Stan Proboszcz: A new deadline for fish farms in the Discovery Islands

December 11, 2020

By: Meghan Rooney

Stan Proboszcz

Another big opportunity is upon us. A few months back, the government had to make a decision about removing factory fish farms in the Discovery Islands, a critical wild salmon migration corridor. September 30, 2020 was the deadline for removing all salmon farms from the Discovery Islands, near Campbell River according to the 19th recommendation of the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River. The inquiry was headed by Justice Bruce Cohen, took over two years to complete and, in 2012, culminated in an 1100 page final report with 75 recommendations covering habitat protection, salmon farming, hatchery management, fisheries management, government accountability and more.

Thousands of our supporters emailed and phoned the Minister of Fisheries and their Members of Parliament, telling them to follow Judge Cohen’s recommendation and get the farms out. 

All of those efforts, along with that of First Nations and our other allies, forced the federal government to respond. If we hadn’t rallied around the September 30 deadline, I believe the government would have quietly ignored it. Thanks to the noise we all made, they were forced to acknowledge it.

However, instead of taking action, they kicked the can down the road to December 18, the day the federal licences for the Discovery Islands fish farms expire. They need to know we’re paying attention and that we’re not going to stop fighting for wild salmon and the natural bounty they support. Please send them an email telling them to get factory fish farms out of the Discovery Islands.

 

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Stan Proboszcz: A new deadline for fish farms in the Discovery Islands

December 11, 2020

By: Meghan Rooney

Stan Proboszcz

Another big opportunity is upon us. A few months back, the government had to make a decision about removing factory fish farms in the Discovery Islands, a critical wild salmon migration corridor. September 30, 2020 was the deadline for removing all salmon farms from the Discovery Islands, near Campbell River according to the 19th recommendation of the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River. The inquiry was headed by Justice Bruce Cohen, took over two years to complete and, in 2012, culminated in an 1100 page final report with 75 recommendations covering habitat protection, salmon farming, hatchery management, fisheries management, government accountability and more.

Thousands of our supporters emailed and phoned the Minister of Fisheries and their Members of Parliament, telling them to follow Judge Cohen’s recommendation and get the farms out. 

All of those efforts, along with that of First Nations and our other allies, forced the federal government to respond. If we hadn’t rallied around the September 30 deadline, I believe the government would have quietly ignored it. Thanks to the noise we all made, they were forced to acknowledge it.

However, instead of taking action, they kicked the can down the road to December 18, the day the federal licences for the Discovery Islands fish farms expire. They need to know we’re paying attention and that we’re not going to stop fighting for wild salmon and the natural bounty they support. Please send them an email telling them to get factory fish farms out of the Discovery Islands.

 

Share This Story!

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Stand with us to defend wild Pacific salmon

8 Comments

  1. Ron Brooks December 11, 2020 at 7:36 pm - Reply

    Time to shut down all open net fish farms. They are destroying our environment

  2. Aaron Baxter December 12, 2020 at 12:34 pm - Reply

    Stop putting Wild Salmon Populations at Risk. Stop ignoring the evidence that Fish Farms breed Unnatural populations of Sea Lice that migrating Juvenile Salmon are unequipped to deal with. Please Stop putting the foreign owned Open Pen Farming Industry ahead of our Wild Coast and all creatures reliant upon its health. Please immediately remove all Open Pen Fish Farms from the Discovery Islands and Pacific Northwest.

  3. Liam Doucet December 12, 2020 at 1:04 pm - Reply

    Stop poisoning the Northwest with your incompetence. Future generations deserve to live in a world with clean waters & plenty of healthy salmon

  4. Liam Doucet December 12, 2020 at 1:06 pm - Reply

    Stop poisoning the Northwest with greed and incompetence. Future generations deserve to live in a world with a clean Salish sea & plenty of healthy salmon.

  5. ken pearce December 12, 2020 at 4:46 pm - Reply

    Roger Dunlop, head bio for the Nuchaatlaz group posted an excellent video of lice infested chinook and chum smolts in the Nootka Island area. His comment was he was amazed any smolts survived at all with multiple lice clinging to them. Not only a problem in the whole of Johnson Straits but West Coast Van. Is as well. Clayquot infested. Between this huge problem and the pinnipeds consuming 50%+ of outbound smolts, odds of survival to adults very slim and the crash of our salmon stocks will continue to extinction unless the “do nothing DFO” finally gets proactive and help solve this easy to solve problem
    PACIFIC BALANCE PINNIPED SOCIETY.

  6. Renee Taylor December 12, 2020 at 6:17 pm - Reply

    There is an abundance of scientific evidence that fish farms are harmful to wild salmon.

  7. L. Vardy December 14, 2020 at 5:53 pm - Reply

    Long past due before our wild salmon are gone! Get the farms out of our west coast waters. Please!

  8. Julie Michaud December 16, 2020 at 2:01 pm - Reply

    This is an opportunity we have to take to stop fish farms.

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