released."

But Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, said: "Clearly, satisfying campaigners and achieving headlines is more important than public safety.

"We stand with salmon netters in our commitment to exclude and deter seals and to shoot only when all other measures fail. This is entirely legal and necessary to protect fish welfare."

The Scottish Government reiterated the "potential risk to public safety" from naming fish farms.

A spokeswoman said: "That risk is something that has now been acknowledged by the Scottish Information Commissioner, even though her final decision is to enforce the release of the information."

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

 Almost 150 seals shot under licence May 8, 2013

THE SHETLAND salmon industry has admitted shooting more than 140 seals during the first two years of the Scottish government’s latest licensing legislation.

Figures released under freedom of information rules show that Shetland’s Hjaltland Seafarms shot more seals than any other salmon company in Scotland during the first 18 months of the new seal licences being introduced.

Licences should only be issued to shoot seals as a last resort, however government reports show that less than one in seven salmon farms has installed anti-predator nets. A government spokesman added that other measures have been introduced to protect fish farms from seals.

The latest figures were released after the industry and the government spent the past year battling against freedom of information requests from anti-salmon farming campaigner Don Staniford.

The industry claimed that identifying individual salmon farms would make employees vulnerable to being targeted by extremist wildlife campaigners and threaten their business.

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

Staniford himself has called on UK retailers and the US government to boycott Scottish salmon.

During 2011 and 2012 salmon farms and netsmen throughout Scotland shot a total of 898 seals, after the government issued licences to shoot a total of 2,506 seals. Salmon farms accounted for almost exactly half of the Scottish figure.

In Shetland salmon farms alone shot 142 greys and three common seals, after licences were granted to shoot 229 greys and 16 commons, accounting for roughly one third of the seals shot by the Scottish aquaculture industry.

The government has identified the names of the salmon farms that shot seals between January 2011 and June2012.

During that period Hjaltland Seafarms shot 70 seals, more than half the total for Shetland.

At Hjaltland’s Laxfirth site, north of Tingwall, 17 greys and one common seal were shot, more than any other salmon farm in the country.

Hjaltland shot seals at a total of 19 different sites throughout Shetland, 17 of which have not installed anti-predator nets, including Laxfirth, according to government reports.

The government’s licensing guidelines state that seals should only be shot by a qualified marksman as “a last resort”.

The Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation code of good practice adds: “The destructive control of a particular seal should be considered only as a last resort, after all reasonable attempts have been made to exclude seals from farms.”

General manager of trades body Shetland Aquaculture, David Sandison, said the number of seals being killed by salmon farms was declining.

He said: “The industry continues to develop technologies and systems that help to keep predators away from fish farms, including net tensioning systems, cone nets, seal 'blinds', false bottoms and acoustic deterrents devices.

“There are however, occasions when individual seals and other predators evade these measures and cause significant fish kills or damage and loss to the farm.

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

“In these circumstances and as a last resort, the farmer is obliged to use the license he holds to shoot a seal.”

John Robins, of the Save Our Seals Fund, said: “It is ludicrous and shameful that the Scottish government is freely issuing licences to allow salmon farmers to kill seals when, by the governments’ own admission, the vast majority of these floating factory fish farms do not use proper anti-predator nets.”

No one was available from Hjaltland Seafarms.

Hjaltland Seafarms’ Laxfirth and Taing of Railsborough sites were in the news at the weekend as two of 12 Scottish salmon farms that had exceeded limits for releasing chemicals into the environment.

The two farms, along with a third identified as Holm, were reported by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency as having used excessive amounts of emamectin, the active ingredient in the sea lice treatment Slice after freedom of information requests were submitted by the Sunday Herald.

Hjaltland Seafarms website highlights the company has environmental accreditation from a wide range of organisations, including The Soil Association, The Organic Food Federation and the RSPCA’s Freedom Food labeling scheme.

Staniford said: “Consumers have blood on their hands when buying lethally farmed Scottish salmon – even RSPCA-certified ‘Freedom Food’ salmon and ‘responsible’ salmon certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and WWF.” On Thursday a Scottish government spokesman said Marine Scotland had requested SOI Ltd, the commercial arm of St Andrews University's Scottish Oceans Institute to undertake a survey of fish farms that had submitted applications for licences.

“The survey found that all fish farms seeking a seal licence already employ at least one and many a number of non-lethal measures," the spokesman said.

"Nearly all have tensioned nets, almost half use acoustic deterrents, a third seal blinds and a fifth antipredator nets. There are a range of views on the effectiveness of each of these measures but to date none have entirely eliminated the risk of seal predation.

“This week was the first meeting of the newly constituted Ministerial Group for Sustainable Aquaculture.

"It was agreed that the work of the Containment Working Group would include assessment of what more could be done, in addition to the existing work of Marine Scotland, on non-lethal methods for deterring predators, including seals.”

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

ď ś Genetically engineered salmon company expects U.S. regulatory OK in 2013 April 25, 2013 (Reuters) - AquaBounty Technologies Inc expects regulatory approval by the fourth quarter of this year to produce its controversial genetically engineered salmon, its chief executive said on Tuesday.

"There have been no new legal issues, no new regulatory issues, no new environmental issues raised," AquaBounty Technologies Chief Executive Ronald Stotish said on the sidelines of the BIO International Convention. "We should have approval before the end of the year."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is due to close a public comment period on Friday and will then likely take 30 to 60 days to review the comments, which include heavy opposition from consumer and environmental groups.

It could take another 120 days after that for the FDA to issue final approval, Stotish said.

"We're hopeful that the FDA will conclude the process," he said. "We can go on then and begin to grow our business."

The salmon, trade named AquAdvantage, would be an all-female population with eggs produced in a facility on Prince Edward Island in Canada and shipped to a "grow-out facility" in Panama, where they would be reared to market size and harvested for processing.

AquAdvantage salmon eggs are engineered to produce fish with the potential to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon. If it gets a final go-ahead, it would be the first food from a transgenic animal, one whose genome has been altered, to be approved by the FDA. Some have threatened to sue if the fish is approved. It would be the first genetically engineered animal commercialized in the food supply.

Stotish said he fully expected litigation to try to stop commercialization, but he said the FDA had been working to fully document the record on its assessment of the genetically engineered salmon to protect against court challenges.

Stotish said AquaBounty has explored legal recourse if the approval is not granted.

AquaBounty was close to financial demise as recently as last fall and lost more than $4 million in 2012. A new investor and a fresh $6 million in capital raised this spring has extended the company's life for at least another year and a half.

"This project has gone on far too long," said Stotish. "Our product has significant cost and economic benefits and we believe environmental benefits. Instead of importing 500 million pounds of salmon we can grow some of that right here. That is good for the consumer. We think that is good for our economy."

In a draft environmental assessment issued in December, the FDA affirmed earlier findings that the biotech salmon was not likely to be harmful and said the agency had concluded that food from AquAdvantage salmon was as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon.

Critics have said the genetically engineered salmon is a dangerous "experiment" and they have pressured the FDA to reject it. They have said the FDA has relied on outdated science and substandard methods to assess the fish.

Whole Foods Market Inc, Trader Joe's and other food retailers representing more than 2,000 U.S. stores have vowed not to sell genetically engineered seafood if it is approved in the United States.

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

 GM salmon's global HQ – 1,500m high in the Panamanian rainforest April 24, 2013 Supersized genetically modified salmon grown fast and fat and after years of wrangling, are ready for market – but is the market ready for them? And why is the firm hidden away in Panama?

Link to video: See inside a genetically modified salmon farm in Panama It is hard to think of a more unlikely setting for genetic experimentation or for raising salmon: a rundown shed at a secretive location in the Panamanian rainforest miles inland and 1,500m above sea level.

But the facility, which is owned by an American company AquaBounty Technologies, stands on the verge of delivering the first genetically modified food animal – a fast-growing salmon – to supermarkets and dinner tables.

The US government this week enters the final stages of its deliberations on whether to allow commercial production of the GM fish, with a public consultation on the issue ending on Friday .

Separately, a committee in Congress on Monday took up a bill that would outlaw GM salmon entirely – essentially destroying AquaBounty's commercial prospects in America. If approved, the salmon could be the first of some 30 other species of GM fish under development, including tilapia and trout.

Researchers are also working to bring GM cows, chickens and pigs to market.

In Panama City, government officials are upbeat about AquaBounty's prospects of getting its fish to market. "From what we know it is very close to being approved. There have been tests for many years and the last thing we heard from the FDA is that there is a very good probability that it is going to be approved in the near future," said Giovanni Lauri, the director of the Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama, ARAP.

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

Aquabounty's GM salmon fish farm in Boquete, Panama AquaBounty must still overcome formidable opposition from supermarkets and consumer organisations, environmental groups and commercial fishermen to sell its fish, however. The prospect of introducing GM fish into the food supply has generated enormous passions, with the FDA receiving 36,000 comments on the fish so far, most of them opposing the move. But after 20 years, AquaBounty's efforts to bring GM animals to the table are getting closer to reality.

There was little outward sign of history in the making – or of the enormous controversy surrounding GM salmon at AquaBounty's remote Panamanian location on the banks of the Calderas river in the western highlands of Chiriqui province. At the premises, visitors can see a fading green industrial shed and four large above-ground pools behind a high wire fence. On the site are up to 5,000 salmon, according to ARAP officials say.

The only evidence of AquaBounty's presence is a small round company decal next to the front door of the shack. Signs warn: "No pasar". The place seems deserted at first, then a guard suddenly emerges when visitors approach the wire fence.

The facility is leased from a commercial fish farm that produces non-GM rainbow trout for export to the US. Access to both farms is by four-wheel drive across a river bed or a rusting footbridge, kept padlocked to keep out intruders. It's a strange arrangement; the non-GM fish farm also raises organic trout for the upmarket supermarket Whole Foods. But the chain is deeply opposed to genetically engineered salmon, and said last month it would boycott the fish if it came to market.

Luis Lamastus, the owner of the trout farm and AquaBounty's landlord, has a different view: "These kind of fish are the future."

It was not entirely clear why Aquabounty chose this out-of-the-way location to raise GM fish for market, or indeed why it chose Panama at all – the company refused to comment for this article.

READ ENTIRE GUARDIAN ARTICLE HERE

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

Energy production and wild game fish: Oil, Coal, Hydropower, Wind, Natural Gas

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

Oil – Drilled, Fracked, Tar Sands

 China's largest bank in deal to finance Kitimat refinery ICBC will also provide engineering and construction help to build refinery April 18, 2013 Video Content Editorial Comment: Irreversible environmental catastrophes in the making: •

At the tarsands site

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Problematic transportation via pipeline or ra i l over sensitive a nd unstable ecosystems

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Air pollution at the refinery

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Problematic transportation via VLCCclass tankers through the often treacherous Douglas Channel

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Air pollution from Asian industries

Kitimat, B.C., refinery gets boost 2:13 China's largest bank will be helping to finance the proposed Kitimat refinery, which would process oil from the Alberta oilsands in B.C., instead of the raw bitumen being shipped overseas.

