Christmas has come early for B.C.’s wild salmon.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and aquaculture giant Marine Harvest have finally dropped their appeal of our precedent-setting Federal Court victory, which held that the government cannot offload its regulatory duties to that same aquaculture companies it is supposed to regulate.
This development is a welcome piece of good news. We have been working with our client, biologist Alexandra Morton, to secure this legal victory for B.C.’s wild salmon since 2013.
That said, our work to protect B.C.’s wild salmon is far from done.
In April, just days before the hearing for DFO and Marine Harvest’s appeal was abruptly adjourned, DFO scientists revealed that heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI) had been found on B.C. salmon farms. This disease can be deadly to wild salmon — heart damage makes it difficult for them to capture prey, escape predators, and spawn.
We’ve since learned that DFO refuses to test farmed salmon for piscine reovirus, believed by many scientists to be the causative agent of HSMI, before allowing those fish to be transferred into open-net ocean pens alongside wild salmon. As a result, we have launched a new lawsuit against DFO to compel it to protect wild salmon.
It’s become very clear that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans won’t stand up for wild salmon. But, thanks to your support, we will.
Happy holidays to you and your loved ones,
Margot
“Happy holidays”? Don’t you mean Happy Christmas? Do not please lose the meaning of this season of JOY.
this is great news now to to have salmon farms movedto onshore bassis
And what about the always so very nice and so very friendly Canadian Prime Minister? Does he care what his ministers are doing or is he to busy to be popular?
Thank you all and best of luck
It’s so shameful the focus is entirely on farmed fish impact and not a word on the impact from size-selective gear? The only way for DFO to mitigate the impact imposed by excessive mesh sizes is to reduce access to the point fisher viability has become a social liability. I suppose the reason foreign funded environmental groups choose to ignore this serious issue is there’s no money to be made “picking on poor fishers” even though they’ve become the genetic liability to the salmon resource? Maybe it isn’t politically correct to expose a serious problem in the wild catch fisheries? Could it be the correction is so simple and cheap more money can be produced attacking the farm industry? It may be so few sockeye will return to the Skeena River this year there may be no fishery and there’s not a single fish farm within hundreds of miles yet this isn’t enough to garner concern from the lawyers at Ecojustice?
Foreign funded Enviro groups? Can you name them? Making profits from attacking salmon farmers? Can you prove this? No you can’t because it’s BS. These are the words that shameless anti science groups were using last year to attack groups that were trying to mitigate the harms of corporations that are all about profits at any expense. This sounds all too much like a astroturf comment. Deflecting blame from a industry that has caused such horrible damage to wild salmon stocks everywhere they operate in the oceans of the world. There are no happy stories about open cage salmon pharming. None.
Thanks for all the honest and hard work you do. It’s such a shame that there are far too many heartless people out there willing the death of our priceless wild salmon for short term profit.
Thankyou Margot and Alexandra for your ongoing work for wild salmon. you are so appreciated.