Wild salmon inquiry nearing completion
Opinion
Many of the British Columbia-based environmental groups- of which there are hundreds- have already made public statements to the fact that they consider the province’s relatively small salmon farming industry to be the main cause for an unexpected low return of sockeye salmon to the Fraser River in 2009, which caused a public inquiry to be conducted by Judge Bruce Cohen. In many cases, scant attention is placed on issues that likely will be of far greater importance to the well-being of sockeye salmon than the salmon farming industry, and the Watershed Watch Salmon Society (WWSS)- headed by its Executive Director Craig Orr- is typical of these organizations- none of who gave credit to the salmon farming industry for the huge sockeye run in the following year, when a hundred year record was broken.
Largely due to the mountain of documents piled on Judge Cohen’s desk by environmental groups, it now appears that the final report will be delayed by another month beyond its already extended deadline of September 30. And the self-proclaimed “experts” from the WWSS are already offering their opinion to whatever the Cohen Commission will come out with- needless to say, it will be a spin focused on the ills of salmon farming- the only issue given serious space on the organization’s web site. But there is another source of information where reasonable people may want to check out before drawing conclusions about the interaction between wild and farmed salmon. The “Salmon Farm Science” blog suggests that “It seems that only poor, agenda-driven science attacking salmon farms gets mass media attention. We will show there is a lot more to the story, and the science.” In a recent posting, a suggestion was made that people should “Do your own research on the Cohen Commission”;
The “Watershed Watch” environmental group has announced today that because of their “broad interest in salmon conservation” they have put together a “Synopsis of Key Evidence from the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Fraser River Sockeye” to aid people in understanding the evidence presented at the commission. Watershed Watch and several other environmental groups were part of the “Conservation Coalition” which did little more than hammer on salmon farming throughout the commission.
So not surprisingly, their 70-page synopsis contains 31 pages of aquaculture-related evidence and quotes from the hearings, versus 21 pages for EVERYTHING ELSE. Commercial and recreational fishing? One page. Climate change? Not even one page. Pulp mills, gravel extraction, aboriginal fisheries and logging? Barely three pages for all of them. And even in the 21 pages of “other” they still manage to throw in aquaculture-related comments and evidence.
If they’re trying to hide how much they hate aquaculture, and believe it’s responsible for the Fraser sockeye decline, they’re not doing a good job. If you are really interested in the evidence presented at the commission, do yourself a favour. Don’t read someone else’s opinion or skewed version of events, not even ours. Go read the transcripts for yourself. Use “Ctrl-F” to search for keywords you are interested in. Read it in context. Get the big picture. All the transcripts are available here. Pick a date in the calendar, the transcript will show up below along with all the exhibits presented that day. And don’t take our word for it, look for yourself.