B.C. media mogul David Black said he has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) for the proposed refinery that is estimated to cost $25 billion.

Black, who was in Beijing on Thursday, did not say how much money ICBC will provide, only that the bank has expressed interest in loaning money to the enterprise, functioning as a co-ordinator to get other banks involved, and providing engineering and construction help to build the refinery.

"They’re very interested. There’s a lot in this for China and there’s a lot in this for Canada and B.C.," Black told CBC News. "This is a non-binding letter of intent. There’s lots of negotiating to do, lots of fleshing out for the agreement. But I am very sure that we’ll get there."

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

Black said more memorandums of understanding are anticipated between Chinese companies and his company, Kitimat Clean.

The Kitimat refinery — which should have the capacity to process the entire output of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline — will create 3,000 full-time jobs, 6,000 temporary jobs and generate large tax revenues for the government, Black said.

Kitimat Mayor Joanne Monaghan told CBC News she hopes the deal with ICBC goes through.

"You know once it's built, it's 2,000 to 3,000 permanent jobs at really good rates," she said. "I think we have to take a really good look at it."

The refinery plans to use a newly-patented "cleaner" approach to processing heavy oil. The FischerTropsch process is said to decrease greenhouse gases per barrel by 50 per cent.

In addition to the refinery, the project will include a possible pipeline between Edmonton and Kitimat, a marine terminal, and a fleet of oceangoing tankers for the refined fuels..

"We're on our way to something that’s going to fabulous for Canada and B.C. and we will reduce environmental difficulties for the planet," Black said. "We’re hopefully going to reduce the greenhouse gases by half compared to any other refinery in the world."

A political issue?

The refinery is being planned on a 3,000 hectare parcel of Crown land near DuBose, B.C. that is zoned for industrial use.

The DuBose site is 25 kilometres north of Kitimat, 25 kilometres south of Terrace, and would be approximately 40 kilometres from a pipeline from a planned Enbridge marine terminal on the Douglas Channel.

Environmental groups and members of Canada's First Nations have expressed concern about a pipeline moving crude oil across ecologically sensitive northern B.C. In March, Premier Christy Clark said she was in favour of the plan, while the B.C. NDP has repeatedly cast doubt on Black's ability to finance the project.

With the Liberals and NDP now in the thick of campaigning for the provincial election in May, the proposed refinery remains a sensitive topic.

While the refinery would mean the creation of a lot of new jobs, it also would involve an oil pipeline — something both parties have been trying to distance themselves from.

On Thursday, Black said he hoped the issue wouldn't become a political one.

"There's so much in this for B.C. I don't think we should let politics get in the way of this," he said.

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

ď ś Keystone XL pipeline 'needs to go ahead,' Harper tells U.S. May 16, 2013 Prime Minister Stephen Harper told an American audience today that the Keystone XL pipeline "absolutely needs to go ahead."

Harper made the pipeline pitch while taking questions at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

He laid out the case for why President Barack Obama's administration should approve the proposed pipeline, touting job creation prospects. Harper said the project will create 40,000 jobs south of the Canadian border and that can't be ignored.

"This is an enormous benefit to the U.S. in terms of long-term energy security," Harper said.

He said that greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the Alberta oilsands have dropped by 25 per cent over the last decade and that the government is continuing to invest in technology to further reduce emissions.

The prime minister also said that the amount of emissions from the oilsands play a small part in total global emissions.

"It's almost nothing globally," he said, adding later that Canada is a small contributor compared to other big oil producers such as Venezuela.

"I don't have to tell you there are probably reasons beyond just emissions why you would want to have your oil from Canada rather than Venezuela," he said.

Harper said when all the economic and other factors are weighed, it's clear why there is such broad support for the Keystone XL project in the U.S. "I think this absolutely needs to go ahead but you can rest assured that making our emissions targets including in the oilsands sector is an important objective for the government of Canada," he said.

The proposed TransCanada Corp. pipeline would connect the Alberta oilsands to the Gulf Coast and is one of the major issues dominating Canada-U.S. relations.

Harper and members of his cabinet have been making repeated trips to the U.S. over the last few months to push for the project's approval. But those opposed to it say further development of Alberta's oilsands and the pipeline will have damaging effects on the environment, including increased greenhouse gas emissions.

This week, in advance of the prime minister's appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, the government took out ads in U.S. publications and launched a new website to promote its sector-bysector regulatory approach to reducing emissions.

Harper took several questions on climate change, Canada's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and other topics including foreign investment and the conflict in Syria.

Anti-Keystone protesters were outside Harper's event.

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

 The tyranny of the tar sands In exploiting every last drop of tar sands crude, the government is impoverishing our country, its democratic freedoms and its future prosperity.

April 17 2013

A portion of the Shell Albian Sands oilsands mine is seen from an overlook near Fort McMurray, Alta.

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

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Canada is fast becoming a place that I no longer recognize. In the last year, federal policy has aimed to remove any obstacles to tar sands expansion using repressive tactics that undermine our longstanding democratic traditions. There seems to be no higher federal priority than doing whatever multinational oil companies demand and we – you and I – are being systematically denied any role in Canada’s natural resource future.

The Canada I know takes pride in its abundant natural resources – its vast and magnificent forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife. Sadly, this legacy that defines us as a nation is now servant to the appetites of oilmen. Our federal government is too willful and too blind to see that in exploiting every last drop of tar sands crude they impoverish our country, its democratic freedoms and its future prosperity.

Look no further than the current controversy over the “muzzling” of scientists in seven federal agencies, including the Departments of Environment, Fisheries and Oceans, and Natural Resources.

Or the $8-million fund that was established in June of last year to crack down on the advocacy work of charities – in particular, environmental charities opposed to the government’s tar sands agenda.

Speak to a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and you will learn that the recent Suncor tailings spill reflects yet another breach of treaty rights. That the blue water in which they once fished is now brown, that traditional hunting grounds have been destroyed, that elders and children are suffering from a number of illnesses, including leukemia, lupus and other autoimmune diseases.

Dismantling key environmental laws that protect our health and safety, as the federal government did in two 2012 omnibus budget bills, is wrong. Brokering a trade treaty that gives Chinese statecontrolled companies the right to sue Canadians for lost profits arising out of measures enacted to protect workers’ rights or to improve our economy is also wrong.

Whose interests is the Harper government serving? Not yours and not mine.

Want to ask the National Energy Board to better protect the environment from leaky tar sands pipelines? You can’t. Not until you fill out an eight-page questionnaire asking the Board to approve your application to then submit a letter on your views. This is what Prime Minister Harper wants: silence.

I serve as Board Chair for an organization called ForestEthics Advocacy. Last year, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver all but branded this group an “enemy of the state” for standing up on behalf of our democracy and environment and championing the rights of Canadians and First Nations. If “enemy of the state” has now come to mean reviving the Canada I know and love, a Canada that is free from the tyranny of the tar sands, then I embrace it. What about you?

Clayton C. Ruby, C.M. is a Canadian lawyer specializing in civil rights and constitutional law. He became chair of ForestEthics Advocacy's board in April 2012.

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

 Harper’s Shell Game – Why Tar Sands Pipeline s are not in Canada’s National Interest

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

 West Coast oil pipelines still face hurdles after Liberals' B.C. election win May 15, 2013 CALGARY — Oil pipelines to the West Coast may have a better chance of being built with the Liberals hanging on to power in British Columbia than had the New Democrats won Tuesday's election.

But a better chance is still likely a slim one.

The Liberals have taken a somewhat softer line on the Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain expansion proposals than the NDP, but that doesn't amount to a "green light" for either project, said Warren Mabee, director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University.

"It's not as though it's just a slam dunk. It's not as though this means that it's a done deal, everybody can sit back and relax," he said.

The New Democrats under Adrian Dix came out against Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain, full stop.

But Premier Christy Clark — whose Liberals won a majority government despite polls that predicted an NDP victory — has laid out five conditions under which her government would allow oil pipelines to be built.

Firstly, the projects have to make it through the regulatory review process. The second and third conditions have to do with spill prevention and response — on land and on water. The fourth pertains to First Nations consultation. And the fifth, arguably most contentious, one has to do with B.C. reaping some of the economic benefits of the pipeline.

On the final condition, Clark has argued the economic boost B.C. would get from the pipelines themselves does not equate to the environmental risks the province would take on.

In the months since a "frosty" — in Clark's words — meeting in Calgary to discuss the matter with Alberta Premier Alison Redford last fall, the question over whether Alberta ought fork over some of the oil revenues to B.C. remains unresolved.

The B.C. government has 17 days to submit its final arguments to the regulatory panel weighing Enbridge Inc.'s (TSX:ENB) $6-billion Northern Gateway proposal, which would ship 550,000 barrels of oilsands crude to the northern port of Kitimat, B.C. Kinder Morgan plans to file a regulatory application later this year for its plan to nearly triple the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline form Alberta to the B.C. Lower Mainland.

"I would be surprised at this point if the B.C. Liberals decided in favour of Enbridge, given everything they've said, given all the evidence that was presented during the hearings and given the staunch opposition of First Nations and local governments," said Eric Swanson, campaign director at the Dogwood Initiative, an antipipeline group.

Even if Clark's conditions are satisfied and her government does throw her support behind pipelines, there are other obstacles standing in the way.

Many First Nations groups along the route remain staunchly opposed, as do many B.C. municipal governments.

"It's never been only the provincial government making the decision. They've always been an important actor," Swanson said.

"We're hopeful still that today's government of British Columbia will stand up for our rivers and our coast."

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

 Oil by rail plan aired, protesters show April 24, 2013

Protestors wave to passing motorists outside the Aberdeen Elks Lodge Tuesday, where Greater Grays Harbor hosted a forum about a plan to ship crude oil out of the Port of Grays Harbor.

Grays Harbor could become part of the crude oil industry as soon as April 2014 if Westway Terminal Company is permitted to begin construction on an oil-storage facility this summer.

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

But the project is meeting some resistance, with some Grays Harbor residents expressing concerns that transporting oil to and from the port could damage the environment.

Protestors gathered outside of the Aberdeen Elks Lodge Tuesday, where Greater Grays Harbor hosted a forum about the project. About 15 people held signs and a giant, inflatable globe while waving at passing traffic.

“We really don’t want to see oil coming in here,” said protester Kevin Gavalis. “All we’d need is one big spill and we’d be ruined. So much of our local economy depends on fishing and oysters. And that would all be gone.”

