Good advice from Mr. Varney. Here’s my letter to the Regional Water Manager.
Regional Water Manager,
I live on DeMamiel Creek, on the upper end. It runs through a pristine riparian zone through my backyard. There are coho carcasses and fry down in the creek. Well, I imagine the black bear sow and her twin cubs have finished them (carcasses, that is) off by now, if the resident eagles haven’t.
My point is, why decommission one of the few success stories in regards to DFO PR? Is the department actively trying to wipe out wild stocks of salmon to facilitate more commercially lucrative contracts with the corporate lobby? Because that is how things are looking on the ground right now. If that creek dries up and becomes seasonal, the DFO has willfully endangered that which they are charged to protect. The bears will become aggressive as they starve and will be forced towards more available garbage supplies, up Sooke. The soil will lack ready nutrients in the riparian zone that so carefully protects the valued creek along its length. Eventually the trees will become more susceptible to disease and drought. The red cedar is especially vulnerable to drought.
What about the residential water license holders? They rely on the flow in that creek to provide their needs. Have they been consulted? The stakeholders are the residents of local communities and First Nations, all of the volunteers from those communities. They are the stakeholders.
If the DFO thinks it can arbitrarily wipe out all that history, all the manhours and money already invested in this run to meet its requirement to slash the overall budget for the Minister of Fisheries, you had better come up with a new plan. To sacrifice any salmon run at this point in history is the very height of irresponsibility, to the point of Criminal Breach of Trust.
Please reconsider.
Kim Poirier
Sooke
Rather than sending it in the mail, letters addressed to the Regional Water Manager may be e-mailed to John.Baldwin@gov.bc.ca. They should be cc’d to Richard Powley (dfo) Richard.Powley@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.