Cohen Commission makes 75 recommendations to protect the fishery

There's no smoking gun found in a massive report looking into the decline of Fraser River sockeye salmon.

An inquiry has found the fish is under threat on several fronts.

The Cohen Commission finds climate change is an issue, and so are salmon farms.

Commissioner Bruce Cohen also takes aim at the Harper government for recent changes to the Fisheries Act. That's also an issue for Otto Langer, a former government biologist who criticizes the feds for making the changes prematurely.

"If there was any decency in the federal government, they would have waited for this $26-million inquiry to complete its report and then they would have started making the changes," he says.

The commission also finds a group of salmon farms north of Campbell River put the fish at risk, and it recommends a freeze on net-pen salmon farm production in the Discovery Islands.

Stewart Hawthorn of the BC Salmon Farmers Association says the area in question is small. "The only area he's got concerns about in terms of farming in the natural ocean environment is in the Discovery Islands area. It affects only five farms."

In all, the report makes 75 recommendations on ways to protect the fishery.

Environmentalists Respond

Many environmentalists seem to be pleased with the Cohen report on Fraser River sockeye.  The Wilderness Committee is giving the report a "B" and is urging the federal government to adopt its recommendations.

"And if they care about wild salmon like the people of BC care about wild salmon, the first thing they will do is adopt the recommendations from Cohen's report, and also properly fund it," says Gwen Barlee with WC.

She says the Wilderness Committee "will definitely be working with other groups" and reaching out to its own members and supporters in BC, about 30,000 people, to put pressure on Ottawa, "urging them to get in touch with their MP, to contact Ottawa, to get in touch with the Prime Minister's office, to make sure that the Cohen report recommendations are implemented."

Barlee says she has faith the government will listen to the concerns express by British Columbians and will take former justice Cohen's recommendations seriously. But she is not without some concern, given the federal government's recent policy decisions.

"In the last six months the government has gutted the federal Fisheries Act," she says. "They have dramatically weakened the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. And those are both acts that were used to protect wild salmon."

"And just a week ago, they laid off one-third of the habitat biologists in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans," she adds.

Barlee says it appears the government has been going in the opposite direction that Cohen says they should be travelling in, when it comes to protecting salmon.