On September 16th the Wilderness Committee attended a rally to protect wild salmon in front of Federal Fisheries office in downtown Vancouver organized by the newly formed Wild Salmon Circle.

About 50 people came out, which was good considering the rainy weather. This rally was on the heels of another successful one on August 20th. Here is a short video from Wed rally of Joe Foy from the Wilderness Committtee speaking. There were some great speakers including Jill Schroder from the Wild Salmon Circle, Joe Foy, Campaign Director at the Wilderness Committee (watch video below), Darren Blaney from Homlaco First Nation, Rafe Mair and another fellow who works in Wilderness Tourism (didn't get his name).

Wild salmon are in crisis. As many of you have already heard, several weeks ago famed Fraser sockeye runs where expected to return in huge numbers - up to 13 million were predicted - but only 1.7 million returned. This is looking like the colapse of Fraser sockeye - the largest sockeye producing river in the world. What's more, last week chum salmon runs were reported to have also crashed up the mid coast leaving many hungry grizzly, black and white kermode spirit bears, many of which are feared dead.

The federal government, that manages the fisheries, has yet to come out with an action plan of what to do with the recent crashes of our critically important wild salmon resources. This is an emergency and the federal government has done nothing. The only thing we've heard is of the fisheries minister last week having a closed door meeting to get input from a small number of stakeholders, but again not coming out with any decisions or plan publicly.

There are most likely several factors affecting wild salmon stocks, like overfishing, climate change warming waters, but one of the most evident problems shown through peer-reviewed scientific studies is the deadly effects that salmon farm sea lice have on wild salmon. The federal government has been quick to point out already that salmon farming is not to blame, even though they say that they don't know what has happened.

The rally was a call to the federal government to do something about the decimated wild salmon stocks and include looking at salmon farming impacts in an assessment plan. They need to come out with this action plan now.

Watch the short video of Joe Foy, Campaign Director at the Wilderness Committee speaking at the rally:

Also, a story in the Province newspaper

Thanks for everyone who came out to the rally! There will be another one, a big rally on Saturday, Oct 3rd at 1pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery, hope to see you then!

Geoff Senichenko
Salmon Farming Campaigner
Wilderness Committee

P.S. Also, check out the "Take Action" section on the wild salmon webpage.

More photos of yesterday's rally:

Photo: by Sven Biggs - Tum Tum - Voice of Wild Salmon mascot with rally participants

Photo: by Sven Biggs - Joe Foy, Wilderness Committee campaign director hands out salmon action cards

Photo: by Sven Biggs - Rally participants again shown

Photo: by Sven Biggs - Tum Tum - Voice of Wild Salmon mascot with another fish mascot at the rally