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LETTER: Fishers, hunters help protect environment

We respect the outdoors and contribute greatly to the protection of the environment that we love.

 

Fishers, hunters help protect environment

 

As an avid outdoorsman, I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the Rain Forest Alliance’s latest attempt to ban salmon fishing and derbies.

Sport fishers, hunters, hikers, kayakers and backpackers are great supporters of the environment. We spend a lot more time on the water or in the woods than the sandal-wearing vegan who pays the occasional visit to the wild West Coast.

We respect the outdoors and contribute greatly to the protection of the environment that we love.

As an avid sport fisherman, I contribute a great deal both indirectly through licence fees and directly as a volunteer at a salmon hatchery to the preservation of the environment that we all enjoy.

Chinook derbies encourage individual sports fishers to pay attention to the health of the salmon and draw in corporate and groups sponsors who contribute enormously to the salmon enhancement societies, most of whom would not survive without the support of environmentally aware fishermen like us.

In an average year I probably catch and keep with my barbless hooks and catch and release, considerably less chinook than an adult male sea lion eats in a week.

Last year I caught about a dozen spring salmon. How any salmon gets past Race Rocks is a mystery to us all.

So, if you really want to save the orcas and keep the Salish Sea as a marine park, get yourself a gun, head down to Race Rocks and pop off a few sea lions.

It’s not nearly as politically correct as taking cheap shots at us environmentally responsible  fishers and hunters, but a whole lot more effective, eh ?

Martin Hill, Sooke