Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to provide more clarity around the recent news that the Society will be receiving the remaining 30% of licence revenues.
First, there are no plans to stock more lakes. In fact, in partnership with Ministry fisheries biologists we have been stocking fewer lakes over the past 5-8 years. Some of the lakes that were historically stocked did not make any sense from both a biological and a geographical perspective. We have been investing resources to enable us to make stocked lake fisheries better.
The new funding is going to be used for a variety of initiatives. These initiatives will be focused on both wild and stocked fisheries as the new funding is allowing FFSBC to expand its investments beyond stocked fisheries. The most prominent initiative is to fund the three Provincial technical committees. Currently there is a small lakes, large lakes, and a rivers committee that helps guide fisheries management decisions in the Province. The committee membership is made up of representatives from each regional office, the Victoria F&W office, and FFSBC biologists. The rivers and large lakes committees have not been receiving the resources required to implement good fisheries projects. These committees (mainly staffed by Ministry biologists) will now have significant resources to invest in stock assessment, angler access initiatives, habitat restoration and other projects that will be beneficial to BC freshwater fisheries.
The funding is also going to be used to increase compliance and enforcement through a partnership with the COS Service. In addition, there are a number of other initiatives we are going to be working on with our Ministry partners that will be beneficial to BC's Freshwater Fisheries resource and its stakeholders.
I cannot comment on where the $3 million dollar budget reduction will come from because I do not know, but I do know it is not coming from a reduction in capacity of F&W staff or the COS service.
I hope this helps clear up any confusion.
Sincerely,
Adrian Clarke
Vice President, Science
Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC