Our salmon are disappearing, and that threatens us all
By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver SunFebruary 19, 2009
Okay, I love salmon. Not eating them, so much. I place our big fish somewhere between a steak and tofu.
What I really love about salmon is that they are our cultural icon -- a symbol of British Columbia's wildness, an indicator of our environmental health. Salmon are a reminder that here, in what used to be called Super, Natural! British Columbia, we've always taken pride in being a little greener than everyone else when it comes to building a modern economy.
You might say the salmon are us. Or at least they have been for generations.
But something dire is happening and we ought to take note. The salmon are disappearing. Yet we don't seem to be worrying much about it.
It's not a decline happening overnight, which may explain our ambivalence. But there's no doubt our greatest fish is becoming incrementally rarer.
That's clear from a report released today by the Fraser Basin Council, the agency overseeing the health of the Fraser, the mighty river that flows through Metro Vancouver and much of British Columbia.
Here's some of the alarming language in the report: "Sockeye, coho and chinook salmon returns are in varying states of decline, with significant cause for concern in recent years. ... Total annual returns of sockeye in 2007 and 2008 were the lowest observed in the past 30 years."
So why should you care? It's not like the fish are extinct, after all. Those salmon runs to the north and up in Alaska are still looking healthy. And even if the Fraser's wild salmon do go the way of the dodo, the Chilean and Norwegian fish farmers can probably supply enough salmon to stock the world's supermarkets and restaurants.
Well, the reason the plight of our great fish matters is that, as go the salmon, so goes the Fraser River, and as goes the mighty river, so goes what makes us Super, Natural.
If salmon aren't surviving and thriving in the 1,400-kilometre-long Fraser and its tributaries it means that something profound and disturbing is happening to the riparian system draining 240,000 square kilometres of the province.
Salmon are an indicator species, our canaries in the coal mine. They die off when we pollute the river too much, when we mindlessly fill in creeks, when we build developments too close to a river, when we clear-cut forests and when we overfish. Salmon define our stewardship of the province and our commitment to sustainable development.
So, as the hundreds of environmentalists and politicians involved with the Fraser Basin Council meet under the five white sails of the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre over the next few days, I offer a challenge. Why don't we elevate the salmon to the iconic status it once had and still deserves?
We need a salmon strategy. We should have images of salmon imprinted on our sidewalks, on our buildings and in our public art, as they do in some Alaskan towns.
More importantly, we should re-imprint the salmon, and its miraculous life cycle -- from the riverbeds to the Pacific Ocean and back to the river to mate and die -- on our minds.
Schools should make mandatory field trips to salmon streams, some of them in the heart of our metropolis. We need salmon festivals, to teach new arrivals to this province the importance of the salmon. Is there any symbol better to show all cultures the interconnectivity of humans and a fragile environment?
Right now, British Columbia has a provincial flower, the dogwood. A provincial bird, the Steller's jay. A provincial tree, the western red cedar and, more recently, a mammal, the Spirit Bear (the white kermode bear). But we have, for reasons that mystify me, no provincial fish.
I nominate the salmon -- all five species -- as our provincial fish.
Salmon are part of British Columbia's collective DNA. Their continuing existence supports our provincial motto: splendor sine occasu -- splendour without diminishment.
mcernetig@vancouversun.com© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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