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[Rodney]

If it's salmon or money, the salmon lose every time

Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Here on the Salmon Coast, soul-stirring runs return with the rains. We always know both are coming, we don't know how much.

And, just like the weather, while everybody talks about the fate of wild salmon, nobody does anything about it.

The iconic salmon is entangled in our sense of identity. It symbolizes our home and reminds us of our own transient place in nature. First nations elders say their cultural survival is linked to salmon.

Yet our misty-eyed reverence evaporates the moment the needs of salmon conflict with somebody making money.

For example, every year since 1993 the Fraser has been prominent on the annual list of endangered rivers. Threats include gravel extraction, logging, farming and suburban sprawl.

So it's no surprise that, even as we get more grim news about the prospects for wild salmon survival, another huge gravel mining operation prepares to scalp salmon spawning habitat.

After studying 30 years of data, the David Suzuki Foundation found shocking salmon declines. Since 1990, stocks plummeted by 70 to 93 per cent among 10 representative B.C. populations.

The report doesn't say it, so I will. Among our leading culprits is the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, notwithstanding its many fine individual scientists, dedicated public servants and their notable achievements.

But the DFO pontificates about wild salmon policy while behaving like a hostage to industry. Although specifically mandated to protect wild salmon, it approves projects which biologists say will harm them.

It salves its conscience with promises it seems incapable of fulfilling. What else to conclude from watching salmon runs under its stewardship dwindle from astonishing abundance to pathetic tatters?

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to notice that the period in which the steepest declines began coincides with the Mulroney government's remaking of the department. Sure, the DFO nabs the occasional poacher, illegal clam digger or householder messing with riparian zones, but when it comes to the big-ticket stuff, it just doesn't seem present or accounted for.

Want to "mine" the province's most important and endangered salmon river -- be our guests! Decide that of all possible locations on this huge coast, you simply must locate your fish farm on a main migration route -- no problem! Leave a salmon river so choked with debris torrents it looks like a landing strip for jumbo jets -- let bygones be bygones!

Our provincial government is also a player in this two-faced farce. Pave the parks, treat them like a land bank for resort development, liquidate the old growth in watersheds, let timber giants convert forest reserves to real estate without paying the compensation due as the original deal for access to public lands, kiss off the last spotted owl habitat, industrialize pristine foreshores, turn a blind eye to repeated pollution permit violations.

Similar hypocrisy permeates the commercial fishing sector. The same folks lamenting DFO incompetence will lobby furiously for fisheries openings that biologists warn may tip already weak stocks like the Sakinaw or Cultus sockeye over the brink and into the abyss of extinction.
Sports anglers think it's all about them. Salmon returns are declining? Let's kill all the seals so there are more fish for us. No Chinooks in the Cowichan River? Let's launch a bizarre ocean ranching scheme in which the release of hatchery fish at convenient fishing spots will create angling opportunities that mask the real declines in abundance.

First nations aren't immune either, not if there's a major buck to be made logging or mining a watershed or digging the gravel out of spawning beds. All of us, all the while, go on chanting the sanctimonious mantra of the sacred salmon.

Well, as I've said before, in a democracy, citizens get exactly what they deserve. The onus for change lies not with the bullied bureaucrats but with the voters who have the power to hold accountable those to whom they delegate authority.

Time to start asking yourself whether your grandchildren deserve a coast of barren rivers and denuded landscapes, in which the salmon that once came to us by the hundreds of millions have largely been lost to concrete blocks, video games and toilet paper.

shume@islandnet.com

[dennisK]

The most important line in that article is:

In a democracy, citizens get exactly what they deserve.

How many here want new and more "stuff"? Olympics? Bigger or faster trucks? Bigger house?

When is enough, enough?

My parents made due with one car and a little (1800 sq foot bungalow) to raise the family.

The decline of the salmon stocks and society's obsession with "more" is no coincidence.

The conspicuous appetite of public consumption is everywhere and as I see it, there is no way to turn the clock back.

How do you tell people in a democracy to stop being pigs?

I can't even honk the driver who goes through a stop sign without getting road rage dissed on me.

meh.

ps...anyone see the latest Honda Ridgeline Truck?

You can put 12 people in it and drive right up to the peak of Whistler.

Awesome.

[coryandtrevor]

I hear ya dennisk,

I went to a Theist vs. Atheist debate last night and one of the strongest points for the theist debater was ' morals are written on our hearts by god ' and are not learned or developed over time to fit our modern goals or needs. They are programed into us from conception.

If that was so, why do people always make what most would consider non-moral decisions most all of the time ? What kind of a 'god' would allow us to destory what 'he' created ? Makes no sense.

Nature should always come before money, but it never does. I used to work in a open pit coal mine that shipped most of if not all of the coal to China. I dont even have to go there to state that we will have thier problems in our backyard very soon.

Just wait for India and China to catch up to Western material greed and artificial want. We will have to supply most of the coal and timber to keep it going. Then stuff will hit the fan.( yeah right)

[bentrod]

God gave us free will and Satan tries to take advantage of this and steer us in the wrong direction.  Money is almost always associated with bad decisions.  Too bad nature has a dollar amount to our elected officials. 

[troutbreath]

Good article by Stephen Hume and more than enough truth in it. Everyone has a hand in helping in destroying the fish habitat or supporting overfishing. Not enough people care to do anything until it's too late. We only miss things when there gone, and the salmon seem to be on the way out.

The only problem with the article is about the part about the seals. I don't think he's been up and personal with them like I have. Seals have a "psycho killer" all rolled up in that cuddly exterior. Go hug one and see how much face you got left.