Tag Archives: DFO salmon closures
Should DFO rein in sport fishing to help save salmon?
Conservation groups want Ottawa to dramatically curtail the recreational fishery as it did with the commercial fishery last week in order to save wild salmon on the West Coast. But the sport sector, equally keen to protect the prized but diminishing chinook salmon, wants Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to make sure any further measures and restrictions this year are backed by science, and provide stability and results for the embattled fishers and the fish population. The federal government failed to address the recreational fishery, which also impacts salmon returns, despite making historic and dramatic reductions to the commercial fleet on the West Coast, said Jeffery Young, science and policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation. >click to read< 08:47
On the Brink of Extinction: DFO salmon closures sink dreams of Pacific fishermen
Geoff Millar’s livelihood is on the brink of extinction after DFO closed roughly 60 per cent of B.C.’s commercial salmon fisheries. The closures, DFO stated, will last “multiple generations” of fish to save tumbling salmon populations. The decision leaves Millar, along with hundreds of other commercial fish harvesters on the B.C. coast, in despair and in difficult financial straits. “These closures have absolutely devastated us,” affirmed James Lawson, a Heiltsuk fish harvester based in Campbell River, B.C.,, “We’ve been forced into a corner, and the only option is retirement, that seems to be DFO’s goal.” >click to read< 07:35
