The Salmon Fishery is Dying And We Don't Have The Guts To Fix It : One Man's Opinion.

By Ben Meisner

Tuesday night you will have an opportunity to (as the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council says)  "Share your local knowledge on what is happening to the wild salmon".

Now the group is to advise the Feds and the Province on how to manage the salmon fishery.

The theme of the meeting is called "What’s Happening to Wild Salmon?". Well, without spending a lot of money, the answers are very simple.

There are a good many people who have been talking about it since back in the early 80's but to no avail, why in the world would anyone now think that things will be different?

Let me name a few from days gone by , Dr Gordon Hartman, Thomas Brown , Dr Cole Shirvell, Harold Mundie and  Don Alderdice.  These were the people who stood up and forecast the failing of the sockeye salmon fishery along the Fraser , and, as I best recall, each and every one of these men  paid a major price in their careers for doing just that.

These people are leading scientists who foresaw the problems and asked that the Nechako River not  be given up in return for some more power sales. They lost.

Now even the Conservation Council should know that water temperatures along the Fraser system have increased, we have allowed a native and non native fishery to take place at unprecedented levels and we then have the gaul to look for a problem? 

Shame on us all.

We were told that a cold water release would be part of a new deal with Alcan. Now had it ever been built , it would have controlled temperatures on only a small section of the migrating path of the sockeye , sort of offering a starving man a quarter slice of bread and sending him on his way to the next community several hundred miles away.

We were told that an effort would be made to ensure that a brood stock of sockeye would reach the spawning grounds, instead we have watched the resource collapse in front of our eyes and all we can do is cast our eyes skyward and suggest that global warming is the culprit.

We have put 3 million people smack dab on the migration route of these fine animals and without even a second thought we look for blame to be placed.

I won’t be attending the "Salmon what ever it is".  I spent 18 months of my life pleading with the powers to be  to not let these fish (who have occupied this water shed  for thousands of years) perish without so much as a fight .

Politics and power have won out and so we are watching the death of a part of heritage destroyed in a few short decades.

We all should be ashamed.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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