Prior to the post election cabinet shuffle that took place earlier this week, the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust teamed up with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation to create an open letter that asked for new Prime Minister Mark Carney to appoint someone from BC to the position of Fisheries Minister, with the belief that someone from the Province would be best equipped to navigate the current challenges facing Pacific Fisheries.
But as was revealed in a later interview with the Executive Director for the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, Aaron Hill, the letter’s creation was a bit more spontaneous than you may have expected it to be.
“It was a fairly last minute decision and we knew that we could quickly get support from these other two groups for this ask and if we had more time, if we had gotten on it sooner, we would’ve probably had a lot more groups signing on, we heard in other media interviews, we heard support for this from the BC Wildlife Federation and from the representative from the fisherman’s union out of Prince Rupert so I think there’s really broad cross sector support from British Columbians for having good west coast representation in Ottawa on fisheries”
And while the letter didn’t lead to it’s desired outcome, with Newfoundland’s Joanne Thompson retaining the position that she had only been in for a few months, the BC Organizations still believe that she’ll be competent in the role.
In the meantime, those organizations, who already work closely together, still have their own plans to help out with the problems facing BC Fisheries.
“There’s some really important issues facing Wild Salmon across BC and in the Northwest in particular, again Alaskan interceptions being at the top of the list and so we are pushing really hard for our government to take a strong approach to negotiations with the Americans in the treaty process, also looking for alignment with our neighbors in Washington and Oregon, who are also having their fish being hammered by the Alaskan fleets and then working outside of the treaty process to raise awareness amongst consumers of Alaskan Salmon that they’re not as sustainable as people might think they are and to try to put pressure on the Alaskans through that route to get them to back off on killing so many of our Fish and to bring in more modern management to their fisheries”
The wild Salmon Economy can be worth upwards of around $100 Million in the Northwest Region and SkeenaWild believes that it’s of absolute importance that BC has strong representation to secure our wild salmon and protect both the industry and the cultural value of the fish for everyone who depends on them.