The first ever Wild Salmon Day was held on the B.C. Legislature grounds yesterday.
The event is a collaborative effort between the province and the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) to continue the work of raising the awareness of British Columbians about the critical importance of wild salmon to our province.
Premier John Horgan and Minister of Agriculture Hon. Lana Popham announced a $5 million dollar contribution to the powerful work of the PSF. Supporting PSF was a top priority in the B.C. Green Party budget submission to the provincial government for the 2019 budget and I believe this is an important investment.
Leveraging government contributions
It’s a particularly significant announcement. The PSF is well-known for their work on conservation, science and habitat protection. Habitat protection and restoration are critically urgent investments that will ensure wild salmon have a home in British Columbia to return to. The PSF does an incredible job in working with habitat and stream keeping organizations to leverage their funds by six and seven times through contributions from community groups and local businesses.
This money is part of a growing momentum for work on wild salmon habitat and conservation in British Columbia. It’s in addition to the $142 million British Columbia Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund, announced earlier this year with the federal government. It remains unclear exactly how much of that money will go to support community work in habitat restoration and salmon conservation. We will watch the coming announcements from this fund closely.
The situation on the west coast has become particularly dire. The crashing salmon stocks are having a deep impact on coastal communities economically and socially. While this money is welcome, there remains difficult decisions ahead about resource extraction and addressing climate change.
Going forward…
Are the B.C. NDP willing to sacrifice short-term gain for the future health and well-being of our province? Will the B.C. NDP government establish a vision of how they plan to reinvent our economy to ensure the long-term economic and social prosperity of our province? Or, will it be more of the same?
I will not pretend that this is easy work by any means. Simply throwing money at a dire situation is easy and in this case it is a particularly good investment, but only if we follow it up with strong economic, social and environmental policy and restraint.
Forget the political window dressing and shovelling money off the back of a truck for “habitat improvement” and more and better “science”. If we don’t stop killing the last potential spawners with nets and hooks here and now you can “fix” all the broken habitat you want until you wake up to the grim reality there’s nothing left to utilize it.