Huge Prize for Freshwater Fishers: The first person who sends an email
saying they want to fish one of our trout stocked lakes with their
son/daughter, grandson/granddaughter wins a fabulous prize! I have a bag of Rod
‘N Bobb’s, glow in the dark floats, Lightsticks, Rod Bells and other fabulous
stuff. You can fish all day, and all night, too! Wow!
Cohen Commission: My Environmental Petition to the
Auditor General, No. 0353, (a protocol, not a list of names), regarding DFO’s
progress in dealing with Cohen’s 75 recommendations has been answered by DFO
Minister Gail Shea on the last day that she could legally respond to me, March
26, 2014. I asked for concrete details on each recommendation.
I
expected a table that has columns: Cohen Recommendation, DFO Tasks,
Responsibility, Timeline, Tasks Completed and Date, with footnotes of staff and
financial resources applied. Instead I received a text reply that mushes
together a few words and doesn’t really answer anything.
Cohen
made 22 recommendations regarding fish farms, almost a third of his
recommendations, and right up front stated that DFO’s conflict of interest
needed to be solved by eliminating fish farms from their purview and for Shea
to get on with the 2005 Wild Salmon Policy, the 1986
Habitat Policy
and a new western director general charged with bringing back Fraser sockeye.
Instead,
Shea has got on with promises of a new $55 million program for fish farms – and
$280 million in Atlantic Canada. And you may have noticed Nancy Greene Raine
calling for tripling the in-ocean fish farm industry in BC. My next Common
Sense article will be on her. In all fairness, I think she simply believes DFO
and is innocent of the problems.
You
can read my Petition article here: http://commonsensecanadian.ca/fisheries-ministers-weak-response-cohen-commission-petition/.
It
has the links to come to your own conclusions: my complete Petition; Shea’s
complete response; and, the Cohen Commission report. His recommendations are
Chapters 2 and 3 of Volume three. Read his recommendations and then compare
them with Shea’s response.
Saltwater Fishing Licences: Get your 2014 – 2015 licence at: https://www-ops2.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/nrls-sndpp/index-eng.cfm. They have had system problems and
it may be best to get one before the last minute. They suggest morning, M to F,
or late afternoon.
These
days, few of us like to put more rather than less personal information on the
internet and you may disagree with what DFO requires, for example, eye colour,
height, gender, phone number and so on. I sent a note saying they should reduce
what they ask for as it is unreasonable.
Sport Fishing Institute: Robert Alcock, President et al met
with Minister Shea in Ottawa on saltwater sport fishing issues. See her
response: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.ca/2014/04/gail-sheas-response-to-sport-fishing.html.
On
halibut, you will know that our working group had the Victoria area fishing for
most of 2013, and there was still sport TAC on the table at the end of
December. This year the lengths are: 90-and 133-cm, and we look to be winners
once again, as lodges typically shut on Labour Day, but Greater Victoria area
anglers keep on fishing.
And
there is the ‘experimental licence’ program that allows sport fishers to buy
halibut quota – of our own fish – from commercial quota holders and keep on
fishing. The drill is: you go to your marina, where a commercial fisher, sells
you quota for, say a 30 pound fish, then you go out and catch a fish of that
size, letting all larger fish go, and the market mechanism program is a
success. Looks so good in Ottawa, Shea plans regulatory changes for this
‘popular’ program.
You
will be happy to know that: “The incremental
government cost to manage the program is anticipated to be low, as the
licensing and quota management infrastructure is already in place.” Slam dunk,
eh?
Shea
goes on to say DFO hired a consultant to review licence fees and suggest
changes. My suggestion is, in addition to the salmon stamp (its $1.7 Million
revenue going to the Pacific Salmon Foundation) that there be a Wild Salmon
Habitat Restoration fee. I suggest $25, or about $7.1 Million, that would also
go to the PSF. The PSF should receive matching funds from BC and DFO and thus,
at about $21.3 Million, this would be the start of a realistic program, with
PSF leverage, to begin really addressing salmon habitat issues, which we all
know is the real issue regarding wild Pacific salmon.
Gerry Taylor: Good stuff on the Freshwater
Fisheries Society of BC bringing us fish, but
how much goes into the other side of a balanced fisheries program? These
responsibilities include research, inventory, habitat protection, habitat
restoration and enhancement, fisheries management, all necessary elements of
delivering a credible fisheries program still dominated by natural wild (not
just hatchery produced) fish.
We’re happy the enhancement side has
survived, but what about the other side? How much funding does it get, and what
is its relation to the economy, community support and contribution to science
and connection to sustainable ecological goodnesses? Is a provincial
fisheries program even functionally operational these days?
The two points are: 1. Enhancement is
just one of the important elements and this fact needs to be told to the public
and politicians. 2. Is there an identifiable Fisheries Program for the rest, particularly
habitat protection? This requires widespread and influential public advocacy
and finely informed and responsive politicians. Proper levels of staffing and
funding are required and should be demanded and provided in light of all the
information that indicates the benefit/cost ratios projected and possible.
A: Gerry worked for provincial fisheries
for 34 years. My understanding is the FFSBC (they bring us those 8 million
trout/char/kokanee annually) will take a look at these issues, and I will let
you know what they may have to say.
dcreid@catchsalmonbc.com
No comments:
Post a Comment