But the atmosphere inside the lodge was markedly different — many of the 75 people attending the forum support the project. Callie White, a spokeswoman for Greater Grays Harbor, said her group approves of the Westway project, seeing it as something that will only improve the local economy.

“If we thought there was any conflict between the environment and the economy, we wouldn’t have gone ahead with our endorsement,” White said. “But it’s a free country and we have no problem with their protest, as long as it’s peaceful and respectful.”

Ken Shoemake, regional manager for Westway Terminal Company, presented a plan for the expansion of the company’s current Grays Harbor facility. Westway is one of three companies hoping to bring crude oil by rail to Grays Harbor.

The company doesn’t play any part in refining oil. Shoemake said other companies would pay to have their oil shipped to Grays Harbor, where Westway would store product and load it on barges.

The company is well equipped to protect the harbor’s environmental interests, Shoemake said. All but two of Westway’s 20 international locations handle transfers from trains to storage tanks to barges — all with considerable success, he said.

Protecting the environment “is part of our everyday business, it’s what we do,” Shoemake said. “We know that Grays Harbor houses a lot of fishing interests, you have oysters and you have migratory birds. And we’re sensitive to that.”

Showmake said the company hopes to build four new storage tanks, which would hold 200,000 barrels of crude oil. The added storage would allow the terminal to handle about 10 million gallons of crude oil each year. Westway also has plans to build new docks, which would allow the oil to be loaded on barges. The expansion is expected to generate 20 local jobs, and more employment opportunities for longshoremen. Shoemake said the company also plans on hiring local workers for construction.

“We’re hoping that we don’t have to import people,” Shoemake said.

Additions to the facility must meet several sets of guidelines from the United States Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington State Department of Ecology and other regulatory entities. Plans for the new tanks include seismic protection and a containment wall that would prevent oil from spilling into the harbor.

“We are not going to build something slipshod,” Shoemake said. “This is going to be a state-of-the-art facility.”

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

Coal

 Surrey coal-handling project to get more public scrutiny: Port Metro Vancouver April 23, 2013

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Responding to calls for more public consultation on a controversial new $15-million coal-handling facility proposed for the Fraser River in Surrey, Port Metro Vancouver says two open houses will be held in May.

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

The details of the open houses have not been worked out, but the plan is for project proponent Surrey Fraser Docks, BNSF rail line and Port Metro Vancouver to be on hand to answer questions.

The times and locations will be announced later.

Port Metro Vancouver, which is responsible for reviewing the project, said it called on Surrey Fraser Docks to hold the open houses because municipalities and individuals have expressed a desire for more public engagement.

“I want the public to have confidence that this port is doing an appropriate level of review on these projects,” Port Metro Vancouver vice-president corporate social responsibility Duncan Wilson told reporters Tuesday at a briefing defending the port’s review process.

Port Metro Vancouver has already came under fire by critics with environmental and health concerns for approving a $200-million coal terminal expansion in North Vancouver three months ago.

The critics said there wasn’t enough public consultation.

Critics, including health organizations such as the B.C. Lung Association, have said that before coal exports can be expanded, there should be consideration of wider health-impact issues including diesel exhaust from trains, as well as climate change.

Port Metro Vancouver says it cannot consider issues such as climate change under its review mandate.

Wilson said there have been general discussions with regional health authorities about port development, but health authorities will not be doing a health assessment on the Fraser Surrey Docks proposal.

Kevin Washbrook, the director of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, said the two open houses are not an “adequate response to the level of opposition.”

He noted that municipalities such as Surrey, White Rock and Vancouver have cited concerns or opposition to the project.

Washbrook questioned whether Port Metro Vancouver will reject the project even if the public is overwhelmingly opposed. “Unfortunately, if they are not willing to incorporate public input into the decision-making process, then the open house concept is simply a sales pitch.”

Port Metro Vancouver noted it has turned down projects in the past, citing the rejection of a Lafarge concrete plant proposed beside New Brighton Park in east Vancouver.

Wilson would not say whether this coal project was likely to be approved.

The new Fraser Surrey Docks facility will be used to transfer thermal coal mined in the western U.S. from rail cars directly to barges. The barges will carry the coal down the Fraser River and to Texada Island for loading onto ships for export to Asia.

The facility, planned to be built by early 2014, would operate for six years. It would ship about four million tonnes of coal a year with one train delivering coal each day. Each train would be more than two kilometres long, according to a draft environmental plan. There’s a possibility that exports would increase to eight million tonnes in the sixth year.

READ ENTIRE VANCOUVER SUN ARTICLE HERE

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

 A rancorous scrap over plans to send American coal to Asia April 20, 2013

MITT ROMNEY’S charge that America had declared “war on coal” may not have won him last year’s presidential election. Yet this once-mighty industry is struggling, squeezed by the plummeting cost of natural gas and a torrent of tough new environmental rules. Last year 37.4% of American electricity production came from coal, down from 48.5% in 2007. The Energy Information Administration expects a slight rise this year as gas prices begin to creep up. But further restrictions on powerstation emissions are expected, and the shale revolution is marching on. If coal has a future, it is surely elsewhere.

For many, that means Asia. Demand for coal imports is growing in post-Fukushima Japan, as it decreases its reliance on nuclear power; in India, where domestic supplies cannot keep up with the growing economy; and, most tantalisingly, in China, which burns almost half the world’s coal, and which became a net importer of the stuff in 2009.

Such facts make mouths water in the Powder River Basin, straddling Wyoming and Montana, where more than 40% of America’s coal is mined. Some already makes its way to Asia, mainly via Canadian ports.

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

But exporters want to build four new terminals on the western shores of the United States—two apiece in Oregon and Washington—to send up to 130m tonnes more a year.

The largest, the 1,500-acre (600-hectare) Gateway Pacific Terminal near Bellingham in northern Washington, would handle up to 48m tonnes of coal a year, as well as up to 6m tonnes of other dry bulk, such as grain.

Energy wars in America’s West are nothing new. But the rancour aroused by the coal-export proposal has become as toxic as a four-chimney belcher. Coal states accuse coastal ones of high-minded NIMBYism. Campaigners say corporations have a primeval attitude to the environment. Cities and counties lock horns over jobs and trade. Everyone accuses everyone else of bad faith, basic innumeracy and, in some cases, black ops.

Local objections focus on the trains that would carry coal to the Gateway Pacific Terminal. At capacity, 18 trains a day would run to and from the facility: nine bearing coal and nine returning empty to the mines. BNSF Railway, one of the project’s backers, says little new rail infrastructure would be needed, as traffic remains below its 2006 peak. Sceptics doubt that, and say the bill will be dumped on taxpayers.

Even without new tracks there is plenty to object to. The coal trains would rattle through central Seattle (the empties could return via other tracks, says BNSF), potentially gumming up roads already groaning with congestion. “I don’t want this terminal built,” says Mike McGinn, the mayor. In Bellingham, a group called Whatcom Docs (named for the surrounding county) worries about trains spewing diesel particulates. Others fret about coal dust flying off the trains; the Sierra Club, an environmental NGO, is threatening to sue BNSF for polluting Washington’s waterways.

Press the naysayers, though, and you find deeper concerns. “Shipping coal to Asia is about as innovative as a tree stump,” says Reuven Carlyle, a Washington legislator who thinks the state’s future lies in emulating the high-tech achievements of Amazon and Boeing. The terminal’s main local foes call themselves Power Past Coal. Shovelling millions of tonnes of the stuff to China every year, say campaigners, will lower prices and encourage it to prolong its reliance on the filthy fuel.

Yet Richard Morse of Supercritical Capital, an energy consultancy, argues you would have to model the energy sectors of at least 15 countries to know whether fresh coal exports would increase global carbon emissions. The focus on China is “myopic”, he says, but even there it is hard to contend that new imports would affect energy policy. For one thing, China’s domestic coal market is so big that a modest decline in import prices would be unlikely to make much difference at the margin. For another, China’s energy strategy is not particularly price-sensitive. “The Chinese are trying everything they can to get off coal,” says Mr Morse. “But the rate at which they can do so is maxed out.” The lights must stay on in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Closer to home, Bellingham desperately needs the “good union jobs” that SSA Marine, the terminal operator, would provide, says Mark Lowry, a local union rep who professes no love for coal. SSA says the terminal would provide up to 4,430 direct and indirect jobs during building and 1,250 after that (opponents say these numbers are puny, and dispute them). SSA Marine employees will earn about $100,000 a year, far higher than the local average.

But the terminal must first survive an extensive environmental review, conducted by a federal agency and local officials. Like everything else, its scope has been hotly contested. The governors of Oregon and Washington have urged the federal government to look at the global climate implications.

Construction will not begin until 2016 at the earliest. More or less the only thing the two sides can agree on is that the row will continue until then.

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

 Kinder Morgan drops plans to build coal export terminal at Port of St. Helens industrial park May 8, 2013

A coal train moves through the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Coal miners are hoping to boost Asian exports through Northwest Ports.

Terminal developer Kinder Morgan will not go forward with a proposal to export coal to Asia from the Port Westward industrial park on the Columbia River, a company spokesman said this morning.

More Continuing coverage of efforts to export coal through Oregon and Washington.

Kinder Morgan's Allen Fore attributed the decision not to seek permits for a coal export terminal to site logistics at the Port of St. Helens industrial park, not the controversy over coal.

"We looked at multiple options and different footprints, but we couldn't find one compatible with the facility we wanted to construct," Fore said.

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

Kinder Morgan's decision knocks another controversial Northwest coal export proposal off the table, leaving three still under consideration, one near Bellingham, Wash., one in Longview, Wash., and one in Boardman.

Kinder Morgan's proposal would have likely generated the most coal train traffic through the Portland area, sending trains through north Portland and up the Columbia to the terminal near Clatskanie.

Another export proposal at the Port of Coos Bay recently fell through, which would have also brought trains through Portland. The Longview proposal could run trains through the city, though industry sources say the coal is more likely to run on BNSF Railway's Washington tracks.

Kinder Morgan’s terminal would have exported up to 30 million tons of Wyoming and Montana coal a year to Asia. The company projected its investment at $150 million to $200 million with 80 permanent jobs at the terminal.

Fore said the company is still looking for coal export sites in the Northwest, though he declined to name specific sites.

"We're a customer driven company," he said, "and our customers are still looking at options in Pacific Northwest."

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 Wyoming

governor opposes Washington, Oregon push to consider global effect of coal exports April 26, 2013

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead is asking the White House to disregard pressure from the governors of Washington and Oregon and refuse to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gases that would be emitted by exporting U.S. coal to Asia from ports in the Northwest.

Mead announced Friday he has written to the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality stating it would be inappropriate to analyze under the National Environmental Policy Act the effects of burning U.S. coal overseas.

