“It was a very, very difficult decision, this is not something that I took lightly, recognizing coastal communities will be impacted by this,” Jordan said in an interview. The government made the decision after hearing a “resounding” message from seven local First Nations opposed to the farms. The federal government is committed to working with industry on a “fair” transition to sustainable aquaculture, she said. The licences for the 19 farms were set to expire Friday. Nine of the farms have no fish, and Jordan said her intention is that the remaining 10 would not be permitted to add additional fish to the pens.
Fish farms to be phased out in migratory bottleneck for wild salmon by July 2022
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The federal government says it’s phasing out fish farms along a key wild salmon migration route in British Columbia waters within the next 18 months.
Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan says 19 fish farms in the Discovery Islands near Campbell River are being issued licences that expire on June 30, 2022, and she does not intend to renew them.
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“It was a very, very difficult decision, this is not something that I took lightly, recognizing coastal communities will be impacted by this,” Jordan said in an interview.
A significant landslide occurred at the remote canyon location on June 23, 2019. About 110,000 cubic metres of rocky debris enough to fill about 45 Olympic-sized swimming pools fell into the river.
It created a five-metre-tall waterfall barrier that prevented migrating salmon from moving beyond the landslide to reach their spawning grounds deeper in the BC interior. There have been major impacts to the reproductive cycle of several key Upper Fraser salmon populations.
Kiewit was previously contracted to perform the first mitigation efforts beginning late 2019 and into 2020 at a cost of $70 million. They successfully built access to the work site, cleared significant amounts of debris, blasted boulders, and widened the river channel and constructed an initial “nature-like” fishway, which improved migration conditions through the area.