Soap box time: An alternative point of view.
I got news for you guys.
Something has to be done about the gravel that is choking the Fraser River, every year it gets filled in more and more. so its only a matter of time before its breaks its banks and spreads throughout the entire valley. The deep water runs are disappearing, shallow water heats up,stresses fish etc etc..
The earth is in the middle of a major warming trend and there is nothing we can do about it. Its been happening for millions (repeat millions) of years and will continue. Sure the greenhouse gases have an effect, but I got news for all the people out there. If you eliminated all the emissions including the CO2 from humans, the planet will still, get 5 to 10 degrees warmer over a 7,500 to 10,000 year period. So cleaning it up is a great idea but it wont solve the natural warming trend. This means bigger snow falls, wilder weather patterns more water, more gravel movement downstream and a steadily rising river bed.
(side note:you think warming is the only problem, just wait till the north south poles reverse (earth is about 30-40% through that event) luckily we wont see that one for a while)
So what’s the solution, bigger dykes, well that’s one big eye sore and rapidly becomes impractical. Ignore it and let the river overrun its banks, or remove gravel.
The unfortunate thing is that the idea of removing gravel will work, however the way those idiots went at it was totally wrong. All they had to do was put in sturdy culverts and the problems would never had happened. What these guys need to do is take a longer term approach, extract the gravel but properly and under close supervision that has the power to stop work instantly they deviate form the plan. That leads to the other problem which is getting government officials to stand up to the special interest groups, natives companies and enforce the plans and follow up with a heavy fines or even jail time for those that don’t do it right.
Is there a real answer I don’t know, but believe me it’s a lot more complicated that just simply yelling and screaming at the top of our voices lets stop all gravel removal. Mother Nature is a balance not one extreme or the other, if we don’t do something about it, mother nature will and when that happens us humans tend to be in the way.
After all they have learned about this the hard way at places in Italy, China, Germany and Russia and its cost money, lives and fish populations.
One final though from a fish point of view. Mount St Helen's was a natural event that saw millions of tons ash sand, mud and other debris rip through the river systems. What happened to the fish population of these rivers?? Check it out there are some interesting surprises. We need balance not extreme end points!!!
cheers
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Topic: Gravel mining (Read 4330 times)