Category «News»

HAT, CRD to Acquire 4692 Mountain Road

Back in August, we reported on the opportunity to add the property at 4692 Mountain Road to the parks of the CRD. Good news: it looks like a park it shall be! The Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT), Victoria’s local land trust, has just announced that they have joined forces with the Capital Regional District to acquire and create a new regional park at 4692 Mountain Road in Saanich.

Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT) has come forward to oversee a fundraising campaign to secure the remainder of the purchase funds.

HAT MRFP Media release

For more information, please visit the project website at: www.mountainroadforest.ca or contact Habitat Acquisition Trust.
• For a short feature video of the property, please view: https://vimeo.com/483883388
• The HAT media release is accompanied by a 2-page project backgrounder, a map and the feature photo (above).
• On site photo opportunities and tours available for the media by contacting michael@hat.bc.ca / 250-880-7816.

Salmon Allocaton Policy review: Terms of Reference

As directed in April 2018 by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, following the B.C. Supreme Court Ahousaht decision, DFO is soon to undertake a review of the Pacific Salmon Allocation Policy. To guide this process, a draft Terms of Reference (ToR) for the participants has been developed.

Every fisherperson in BC – recreational, First Nation, and/or commercial – should have an interest in getting these ToR correct.

To that end, SFAC members are invited by the SFAB to read and review the ToR, as well as the SFAB’s own notes and comments on the ToR; and then provide, in writing, any additional comments, concerns and most importantly suggestions for improvement you may have to your local chair. All before Dec 31st, 2020!

The Benefit of Catch & Release Fisheries

Rod Clapton, President of the B.C. Federation of Drift Fishers has sent us his well thought out consideration of catch and release fisheries as an alternative to DFO’s current practice of complete public fisheries closures to protect wild salmon stock.

The tremendous social and economic loss of Public fisheries demands that consideration of all options for retaining some opportunity must be a priority. We cannot accept total closures when other viable alternatives such as C&R are available. The documented closures of fishery dependent businesses is a sad reality. The Public Fishery generates 1.1 billion dollars a year in revenues & provides 9,000 jobs province wide. The social value is priceless, highlighted this year by the recognition of the safe healthy benefit of fishing in these current Covid-19 restrictions.

The Public Fishery remains committed to Conservation as the #1 priority. We will continue to support all science based efforts to rebuild stocks but demand that total closures be a last resort after all other options such as “Catch & Release” are carefully considered.

Rod Clapton, president BCFDF

Friday, Nov 6th, 9:30 am: 1st webinar of 2020 SFI Conference Series

Sports Fishing Institute of BC (SFI) is hosting a series of virtual discussions intended to seek pathways for recovery of salmon stocks and predictable opportunity and reliable access for BC’s public fishery.  Attendance is free but you must register for each session in advance. Each session will be approximately 90 minutes long, with an audience question and answer period following each presentation or speaker, and will cover topics within this year’s theme, Charting a Predictable Path for Salmon and BC’s Public Fishery.

The first of four webinar sessions in the 2020 SFI Conference Series will occur Friday, November 6th, at 9:30 am.

Speakers:

  • 9:30 Rob Alcock, President, SFI: Welcome and intoductions
  • 9:45 Rebecca Reid, Regional Director General, Pacific Region Fisheries and Oceans Canada
  • 10:20 Dr. Carl Walters, Professor Emeritus, UBC: The Role of Marine Mammal Predation in Recent BC Fish Stock Collapses

Local SFAC Meeting: Nov 3, 7 pm

The local SFAC meeting is planned for Nov. 3 at 7 pm. This link will allow you to join the MS Teams virtual meeting at that time. This document may help you join the meeting successfully.

The local SFAC chair was provided much information in advance of this meeting by South Coast SFAC chairs Mike Kelly and Erika Watkins. Some of this information is shared here.

This document is DFO’s “Regional recreational Updates – Fall 2020”. This document provides a lot of information and updates on a variety of species management issues and policy initiatives that DFO currently has underway in a regional context. It is intended as an information document. Note that the first 6 items in the document highlight issues that will be included in SFAB consultation during the upocoming cycle.

This document is the “SFAB Regional Priorities and Requests for Consideration 2020\2021”. This is a list of priority issues that the SFAB species specific working group chairs and the SFAB executive have identified as regional priorities for the upcoming consultation cycle. Please note that these regional priorities may not capture priorities at your local committee level, and it is anticipated  that both motions and action items that offer advice to address both regional and local issues may flow from your local meetings.

The SFAB motions tracking spreadsheet may help you understand the status of SFAB motions that have already been submitted to DFO as advice. This may help you understand how advice provided  by either your committee or the Regional and Main Board has been considered by DFO and what the outcome of that consideration has been. It also will assist in identifying outstanding items that require clarification.

Pat Ahern of the SFI has provided a slide deck to explain the status of the SFAB modernization process.

Under normal circumstances, in 2020/2021, elections would be held to either reconfirm the mandate of existing local, regional and Main Board chairs; or to replace them through a fair, transparent, anonymous and democratic process. Elections are being deferred until such time as they may occur in face to face meetings.

DFO: no to MM and MSF, yes to wild salmon policy

Near the end of June this year, the Sport Fishery Advisory Board sent a letter to DFO urging that agency to move forward with mass marking (MM) of hatchery chinook to enable mark selective fisheries (MSF) along our BC coast.

DFO’s response is lengthy and includes a full range of issues and topics to discuss, but basically comes down to: no to mass marking – it’s too hard and we can’t afford it, and those hatchery fish may out-compete the wild fish; no to marked selective fishery for areas such as south Vancouver Island – there may be an at risk chinook group that suffers some mortality.

The ACS has concerns regarding DFO’s approach to salmon conservation and its impact on the recreational fishers of BC. The consultations that DFO schedules with recreational groups – generally represented by SFAB – appear to carry little weight with regard to the fishery management measures put in place.

Millstream Creek Fishway Project: Photo Update

This project is led by Peninsula Streams Society (PSS) to construct a fishway at the Atkins Road culvert, near Mill Hill Regional Park. Fish passage is currently blocked by a high culvert under Atkins Road. The new fishway will construct fourteen step-pools leading up to the culvert, and add steel baffles to aid fish movement through it.

The fishway will allow fish to ascend past the culvert to access 7+ kilometers of habitat for spawning and rearing Cutthroat and Coho salmon.

More details on this project may be found here. The images here give some sense of the challenge and work involved.

16 Sturgeon Dead in Gillnet at Harrison and Fraser Rivers.

The Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance (LFFA) passed on bad news regarding sturgeon deaths at the confluence of the Harrison and Fraser Rivers.

…on August 27th, a Conservation and Protection Officer from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) contacted our organization to inform us that 16 sturgeon were found dead in a gill net at the confluence of the Harrison and Fraser Rivers.

Email from LFFA

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