The NEPA law requires detailed analysis of the environmental effects of federal agency actions. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing three proposed port projects that would accommodate coal exports, one in Oregon and two in Washington.

Wyoming is the nation’s leading coal-producing state, and state officials are concerned about falling domestic demand for coal as a result of global warming concerns. State officials are pushing to secure ports in the Northwest to allow coal exports to Asia.

Many in the Northwest have expressed concern about the prospect of heavy train traffic and attendant coal dust, noise and other disturbances, as well as the ultimate emissions from burning the coal, if exports are allowed. Proponents, however, have said the exports will create jobs and generate millions in tax revenues.

“Coal will provide electricity across the globe in the coming years, and I believe these export facilities will power economic growth here in America,” Mead stated.

“I support a thorough, site-specific environmental and economic analysis of these projects,” Mead said. “I support addressing all of the concerns and questions raised by the citizens of Oregon and Washington. However, I do not support the novel use of NEPA as a political opinion piece on global climate change.”

In a joint letter last month, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber asked White House to require a full examination of the effect on global air quality of shipping up to 140 million tons of coal a year from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana overseas.

Noting the coal exports could result in 240 million tons per year of carbon dioxide emissions, the Democratic governors wrote it is “hard to conceive that the federal government would ignore the inevitable consequences of coal leasing and coal export.”

“We believe the decisions to continue and expand coal leasing from federal lands and authorize the export of that coal are likely to lead to long-term investments in coal generation in Asia, with air quality and climate impacts in the United States that dwarf almost any other action the federal government could take in the foreseeable future,” they wrote.

Mead stated in his letter that Inslee and Kitzhaber didn’t propose NEPA analysis of the environmental effect of exporting products produced in the Northwest, such as timber.

“Rather, their letter targets one commodity — coal — and the producers, transporters and workers who deal with it,” Mead wrote. “This undermines the fundamental fairness of the process and potentially sets U.S. regions, states and resources at odds with each other.”

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 Environmentalist Discusses Impacts of Coal Facilities Centralia College Lyceum: Twin Cities Could See More Train Traffic, Noise and Pollution April 25, 2013

Beth Doglio, Campaign Director for Climate Solutions, holds a question and answer session after her lecture on the Power Past Coal campaign at Washington Hall at Centralia College on Wednesday afternoon.

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

An Olympia-based environmental advocate spoke at Centralia College Wednesday on the regional impacts of coal exports — including increased train traffic and noise in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas.

When Beth Doglio, a campaign director at Climate Solutions and Power Past Coal, which promote renewable energy and solutions to climate change, asked a room of Centralia College students how many were aware of the proposed coal export terminals coming to the region, only about half raised their hands.

Editorial Comment: This American coal that will be exported to Asian markets will come back to the Pacific Northwest via the air we breath and deposited onto our forests and lands and into our lakes, rivers and streams as acid rain.

We’ve seen and read about the impacts of acid rain on the east coast – we should do all we can to minimize human health and environmental degradation risks at home and abroad. Alternative energy sources are viable options to attack this growing concern.

Coal companies are targeting the Pacific Northwest as the gateway for export terminals that would send about 140 million tons of the fossil fuel to Asia from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. The plans include proposed facilities in Longview and Bellingham.

Some 60 uncovered coal trains a day would roll through Idaho, Oregon and Washington, running along the Columbia River Gorge and up and down the Interstate 5 corridor, she said.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe would transport about 90 million tons of coal — or 34 trains a day — through Washington. Currently, four uncovered trains carrying coal travel through the state each day, with two typically going to TransAlta’s Centralia facility, according to the Sierra Club.

Doglio said the Twin Cities area would see an increase of about 10 coal trains a day.

“We’re going to get all the impacts and none of the jobs,” Doglio, an Olympia resident said.

Centralia, Chehalis and surrounding communities could see increased train traffic, which may have negative impacts for businesses and individuals alike, along with more noise and pollution from the diesel-fueled trains themselves as well as the coal dust coming from the uncovered cars, according to Doglio.

BNSF estimates that an average of 500 pounds of coal is lost from each rail car on every trip. A typical train carries about 120 rail cars — losing an estimated 30 tons of coal per trip, according to the railway’s testimony before the Surface Transportation Board.

“The dust is a very significant concern,” Doglio said, noting the potential impacts for farmers and agricultural lands.

Additionally, she said, a group of 160 medical doctors from Whatcom County have voiced concerns about diesel particulate matter, coal dust, noise exposure and delayed emergency response times as major worries regarding the proposed project. The Bellingham-area physicians said pulmonary, cardiac, cancer and safety risks would increase for surrounding communities.

Rather than spending public money on environmental and health impact studies and making improvements in transportation for these proposals, Doglio said, the nation should be investing in cleaner energy for the future.

“Coal is the dirtiest form of fossil fuel in the world,” she said. “Do we want to spend our public dollars on infrastructure for coal companies to profit?”

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

Hydropower

 Emergency dam plans need a look May 14, 2013 MANSFIELD — Owners of major dams are required to provide the state with an emergency action plan, showing how they would deal with a catastrophic dam failure or prevent minor leaks from becoming major — but 10 dams in Richland County don’t have an approved plan filed with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

The plans must include an “inundation map” showing where water likely would flow if a catastrophic problem occurred, so emergency officials could reach neighboring property owners and evacuate them if necessary.

The problem in Richland County may rest partly with the dam owners and partly with ODNR and whether it has kept its dam safety data current.

Editorial Comment: Those responsible for determining feasibility and the Benefit:Cost ratio associated with constructing a new dam should be required to develop an associated Emergency Action Plan (EAP) to address potential dam failure.

In the case of the proposed Chehalis River dam in SW Washington State, such an EAP would be complex. It would address the failure of up to three significant dams: Chehalis River Dam (headwaters), Skookumchuck Dam (mid-basin) and Wynoochee Dam (lower basin).

The loss of human life and property would be catastrophic if one, two or all three of these dams fail.

Richland County has a surprising number of dams. At least 40 are mapped on the Ohio Dam Safety Program’s website at www2.dnr.state.oh.us.

Most of those are so small they are exempt from the requirement to file an emergency action plan (EAP).

But some of Richland County’s largest dams don’t have an approved plan.

Local dams Richland County has three Class I dams, considered large enough that a breach could cause potential loss of life. The first, Clear Fork Reservoir, is 44 feet tall, with a pool area of 1,024 acres. It has an ODNR-approved plan.

But the other two, the City of Shelby’s Upground Reservoir No. 2, on Mickey Road, and No. 3, on the city’s north side, do not.

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Shelby City Project Coordinator Joe Gies said Tuesday that as far as he was aware, the city had filed EAPs with the state prior to 2002, and that both plans had been accepted. If that was not the case, “we’ll certainly look into it,” he said.

The emergency plans for the Shelby reservoirs may not be listed as approved for lack of inundation maps — an issue Gies said he would research.

“We inspect the reservoirs every year, and ODNR comes and inspects them every five years,” Gies said. He added he is not aware of ODNR raising any concerns about the plans Shelby provided. “We haven’t had any issues with the reservoirs,” he said.

Five Class II dams in Richland County, as well as three Class III dams, also do not have ODNRapproved plans.

Mark Ogden of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, a former ODNR employee, said the plans contain important information local officials will need if a catastrophic failure occurs.

Each describes the construction of that particular dam, gives scenarios for potential problems, describes ways the owner would deal with major problems from a major storm or structural slide and provides the inundation map. Neighboring property owners who might be affected are listed.

ODNR regulates about 1,550 dams — inspecting them at least once every five years, by law, spokesman Mark Bruce said. The agency has embarked on a five-year process to make sure dams have updated EAPs, he said. Some state-owned dams are among those that currently do not have approved plans, he said.

“We do not have EAPs for all of the dams ODNR regulates. We are working to change that,” he said.

Database woes Bruce acknowledged ODNR’s database does not provide a completely precise picture when it comes to compliance.

On the state dam safety website, if a particular dam’s “EAP status” is blank, that could mean the dam owner never provided a plan, or that one was provided, but it was done 15 years ago and never updated, he said.

A notation that a plan is “not approved” means the dam owner provided a plan, but is still working with ODNR to make sure it meets requirements, he said.

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

Bill touted The issue of emergency plans came up Tuesday, after U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown held a press conference focused on the Water Resources Development Act. Brown said the bill, which would reauthorize the National Dam Safety Program, could provide needed funding to inspect dams and develop EAPs. Brown’s staff sent an email noting that at least three dams in Richland County didn’t have approved EAPs. While some states transfer some dam safety funding to dams owners to pay for EAPS, Ohio has not done that. “In Ohio, it is the owner’s responsibility to prepare the EAP,” Bruce said. “We (ODNR) won’t do that for you.”

Ogden said ODNR has used a portion of its federal dam safety funding to develop tools dam owners can use to start writing EAPs on their own, or to conduct outreach meetings to educate dam owners on how to go about that task.

Some risk Dams provide great benefit, but they also involve risk, the dam safety official said.

“A lot of dams across the country were constructed before there were any safety regulations,” Ogden said. Some don’t have enough spillway capacity to manage very heavy storms. Many dams built in Ohio during the 1950s and 1960s were constructed using corrugated metal pipe, which may last only 30 to 50 years, he said.

In some areas, considerable development has occurred near dams originally built “out in the middle of nowhere” — leading to higher potential for property damage to surrounding homes and businesses, he said.

Two of the north central Ohio’s largest lakes — Charles Mill and Pleasant Hill, in Richland and Ashland counties, part of the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District — are under federal oversight, rather than ODNR regulation, because they are owned by the Army Corps of Engineers office in Huntington, W.Va. Darrin Lautenschleger, who handles public affairs for the Muskingum District, said emergency plans have been developed for those lakes. “I think that they’re going to have the proper procedures in place,” he said.

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

 Study of Controversial Dam Reveals Hidden Dependence on Rainforest May 15, 2013 Hydropower dams may be an unlikely new weapon for conservationists trying to save tropical trees.

A new study reveals that vast forests are necessary to keep rivers flowing and turbines spinning.

Without them, the dams produce significantly less power than they would otherwise. "The idea that protecting tropical forest is necessary for sustainable hydropower is a new argument," says Kathryn Hochstetler of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the University of Waterloo in Canada.

The findings could encourage forest conservation, she says, but they might also encourage construction of dams that are more damaging to the local environment.

Brazil generates about 80% of its electricity from dams, and the government is planning a lot more.

For example, when engineers complete the $14 billion Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in Para state, it will have the third greatest capacity for generating hydropower in the world. But opponents of the dam worry about its environmental impacts, including harm to fishes and flooding of land for its reservoir. The original design called for five reservoirs that would have destroyed 1225 km² of forest.

