"Will 2009 be the year that salmon become a pivotal political issue in British Columbia?" Article by Mark Hume in the Globe and Mail: Campbell's doomed policies on fish farming will be a tough sell to voters (or click here to view a PDF)

Excerpt: "The salmon crisis will come to rest at Mr. Campbell's feet because of the way his government has embraced salmon farming, promoting an industry that scientific research is increasingly blaming for damaging wild stocks by causing sea lice epidemics."

During financial instability who is going to feed you? A corporation or a 10,000-year-old system that delivers to your door?

Norwegian corporate fish farmers in B.C. are riding out the global financial storm. They require enormous expenditure to feed their B.C. farms on fish from the South Pacific and they are suffering huge losses to disease in Chile.

They are a luxury item in a world tightening its belt. Salmon farms kill wild salmon through lethal disease amplification.

Wild salmon, however, are an independent wealth. They fertilize the forests we need to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. They transport the vast energy of sunlight hitting open ocean waters to our door on a schedule. They are clean food manufactured without greenhouse gases. They fuel a $1.6-billion tourism industry in B.C. and swim right into Vancouver by the millions, perhaps the greenest badge of honour possible. And they belong to you.

You might think yourself so civilized that wild salmon are not important to you, but your forefathers would disagree.

When times get tough, we all turn to the supply lines right outside the door.

Wild salmon have survived our rapacious greed, but they are not surviving violation of their foundation natural laws.

Atlantic and Pacific salmon cannot meet, nomadic fish cannot be held stationary in pens, disease runs rampant without predators and young salmon are not surviving swarms of farm lice. Ocean productivity is running high on this coast and wild salmon would thrive if given the chance.

However, with unfathomable lack of vision Gordon Campbell just allowed Norwegian fish farms to expand on one of earths' most valuable wild salmon runs, (Fraser River) and so our salmon will continue feeding farm lice, not us.

Now is not the time to gamble. This not a test. Keep B.C. independently wealthy remove salmon farms from wild salmon migration routes.

Alexandra Morton is the 2008 recipient of the 2008 Eugene Rogers Award from the Western Canada Wilderness Committee.

This article was published in the Nanaimo Daily News; click here to view a PDF of the original article.

Article in The Province: Groups upset after Victoria OKs increased fish-farm production: New aquaculture plan coming from province

Catherine Stewart, Living Oceans Society: "An increase in production of this nature will place tremendous pressure on already imperiled wild salmon stocks and the marine ecosystem around these salmon farms."

Article by Don Maroc in the Cowichan News Leader: Something stinks in provincial fish farm policy

Excerpt: "A year and a half ago the legislative committee recommended that B.C. develop ocean-based closed containment technology that would avoid the transfer of sea lice and disease between adult farmed salmon and migrating juvenile salmon. It was also suggested that until closed containment is achieved salmon farms on migration routes should be either closed or fallowed when juvenile salmon are passing.

Salmon farms and the harm they're doing to our wild salmon - through the sea lice they breed and infect our coastal juvenile wild salmon with - are generating huge international attention these days.  On the heels of the worst year ever for BC's wild salmon - in which entire stocks in the Broughton Archipelago, Clayquot Sound, and other fish farm-intensive waters are on the verge of total collapse - alarm bells continue to ring about the severe danger to a resource that is invaluable to BC's ecology, indigenous cultures, and economy.

• New York Times Online: Watch this excellent video on world-renown marine biologist  Alexandra Morton, whose research on sea lice from fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago have provided the rock-solid scientific basis for the campaign against salmon farms in BC.  Her work has been published in some of the world's top scientific journals, including Science: Alexandra Morton's Salmon Fight.
• Watch the Green Warriors of Norway (famous eco-activist organization) short documentary, entitled "Norwegian Salmon Farmers Destroying the Wildlife of Canada" : Norwegian salmon farmers are destroying the wildlife of Canada.
• International Declaration Against Unsustainable Salmon Farming Sent to United Nations by activists and organizations from around the world, including Norway, Chile, U.S., U.K., and Canada. Join Alexandra Morton, Paul Watson, Doug Tompkins, Craig Orr, Brian Gunn, Chief Bob Chamberlin, Darren Blaney, Bartlett Naylor, Kurt Oddekalv, Juan Carlos Cardenas, Anne Mosness, Bruce Sandison and others in signing the "International Declaration Against Unsustainable Salmon Farming" via: http://www.ourglobalocean.org/sign-the-declaration.html.
• If you haven't seen it yet, check out our own "Glendale Grizzlies: In the Absence of Salmon" video.