Comment
Over the past several years the government of British Columbia, which by chance is the custodian of one of nature's most remarkable fishing areas, has been increasingly transferring the responsibility for habitat renewal and fishery enhancement to local groups. On the surface this seems a highly commendable practice, for who better than local anglers know the wants and needs of a particular area? On closer examination, however, we have to wonder if the practice hasn't gone too far. B.C.'s biologists and fisheries managers have done a remarkable job over the past 50 years, protecting a resource under intense pressure. They have worked with restrictive budgets, and have often had their best initiatives stalled by the inflexibility of bureaucracy.
Certainly we commend the work of local groups, and praise their dedication to the resource. But let's not forget what a great resource we also have in our fisheries department. They should be adequately funded, and if they are going to oversee the work of amateurs, they should have their budgets increased, so that they don't have to divert professional staff from other areas.
See the letter below for another comment on this issue.
-Mark Hume
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An Open Letter to Dennis Streifel, Minister of Fisheries, British Columbia:
Dear Sir:
Since you are the minister responsible for Fisheries Renewal B.C., I am writing to you with serious concerns about this program.
Afeter careful examination of many of the projects, I find a lot of them have to do with salmon, which of course is under federal jurisdiction, not provincial. It seems Fishery Renewal B.C. is spending huge sums of money doing federal work, while our provincial fishery branches, which look after species under provincial jurisdiction, are getting budget cuts. Something is definitely wrong here.
A better system would have been to give the Fisheries Renewal money to the Ministry of Environment fishery managers or biologists, for use on projects they deemed worthwhile.
The way it is structured now, by giving money to local boards to disperse, you are really letting the amateurs run the show instead of the professionals. It is proving to be a flagrant abuse of taxpayers dollars. Maybe the ombudsman should look into this or have an audit done.
In some cases the projects actually harm fish stocks. A case in point is a project on the Bulkley River, proposed by the local Steelhead Society of B.C. chapter, which will be catching steelhead in March, during the spawning period.
Is the mortality in hooking those fish with bait worth the data that will be obtained, considering that nothing will probably be proved that is not already known?
This is one project you should cancel before it is too late, and I believe that it is time Fishery Renewal B.C. was terminated. Instead, let's put the money into the proper hands, the Ministry of Environment's fisheries experts,so that it can be spent more wisely.
Yours sincerely,
Joe Saysell
Lake Cowichan
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