Because of objections, the design was changed to a single reservoir of 441 square kilometers.

The common wisdom among engineers, however, is that deforestation isn't necessarily bad for hydropower. As long as erosion doesn't silt up the reservoir, cutting trees should actually improve electricity generation. That's because trees take up a lot of water from the soil and send it into the atmosphere through a process known as evapotranspiration. Remove the trees, the thinking goes, and the ground contains more water, which eventually trickles into streams and ends up swirling through the turbines in a dam downstream.

But there is a larger picture. Growing evidence suggests that rainforests help keep rivers flowing. The massive amount of moisture that they send into the air—much more than from crops or pasture— creates regional weather patterns that lead to rain storms over the forest. Claudia Stickler, a geographer with Brazil's Amazon Environmental Research Institute (AERI), who is based in San Francisco, California, and her colleagues examined what deforestation would mean for the Xingu River and its potential for hydropower.

It matters where the trees are cut, they found. Deforestation within the Xingu watershed did indeed boost river flow, by up to 12%. But according to their climate and hydrological models, this boost is undercut by the impact of continued deforestation throughout the Amazon watershed as a whole. By 2050, the continued loss of trees will inhibit storms and slacken the Xingu's flow by up to 36%, the team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That would mean 40% less power than the dam-builders are predicting.

Things may not be quite that bad. The scenario for deforestation was based on data from 1995 to 2006. Since then, the rate of tree cutting has fallen 76% from the 10-year average and continues to decline. "This research would provide one more reason to redouble those efforts and try to prevent backtracking," Hochstetler says. The authors say the results are widely applicable. "Clearly there's potential that [the results are] relevant for other tributaries for which hydropower dams are being planned," says co-author Daniel Nepstad of AERI. The worry is that the prospect of less reliable hydropower will mean that engineers will be more likely to design large reservoirs to guarantee water pressure for electricity generation. Wilson Cabral de Sousa Júnior, a civil engineer at the Technological Institute of Aeronautics in São José dos Campos, Brazil, points out that it would be legally simple for the government to decide to add more reservoirs to the Xingu River.

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

 China gives environmental approval to country's biggest hydro dam May 15, 2013 BEIJING: China's environment ministry has given the go-ahead for the construction of what will become the country's tallest hydroelectric dam despite acknowledging it will have an impact on plants and rare fish.

The dam, with a height of 314 metres (1,030 feet), will serve the Shuangjiangkou hydropower project on the Dadu River in southwestern Sichuan province.

To be built over 10 years by a subsidiary of state power firm Guodian Group, it is expected to cost 24.68 billion yuan ($4.02 billion) in investment.

The ministry, in a statement issued late on Tuesday, said an environmental impact assessment had acknowledged that the project would have a negative impact on rare fish and flora and affect protected local nature reserves.

Developers, it said, had pledged to take "counter-measures" to mitigate the effects. The project still requires the formal go-ahead from the State Council, China's cabinet.

China aims to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in its energy mix to 15 percent by 2020, up from 9.4 percent in 2011. Hydropower is expected to make the biggest contribution.

It has vowed to speed up construction of dams in the 2011-2015 period after slowing it down following the completion of the controversial Three Gorges project in 2005.

The Three Gorges Dam, which serves the world's biggest hydropower station on the Yangtze river, measures 185 metres.

The 300-m Nurek dam in Tajikistan in Central Asia is the world's highest, though other taller dams are now under construction. China's tallest dam now, at 292 metres, is the Xiaowan Dam on the Lancang River, also known as the Mekong.

On completion, the Sichuan project will have a total installed capacity of 20 gigawatts (GW), with annual power generation to exceed 7 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh).

The government said this year that hydropower capacity was expected to reach 290 GW by 2015, up from 220 GW at the end of 2010. It also said it would begin building a controversial project on the undeveloped Nu River in Yunnan province.

Guodian was one of a number of state-owned firms criticised by China's national audit office last week for starting work on projects not yet been approved by the central government. The office said by the end of 2011, the company had invested nearly 30 billion yuan in 21 unapproved projects.

The Huadian Group, China's biggest power company, was also criticised for launching construction of the Huangdeng hydropower plant before receiving the government's go-ahead.

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

 So, is anyone listening to what dams’ owner has been saying?

Does everybody know ‘no change’ not an option?

May 14, 2013

Last week, Klamath County commissioners joined Siskiyou County commissioners in opposing removal of four Klamath River dams.

No surprise in that. The three Klamath County commissioners were elected largely on their opposition to dam removal. One dam, J.C. Boyle, is in Oregon, and the other three — Iron Gate, and Copco No. 1 and 2 — are in California.

We hope as opponents try to slam the door on dam removal, they ask themselves where they go from here. That includes not just the county commissioners, but members of the public.

Several weeks ago, the Herald and News printed a commentary from Dean Brockbank, vice president and general counsel for PacifiCorp Energy, which owns the four dams and has determined that shutting them down is better than relicensing them and keeping them running.

A couple of the points he made: ■ “Probably the most important thing to remember in the debate over whether to remove the dams is that the status quo is not among the options. It doesn’t work in this case to say, ‘I don’t like it so, let’s go back to how things were.’ ” ■ “The company favors settlement over costly and uncertain litigation to resolve issues as complex as those related to the relicensing of the Klamath Project … What ultimately brought the company onboard with the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement were terms the company insisted upon that ensured removing the dams and replacing the power would cost less and present less risk for customers than relicensing and upgrading the dams.”

There are also upgrades needed to meet federal clean water regulations, which would leave the dams producing less power than they do now.

The dams’ owners are telling us the best deal available is the one that’s being rejected at the local level and that if the dams are retained, it’s going to cost customers more money for power. Taking them out is cheaper.

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

 Did a giant dam cause China’s latest earthquake?

April 22, 2013

A highway over Zipingpu Reservoir after the 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan The deadly earthquake that hit China over the weekend could be a troubling consequence of the country’s years-long campaign to harness hydropower, say scientists. The quake on April 20 in Lushan county, Sichuan province, which the US Geological Survey measured at magnitude 6.6 but is being pegged at magnitude 7.0 by Chinese authorities, hit on the same fault line as the Wenchuan quake in 2008 that killed over 80,000 people, including more than 5,000 children.

“After the Wenchuan quake, the fault line became active as its stress wasn’t completely released. So it was possible for a 7.0 magnitude aftershock even five years later,” Fan Xiao, chief engineer at the Sichuan Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources told the Global Times. The death toll so far in last weekend’s quake is 188 people, with 11,500 others injured.

Scientists have long argued that the weight of water reservoirs can cause seismic shifts that trigger tremors, also known as reservoir-induced seismicity. (The Hoover Dam in the US, the Koyna Dam in India, and the Katse Dam in Africa are notable examples.) In 2009, Chinese researchers said the 150-meter tall Zipingpu dam (pdf), 5.5 kilometers from the epicenter of the Wenchuan quake, had clearly affected seismic activity and may have triggered a quake earlier than it would have naturally occurred. Yang Yong, a geologist in Chengdu, told the Financial Times (paywall) that the building of reservoirs in Sichuan province has caused more seismic activity.

China, bent on being a world leader in hydropower generation, has more dams than the rest of the world combined. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the world’s largest hydropower project. It has come under criticism even from Chinese officials and others concerned about its geological impact. A 2011 study by government seismologists concluded the dam had increased seismic activity near its reservoir. Over 3,400 earthquakes were registered in the reservoir’s vicinity between 2003, when the dam began operation, and 2009.

Still, the government is building more dams, especially in the southwest, which is rich in water resources but also prone to tremors.

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

Government action/inaction and wild game fish

 Escaped farmed salmon in local rivers; 900,000 seals harvested for meat and skins It's what people who worry about aquaculture fear most... escapes from salmon farms. Now officials from DFO have confirmed that escaped farmed salmon have turned up along side wild salmon in the Garnish River on the Burin Peninsula.

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

 Healthy choice — farm-raised Atlantic salmon May 16, 2013 U.S. producers of farm-raised salmon are working hard to help fill today's growing demand for seafood. USDA nutritionist Susan Raatz, physiologist Matthew Picklo, and cooperators have found that farm-raised Atlantic salmon maintains its healthy levels of omega-3 fatty acids when baked.

Two omega-3 fatty acids, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), are abundant in oily fish such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, and herring. Some data have shown that consuming 250 milligrams daily of EPA and DHA—the amount found in a 3-ounce salmon fillet—is associated with reduced risk of heart-disease.

Raatz and Picklo are with the ARS Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, N.D. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency.

While eating seafood rich in omega-3 fatty acids is known to reduce risk of heart disease, it has not been known whether baking causes loss of omega-3s in farm-raised Atlantic salmon. The team also examined the extent to which baking Atlantic salmon alters healthful fatty acids through oxidation that leaves unhealthy compounds, such as toxic omega-3 oxidation byproducts.

The researchers demonstrated that baking salmon to the proper temperature does not decrease its content of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. They found that baking actually decreases the presence of fatty acid oxidation byproducts. Preparing the fish based on restaurant and safety guidelines—to a tender-but-safe 145 degrees Fahrenheit rather than overcooking—was a key factor, according to authors.

The research was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Read more about this research in the May/June 2013 issue of Agricultural Researchmagazine.

Don Staniford: “Here's the other side of the story detailing cancer-causing chemicals in farmed salmon:” http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/pressrelease.html

Health Risks Associated with Consuming Farm-Raised Salmon www.albany.edu

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

 ISA in a Chile with new solutions…and big challenges April 15, 2013 The jury is still out on whether two recent infectious salmon anemia (ISA) detections in Chile’s Aysen region are the beginning of another crisis like the one that wracked the industry from 2007 to 2010.

Although industry sources and the government itself highlight that Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service, Sernapesca, is being more proactive this time around, multiple sources told Undercurrent News that the prevalence of sea lice is cause for considerable concern.

Industry sources in Chile told Undercurrent Sernapesca’s implementation of new regulations has significantly changed the industry’s prospects.

Gaston Dupre, with AquaChile, commended Sernapesca for its approach.

“We are very confident that Sernapesca is doing a good job, and these outbreaks that we have seen, there’s action on the way,” Gaston Dupre, of AquaChile, told Undercurrent.

Valeria Mutis, an industry analyst with Rabobank International, summed up some of the biggest improvements.

“Differently from 2008-09, the current regulation should prevent the industry from a massive dissemination of the disease. So far, the affected companies and the authority have reacted promptly; the two cages that were reported positive to the virus were immediately harvested,” Mutis told Undercurrent.

She also noted that Sernapesca, the government agency in charge of regulating aquaculture in Chile, declared Macrozone 6 — the area of the Aysen region where both detections are located — under sanitary emergency. The declaration allows the agency to take additional bio-contention measures.

The main difference from when the outbreak started in 2007 and now are the disinfection requirements at processing plants, Alicia Gallardo, chief of the animal health unit for Sernapesca, told Undercurrent.

Another difference is that the prevalence of testing has increased.

“Since 2011, each month, we test [all] Atlantic salmon for the ISA virus,” Gallardo said. “That includes each farm in each macrozone,” she added.

Sernapesca’s new regulations have resulted in lower pen densities and less prevalence of sea lice than when ISA hit in 2007, a leader at a major salmon farming company in Chile told Undercurrent.

As of Friday, Sernapesca confirmed the ISA detection on the Multiexport farm that tested positive for ISA last week in preliminary tests. The strain of the virus detected, cepa HPR 14, is less deadly than that detected before, HPR7. This strain is a medium level in strength, Diego Valderrama Villarroel, with Sernapesca, said.

“This was found in Chile before, but it wasn’t very important with the outbreak of 2007,” Villarroel told Undercurrent. “It was present back then, but it wasn’t one of the important ones.”

The strain most influential in the 2007 outbreak was HPR7, he said.

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

 Seattle opposes genetically modified salmon

City of Seattle Legislative Information Service Resolution Number: 31443

A RESOLUTION stating the City of Seattle's opposition to any action by the Food and Drug Administration to approve genetically engineered salmon.

Status: Full Council Date for Full Council consideration: April 22, 2013 Index Terms: SALMON, FISH, US-GOVERNMENT Fiscal Note: Fiscal Note to Resolution 31443 A RESOLUTION stating the City of Seattle's opposition to any action by the Food and Drug Administration to approve genetically engineered salmon.

WHEREAS, AquaBounty Technologies Inc. has applied for federal approval to commercially produce a growth-enhanced transgenic (genetically modified) Atlantic salmon; and WHEREAS, this genetically modified salmon has been altered with growth genes from the Pacific Chinook salmon and eel-like Ocean Pout; and WHEREAS, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has extended its public comment period until April 26, 2013; and WHEREAS, salmon is important to the Northwest from an economic as well as cultural standpoint; and WHEREAS, more than 400,000 fishermen, environmentalists, food safety advocates and others have written to the FDA with concerns about the agency's preliminary findings; and WHEREAS, these faster-growing farmed fish could threaten the livelihood of Northwest and Alaska fishermen by flooding the market with genetically modified fish; and WHEREAS, there are no current requirements to label genetically engineered food; and WHEREAS, Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington, Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski and Representative Don Young of Alaska are part of a bipartisan coalition that supports legislation that would ban the fish outright or require it to be labeled as transgenic if the FDA approves it; and WHEREAS, the FDA has not conducted any safety testing and has generally neglected to adequately address serious concerns about the safety of consuming salmon that has been genetically engineered (GE) to produce growth hormones at all times, allowing it to grow faster and bigger than natural salmon; and WHEREAS, scientists have predicted that the introduction of genetically modified salmon into populations of native salmon could have severely detrimental ecological and economic impacts on coastal communities whose livelihoods depend heavily on fishing, including the devastation of populations of native salmon, as well as other fish and marine mammals that feed on native salmon populations; and WHEREAS, there is little data on the human health impacts of GE fish; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SEATTLE, THE MAYOR CONCURRING, THAT: Section 1. The City of Seattle opposes any action by the Food and Drug Administration to approve genetically engineered salmon.

Section 2. The City of Seattle supports federal labeling of genetically engineered and modified food and animals.

Section 3. This resolution will be submitted to the FDA as public comment.

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

Mining and wild game fish

 Bristol Bay: Largest Salmon Fishery vs Giant Mine Proposal April 29, 2013 SEATTLE, Washington – If Bristol Bay, Alaska is opened to mining, the ore deposit would be mined for decades, and the wastes would require management “for centuries or even in perpetuity,” finds a revised environmental assessment issued Friday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Bristol Bay watershed in southwestern Alaska supports the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world, is home to 25 federally recognized tribal governments, and also contains one of the largest concentrations of copper, gold and molybdenum in the world.

Sockeye salmon in the Wood River, which flows into the Nushagak River just north of Dillingham, Alaska.

The revised assessment, released for peer review follow-up and public comment, finds that hundreds of streams, creeks and rivers where salmon now run could be jeopardized if mining chemicals spill, if a pipeline carrying ore concentrate or diesel fuel is breached, if dams containing mine tailings break open, or even if culverts are blocked by debris.

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

The Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay is proposed by the Pebble Partnership, based in Anchorage, Alaska, a joint venture between the British company, Anglo American, and the Canadian company, Northern Dynasty Minerals.

The revised assessment is intended to provide a baseline for understanding the impacts of mine development not just at the Pebble deposit, but throughout the Nushagak and Kvichak River watersheds.

“This is not an in-depth assessment of a specific mine, but rather an examination of impacts of reasonably foreseeable mining activities in the Bristol Bay region,” says the EPA. The Bristol Bay watershed is inhabited by 29 fish species, more than 40 terrestrial mammals, and more than 190 species of birds.

The watershed supports production of all five species of Pacific salmon found in North America: sockeye, coho, Chinook, chum, and pink. Because no hatchery fish are raised or released in the watershed, Bristol Bay’s salmon populations are entirely wild. These fishes are anadromous, meaning that they hatch and rear in freshwater systems, migrate to sea to grow to adult size, and return to freshwater systems to spawn and die.

The watershed supports some 46 percent of the average global abundance of wild sockeye salmon.

“Between 1990 and 2009, the annual average inshore run of sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay was approximately 37.5 million fish. Annual commercial harvest of sockeye over this same period averaged 25.7 million fish. Approximately half of the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon production is from the Nushagak and Kvichak River watersheds, the main area of focus for this assessment,” the EPA states.

The EPA assessment attributes the “exceptional quality of the Bristol Bay watershed’s fish populations” to the watershed’s “high-quality, diverse aquatic habitats, which are untouched by human-engineered structures and flow management controls.”

“Surface and subsurface waters are highly connected, enabling hydrologic and biochemical connectivity between wetlands, ponds, streams, and rivers, thus increasing the diversity and stability of habitats able to support fish,” the agency states.

“The predominant Alaska Native cultures present in the Nushagak and Kvichak River watersheds – the Yup’ik and Dena’ina – are two of the last intact, sustainable, salmon-based cultures in the world.

In contrast,” the EPA assessment says, “other Pacific Northwest salmon-based cultures are severely threatened by development, degraded natural resources, and declining salmon resources.”

Some Alaska Native villages in the watershed have decided that large-scale hard rock mining is not for them, while a few others are seriously considering this opportunity.

The three mine scenarios evaluated in the assessment are based on the amount of ore processed: Pebble 0.25 (approximately 0.25 billion tons of ore and duration of 20 years), Pebble 2.0 (approximately 2.0 billion tons of ore and duration of 25 years), and Pebble 6.5 (approximately 6.5 billion tons of ore and duration of 78 years).

READ ENTIRE ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS SERVICE ARTICLE HERE

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

 Alaska's Bristol Bay wild salmon fishery valued at $1.5 billion May 9, 2013

Alaska's Bristol Bay is the most lucrative wild salmon fishery in the world, worth an estimated $1.5 billion according to a new study released by the University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute for Social and Economic Research.

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

The $1.5 billion takes into account the harvesting, processing and retailing of Bristol Bay salmon, as well as the total economic effects of those activities -- all the way from the gill netter who hauls the fish into their boats, to the grocery clerk in Seattle who hands the fish over to a customer.

According to the report, all those impacts make the fishery so valuable. In 2010, for instance, the fishery produced $370 million in exports, accounting for nearly 6 percent of the total value of all U.S. seafood exports.

Did that number surprise Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association Executive Director Bob Waldrop?

"Totally," he said by phone Thursday.

Waldrop, whose association requested the study, said he was familiar with the in-state economic contributions of the industry. In 2010, the region harvested 29 million sockeye, worth roughly $165 million. According to Waldrop, those 29 million sockeyes equate to about $400 million worth of state economic benefits.

“The fish come back to the bay and that's the end of their biological life cycle,” Waldrop said. “But the economic cycle just begins there.”

Waldrop said the association decided to do the study to make sure there was more data on a national level to support the fishery, which is in the center of a long-running debate over the proposed Pebble Mine project.

Editorial Comment: Wild salmon that avoid predators and directed fisheries to return to their natal streams fulfill their purpose of nourishing salmon dependent ecosystems (plants and animals) in their efforts to spawn a new generation.

Wild salmon and their many benefits are continuous; a new generation is spawned before the current generation dies.

Even in death, wild salmon freely provide essential, oceanderived nutrition to their ecosystems

The mine, located in Southwest Alaska near Lake Iliamna, has an estimated 80.6 billion pounds of copper and 107.4 million ounces of gold. But the proposed mine -- which would be Alaska's largest -is also located at the heart of the Bristol Bay watershed. Opponents argue the mine will devastate the salmon.

Waldrop said the debate is one of national significance, as indicated by the study's findings. "It's a national issue, and there will be a national solution," he said.

The report also shows that while Bristol Bay creates 12,000 seasonal jobs, the revenue for which translates to an estimated 10,000 full-time jobs around the country.

That number is meaningful to Waldrop, especially as the fight against Pebble Mine ramps up.

Proponents of the mine have argued that it will create 1,000 jobs that could last for decades in a region starved for them.

"We're trying to defend ourselves against the idea there should be a mine out there," Waldrop said.

"Because it's one or another. Do we want to give up 10,000 jobs for 1,000?"

The report comes at the same time the Environmental Protection Agency is conducting a comment period of its revised Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment. The public has until May 31 to offer comment on the assessment, which is going through its second round of analysis. The agency has said it hopes to have a final version on the assessment ready by fall 2013.

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

 Fortune Minerals needs to abandon its mine plan Miners looking for common ground April 24, 2013 Let’s go back to 2005.

Eskay Creek was winding down and Galore Creek was planning the next big mine but there was little certainty that anything would go through. The safe assumption would be that communities would jump at the chance for jobs in the mining sector on an emerging project like Fortune Minerals.

Three commonly known rules in building a successful business: Location, location, location.

Fortune’s open-pit coal mine they call Arctos Anthracite, proposed for Mt. Klappan, rises above the iconic valleys of the legendary Spatsizi Wilderness Plateau in the heart of the Sacred Headwaters. Generations old Tahltan hunting camps dot the caribou rich flanks and the headwaters of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine are visible from the summit.

Fortune Minerals pushed hard even though community members turned down their jobs and blockaded the company in order to protect the culture and hunting values they have at Mt. Klappan.

Like a bully in the playground, Fortune had 15 community members arrested, including 13 elders from Iskut.

These arrests rattled the community and broke the hearts of the grandchildren who stood helpless as their grandparents were carted away in handcuffs. This sparked an international campaign to protect the area from large-scale industrial development.

It was Fortune’s arrests that uncovered Shell’s plans to drill for coalbed methane.

The Tahltan Nation collaborated with downstream residents to oppose Shell’s ill-conceived idea while Fortune waited quietly in the background. Municipal governments and First Nations from all three watersheds supported a unified campaign to protect the Headwaters. It didn’t make sense to transform the source of our wild salmon rivers into an industrial wasteland.

In 2008, the province responded with a four-year moratorium on coalbed methane in the headwaters.

In December 2012, Shell voluntarily withdrew its plans and the BC government permanently banned all future oil and gas activities citing, “The Klappan is an area that has been identified by the Tahltan Nation as having significant cultural, spiritual, and social values. It is also an area of vital salmon-bearing waterways such as the Stikine, Nass, and Skeena rivers, and as such has importance for all British Columbians who rely on those rivers.”

Just as Shell’s plans headed to the shredder and the BC government commits to a planning process with the Tahltan for the headwaters, Fortune Minerals rides in on its black horse kicking up dust in everyone’s eyes.

The Tahltan and communities didn’t fight for 10 years to protect the headwaters so Fortune could proceed with an open-pit coalmine right in the heart of it.

The only thing standing in the way of permanent protection is Fortune Minerals.

Let’s have Fortune admit the truth, their mineral claims are in an unfortunate location. Their plan to reconstruct the 60-year-old crumbling railway from Fort St. James to Dease Lake and run 24,000 tonnes of coal every three days for 25 years is an irrevocable blow to the Klappan and upper Skeena river. That’s 100km of railway right beside our pristine Skeena as it flows from the Sacred Headwaters.

A 1977 BC Royal Commission into the condition of this abandoned railgrade regarded it, “...as one of the most serious unresolved environmental problems in British Columbia.”

Those problems continue to this day and Fortune’s proposed reconstruction of the railway for an industrial corridor would drastically increase the likelihood that other companies will jump on the train and pursue lesser known coal tenures scattered along the Skeena and its headwater tributaries. Our wild salmon and steelhead swimming through it all.

The mining sector has a whole lot going for it along Highway 37 – mining, exploration, hydro projects, transmission lines, etc. all moving forward. What we need in the Sacred Headwaters are healthy rivers, wild salmon and areas of cultural identity that we can share with our children.

Will Fortune Minerals continue to waste taxpayer time and money on this bad idea when we know it will never happen?

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

 Sea-Swallow’d

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

Pesticides, pollution and wild game fish

ď ś Fish company investigated after salmon farm pollutes Scottish loch Marine Harvest, one of the largest fish-farming companies, is under investigation after polluting loch with pesticide May 10, 2013

Caged Scottish Salmon Marine Harvest, one of the world's largest fish-farming companies, is under investigation after its salmon farms polluted a Scottish loch with toxic pesticide residues hundreds of times above environmental limits.

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

Sampling tests around salmon cages on Loch Shell in the Outer Hebrides by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) found that levels of Teflubenzuron, used to kill sea lice parasites which affect hundreds of thousands of caged fish each year, were up to 450 times higher than recommended levels.

The agency could now cut back Marine Harvest's operations on Loch Shell where the firm has three fish farms, including one which was already under Sepa investigation, after it launched a review of its operations there.

Sepa's tests, carried out in 2012, found that Teflubenzuron levels were well above the recommended limits at 20 of the 21 sediment sampling sites on the loch, suggesting long-term problems with its treatment regime there.

There were Teflubenzuron samples showing readings 150, 200 and 250 times above the 2 microgram per kilogramme limit, at least 100m from the edge of the salmon cages. Residue levels for two other anti-sea lice chemicals, Emamectin and Deltamethrin, were also breaching limits on Loch Shell, which on the east coast of Lewis south of Stornoway.

Sepa said its tests in several areas heavily used for fish farming, including Shetland, Orkney, Loch Fyne and Firth of Lorne in Argyll, and sites in Wester Ross, found chemical levels breaching its recommended limits at 72 sampling sites, nearly a tenth of the 792 sites it tested.

These results have again raised anxieties among environment and anti-fish farm campaigners that the farms can have a major impact on sea life and marine habitats as operators take aggressive steps to cope with sea lice infestation and infectious diseases.

The pesticides are designed to attack the nervous systems and outer shells of the sea lice. But they are also lethal or toxic to other marine species, chiefly prawns and lobsters, and other crustaceans, but also other bird, fish and mammal species.

Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland, said: "The fact that the limits have been breached so spectacularly at some locations is deeply worrying and suggests something has gone badly wrong.

It's simply unacceptable that entire lochs be put at risk in this way. It also begins to raise questions over the industries approach to tackling sea lice problems."

Don Staniford, the anti-fish farming campaigner who has investigated Sepa's monitoring data, tabling a series of detailed Freedom of Information requests, was more blunt. He said salmon farming was a "malignant cancer".

"Sepa's statutory duty is to stop companies such as Marine Harvest using Scottish waters as a toxic toilet and dumping ground for chemical contaminants," he said. "Yet Sepa has shamefully opened the floodgates to the use of a cocktail of chemicals. Shame on Scottish salmon farming and shame on Sepa."

Steve Bracken, business support manager for Marine Harvest Scotland, said the findings at Loch Shell were "unusual" and suggested their modelling for tides and currents on Loch Shell, which normally disperse and dilute chemicals, was inaccurate.

He confirmed the pesticides were used to tackle a sea lice infestation, and admitted its efforts were not very successful: it had to harvest the fish early and close the site down for nine months to tackle the sea lice. He insisted that Marine Harvest took its environmental duties seriously, and were trying to find more natural techniques for tackling sea lice, including using the fish wrasse, which eat sea lice, in salmon cages.

"We are deeply disappointed by the results in Loch Shell as we take our commitment to the environment very seriously," he said.

"We are in discussions with Sepa to try and understand the reason for these results, which are very much outside the norm, in order to ensure they don't happen again."

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

 Aquaculture company ordered to pay $500K for pesticide use Kelly Cove Salmon pleaded guilty to 2 charges related to deaths of lobsters in Bay of Fundy April 26, 2013

Environment Canada found the dead lobsters had been exposed to cypermethrin, an agricultural pesticide that's illegal for marine use in Canada. (CBC) A New Brunswick aquaculture company has been ordered to pay $500,000 after pleading guilty to two charges in connection with the deaths of hundreds of lobsters in the Bay of Fundy from an illegal pesticide about three years ago.

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

Environment Canada had charged Kelly Cove Salmon and three company executives in November 2011 with 11 counts each of depositing a substance that's harmful to fish into fish-bearing water, under the Fisheries Act. Kelly Cove Salmon, a division of Cooke Aquaculture, which is based in Blacks Harbour, pleaded guilty to two of the counts in St. Stephen provincial court on Friday morning.

The company was fined $100,000. It was also ordered to pay $350,000 to the University of New Brunswick's environmental studies program and an additional $50,000 in trust to the environmental damages fund.

The charges against Cooke's C.E.O. Glenn Cooke, vice-president Mike Szemerda, and Randall Griffin, the regional production manager for Kelly, were withdrawn.

Sends strong message Robert Robichaud, regional operations manager for the environmental enforcement division of Environment Canada in New Brunswick, told CBC News he was pleased with the penalty.

He said it sends a strong message to the industry that violating Canada's environmental laws will not be tolerated.

According to the agreed statement of facts presented to the court, Kelly Cove Salmon used cypermethrin at 15 of its sites in six different communities between October 2009 and November 2010.

Editorial Comment: “Sends strong message” Indeed, the $44 million potential fine and three year prison sentence was reduced to a mere $500,000 with no jail time for the crooked management at Cooke Aquaculture. Not even a slap on the wrist for them.

Just more evidence that open pen salmon feedlots are weapons of mass destruction utilized in biological warfare that are universally tolerated by corrupt governments.

Cypermethrin is an agricultural pesticide that's illegal for marine use in Canada and toxic to lobsters.

It's a fast-acting insecticide and has been used to kill sea lice in European fish farms.

The six communities involved included: Grand Manan, Deer Island, Seeley's Cove, Red Head, Maces Bay and Campobello, the courtroom heard.

Hundreds of dead and dying lobsters were hauled up in traps in 2009 and 2010, an investigation by Environment Canada revealed.

In November 2009, four lobster fishermen discovered a large number of dead lobsters, officials said.

Tests showed the lobsters had been exposed to cypermethrin, they said.

In December 2009, two commercial lobster fishermen had about 15 crates of lobster in Clam Cove, near Deer Island. Several hundred pounds of those lobsters were also dead and tests showed they too had been exposed to cypermethrin.

The following day, Environment Canada officials took samples from a site operated by Kelly Cove Salmon in Seal Cove, Grand Manan and found the presence of cypermethrin.

The maximum penalty for the charges is up to $1 million per charge and up to three years in prison.

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

Wild game fish management

 Debut of Fishileaks leads to lawsuit against Fish & Wildlife Agency

Brothers Tim and Dave Hamilton walk along the banks of the Chehalis River near Central Park.

They've launched the website fiishngthechehalis.net and are suing the state Department of Fish & Wildlife for not releasing public records, despite multiple requests since 2011.

Brothers Dave and Tim Hamilton are taking on what they say are systemic problems with the way the state Fish & Wildlife Department is managing the fisheries on the Chehalis River, problems they allege are caused by commercial gillnetters and a lack of production in the state’s hatcheries.

And they’re doing it all using the Fish & Wildlife Department’s own public records. They call it Fishileaks, a riff on the term WikiLeaks, which contained thousands of classified leaked memos and documents tackling federal diplomatic secrets. In the Hamiltons’ case, they’re relying on the state Public Records Act to get their documents, not some internal employee.

So far, they’ve received more than two gigabytes worth of data. and they’ve uploaded most of it to their website at http://fishingthechehalis.net. But, they say, there’s a lot more out there that the state agency hasn’t turned over despite six record requests done since November of 2011.

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

“It’s plain and simple,” Dave says. “The public has a right to know how these resources are being managed, not what they perceive or have heard — to actually know and look and see what simple terms are made that affect it. It’s about transparency.”

Representing Dave Hamilton is Joe Frawley of the Olympia law firm of Rodgers Kee & Pearson.

Together, they’re now suing the state Fish & Wildlife Department, citing multiple violations of the state Public Records Act. The lawsuit was filed April 1 in Thurston County Superior Court. Dave says he got to know Frawley because they are both fishermen.

Dave lives in Central Park right along the banks of the Chehalis River and has spent decades as a volunteer coordinator working in the Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay coastal regions. He’s a current member of the Grays Harbor Advisory Board, reviewing fishing practices in the Chehalis and was appointed directly by Fish & Wildlife Director Phil Anderson.

Tim lives in McCleary and is the director of the Automotive United Trade Organization, where he keeps tabs on gas prices and regulations and represents independent gas stations across the country. He’s a known public speaker and makes consistent appearances on television and radio talking about his insights.

“Dave knows more about fish after 30 years in this river than you can imagine,” Tim says. “He worked for Weyerhaeuser and they even gave him a three-year leave of absence to work for the Chehalis Fisheries Taskforce.”

Both of them say they love recreational fishing, but have become frustrated with the bureaucratic procedures used to set fishing seasons.

“So I had knowledge and I had some documents and I was able to explain to Tim what was going on and he understands it, just barely, but if I tried to explain it to people, their eyes will glaze over,” Dave says.

“You know this but you have to prove it,” Tim said he told Dave. “So here we crafted a partnership where his goal is to fish and have expertise on the river and my job was to deliver what he knew and what all these old-timers knew, because we had a dozen other people involved here who gave us input.”

They came together and produced a series of polished, produced videos that they posted on their website to explain how they perceive Fish & Wildlife is setting their season and focusing more on gillnetters than they should.

“It was just an evolution,” Dave says. “It wasn’t like we intended to go on some stinking crusade. But when Tim turned toward the videos, it was amazing.”

At the start of every fishing season, the Fish & Wildlife Department gives the Quinault Nation their fair share of the catch, as determined by Indian Treaty and backed up by court decisions. The Hamiltons say they have no issues with those decisions. Dave says that the tribes have become “an unfair scapegoat,” when he says that the tribes are doing what their treaty allows them to do.

READ ENTIRE VIDETTE ARTICLE HERE

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

Local Conservation Projects

 Petition

to ban open pen salmon feedlots in British Columbia delivered with 68,000+ signatures

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

 Thousands of Salmon Hatching in China Creek Progress: Hatching Shows Centralia’s Urban Creek Can Sustain Salmon Populations April 17, 2013 In early December, Centralia College and city officials discovered nine Coho salmon swimming in China Creek and celebrated the potential of a returning fish population to the urban waterway.

Recently, the thousands of eggs deposited in the creek by those salmon are beginning to hatch along the banks at the Kiser Natural Outdoor Learning Lab on the Centralia College Campus, proving the urban creek is sustaining a salmon population, officials say.

“We are very proud of the fact we were able manipulate and clean up that stretch of China Creek and put in good spawning gravel,” Centralia College President Jim Walton said. “They will slowly move downstream into the Chehalis River and hopefully in about three years they will return.”

Biology professor Steve Norton estimated 1,400 to 5,700 eggs were deposited in the creek in December. Only 1 or 2 percent will return to spawn in three to four years, but Norton said at that time China Creek should have a self sustaining population.

“These are little babies in their most vulnerable phase and have not been impacted by runoff containing oils or chemicals that could interfere with development,” Norton said.

Walton, who has a fishery degree from the University of Washington, said the small Coho are about 1 to 2 inches long and can be found on the creeks edges throughout the KNOLL. “You just have to be really patient and pretty soon you see a movement against the gravel,” Walton said. “You have to get down close and look in the slower water.”

Walton said if locals want to see the young salmon they need to be careful and not trample the vegetation planted along the creek bed.

Centralia College cleaned out the section of China Creek that runs through campus two years ago and reshaped the banks to create the KNOLL. The lab has been used by the biology, geology and botany departments, along with other science classes.

The KNOLL gives fish an inviting habitat because the natural plants cover the creek and provide shade, Norton said, which keeps the water cooler.

Also, a specific gravel in the creek allows the salmon to spawn.

The Centralia Stream Team also helped improve the creek by removing 6,080 pounds of garbage, stormwater manager Kim Ashmore said.

Norton said the young salmon will likely stay in China Creek until July when the creek begins to dry up in the late summer. The salmon will then spend two years in the Pacific Ocean before returning to China Creek.

“If we can figure out how to get year-round water flow, we could get more species in the creek,” Norton said. “What the college has produced is not what the other parts of the creek look like.”

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

Conservation-minded businesses – please support these fine businesses

 Dave and Kim Egdorf’s Western Alaska Sport Fishing

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

 Riverman Guide Service – since 1969 Kim Malcom – Owner, Operator Licensed and Insured Guide Quality Float Trips – Western Washington Rivers – Steelhead, Salmon, Trout

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

 Charterboat Slammer – Dep Sea Charters – Westport, Washington

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

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

Attention Conservation-minded Business Owners Many businesses around planet earth rely on healthy populations of wild game fish.

This is true for fishing guide/charter services, resort and hotel owners, fishing tackle and boat retail stores, clothing stores, eco/photo tours, grocery stores, gas stations and many more. In fact, wild game fish are the backbone of a multi-billion dollar per year industry on a global scale.

This is why we at Wild Game Fish Conservation International offer complimentary space in each issue of “LEGACY” for business owners who rely on wild game fish populations to sustain your business. An article with one or more photos about your business and how it relies on wild game fish may be submitted for publication to LEGACY PUBLISHER. Please include your business website and contact information to be published with your business article. Selected submissions will be published each month.

Healthy wild game fish populations provide family wage jobs and balanced ecosystems while ensuring cultural values. They also provide a unique, natural resourcesbased lifestyle for those fortunate to have these magnificent creatures in our lives.

Conservationists working together with the business community effectively protect and restore planet earth’s wild game fish for this and future generations to enjoy and appreciate. This i our LEGACY. WGFCI endorsed conservation organizations:  American Rivers  Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture  LightHawk  Native Fish Society  Salmon Are Sacred  Salmon and Trout Restoration Association of Conception Bay Central, Inc  Save Our Salmon  Sierra Club – Cascade Chapter  Sportsman’s Alliance For Alaska  Steelhead Society of British Columbia  Trout Unlimited  Wild Salmon First  Wild Salmon Forever

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

Featured Artists:

 Leanne Hodges: “We Need Wild Salmon” Artist, Owner - West Coast Wild

Be sure to attend the June 1, “Spirit of Wild Salmon Gala” with Leanne and other wild salmon warriors.

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

 Gary Haggquist: “Lifeblood” Video

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

 Twyla Roscovich: Dear Marine Harvest

Part 1

Part 2

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

 Calgary muzzles artists critical of tar sands April 17, 2013 The Raincoast Conservation Foundation had a permit from the City of Calgary to display their travelling art exhibition, Artists for an Oil-Free Coast, at city hall.

However, once the show opened, a backlash from conservative politicians caused the city to revoke the permit, arguing the show was too “political” and violated municipal bylaws banning demonstrations inside the building.

Despite the show’s unambiguous title, the city claims they “weren’t aware there was a specific political agenda or cause associated with the art exhibit,” according to Sharon Purvis, the city’s director with corporate properties and buildings.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny by Bill Helin While the city is allowing the work — largely comprised of landscapes and nature scenes — to stay up until Wednesday, they have banned exhibition organizers conducting media interviews or speaking about politics to the public.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, renowned painter Robert Bateman, who contributed artwork to the show, welcomed the hostile reaction.

“I’m sympathetic to the councillors that want to ban it. They’re actually helping the cause of raising the profile of the show, which is OK, because otherwise the show might get ignored.”

More information about the Artists for an Oil-Free Coast, including future tour dates, can be found at the Raincoast website.

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

Featured Fishing Photos:

 2013 All Ages Fishing Derby Watch YouTube video here

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

Video Library – conservation of wild game fish Aquaculture Salmon Confidential: (69:15) The Fish Farm Fight; (6:51) Salmon Wars: Salmon Farms, Wild Fish and the Future of Communities (6:07) The Facts on Fish Farms (60:00+) “Algae culture fish farm” (6:40) Vegetarian Fish? A New Solution for Aquaculture (7:32) Everyone Loves Wild Salmon – Don’t They? - Alexandra Morton (2:53) Atlantic salmon feedlots - impacts to Pacific salmon (13:53) Farmed Salmon Exposed (22:59) Salmon farm diseases and sockeye (13:53) Shame Below the Waves (12:37) Occupy Vancouver, BC - Dr. Alexandra Morton (6:18) Farming the Seas (Steve Cowen) (55:53) Farming the Seas (PBS) (26:45) Cohen Commission – Introduction (9:52) Deadly virus found in wild Pacific salmon (1:57) A tribute by Dr. Alexandra Morton (5:35) Green Interview with Dr. Alexandra Morton (6:06) Closed containment salmon farms (8:15) Don Staniford on 'Secrets of Salmon Farming' (7:50) Greed of Feed: what’s feeding our cheap farmed salmon (10:37) Land-based, Closed-containment Aquaculture (3:14) Hydropower Undamming Elwha (26:46) Salmon: Running the Gauntlet - Snake River dams (50:08) Mining Pebble Mine: “No Means No” (1:15) Locals Oppose Proposed Pebble Mine (7:23) Oil: Extraction and transportation Tar Sands Oil Extraction: The Dirty Truth (11:39) Tar Sands: Oil Industry Above the Law? (1:42) SPOIL – Protecting BC’s Great Bear Rainforest from oil tanker spills (44:00) H2oil - A documentary about the Canadian tar sand oil (3:20) From Tar Sands to Tankers – the Battle to Stop Enbridge (14:58) Risking it All - Oil on our Coast (13:16) To The Last Drop: Canada’s Dirty Oil (22:31) Seafood safety Is your favorite seafood toxic? (6:06)

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

Final Thoughts: One would think that educated people living in our modern world would learn from past successes and failures, and then act accordingly.

This is not the case. We continue to poison the very air we breath, the water we drink and the land where we live, work and play.

Our “modern” lifestyle is not sustainable. We can no longer ignore natural laws as we seek short term greed-driven gains at the long term expense of planet earth.

How could corporate leaders and elected government officials believe for a second that our rivers could be dammed with no impact to wild fish, that open pen salmon feedlots would not impact wild salmon, that burning coal and oil in Asia would not impact our air, water and soil; that clear cutting steep slopes would not lead to downstream flooding, that floodplain development would not lead to increased flood damage?

The truth is obvious; these corporate leaders and government officials know full well that ignoring natural laws as they seek short term gains will always lead to catastrophic losses for others to deal with. Yet, these irresponsible practices continue.

It’s up to each of us as conservationists to stem apathy that is silently expressed by many who do nothing for the betterment of the earth’s living creatures.

Now is the right time to do good deeds as stewards of our planet and the living things that rely on its health.

Courtesy of Natural Settings and Lighthawk