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The Best Weekly Media Round-up of Stories about Salmon and their Habitats
Salmon News
Top 10

After a court order in February, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has just weeks to change and take the viral threat more seriously. However, internal documents and interviews with scientists show the department has a history of overlooking research that could be damaging to fish farms.
Commercial fishing boats on the B.C. coast have returned to their home ports after a successful spring herring roe fishery in the Strait of Georgia off Vancouver Island.
Steelhead can’t get to their spawning grounds because the Bonaparte fishway is inoperable.
Researchers are learning how orca family roles play into their foraging habits and how relationships are crucial to survival.

In 2018, the House of Commons passed four environmental protection bills. Will the Senate also go green and vote for stronger environmental laws before Parliament prorogues at the end of June?
Warming ocean waters are an invitation to all sorts of pathogens with the potential to remake ocean life.
Several groups are raising concerns over the approval for the production of genetically modified (GM) salmon in P.E.I.
A new documentary about the Heart of the Fraser launched this week in Burnaby this past Friday. Find out more about our campaign to save this critical habitat area at www.heartofthefraser.ca.
In a groundbreaking move, the beautiful but uncomfortable documentary forces viewers to acknowledge their own complicity in the decline of nature.

B.C. Hydro is preparing for lower water levels in some Vancouver Island reservoirs and watersheds in the coming months, after a particularly dry winter.
Opinion

Land-based closed containment systems offer a much better deal to the environment, salmon farmers and anglers.
Hatchery salmon is THE BIG EXPERIMENT to see if they will either save or destroy our wild salmon.
I have been salmon angling for over 60 years. Sadly, during this time I have witnessed drastic declines of wild Atlantic salmon.
John Couture is the Nova Scotia director for the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters Federation and a member of the Cape Breton Fish Harvesters Association.

“The proposed Pebble Mine project to be located at the headwaters of the Nushugak River in Bristol Bay is the wrong mine in the wrong place,” asserts Michael Jackson, a Bellingham fisherman who, along with many others, sets drift nets there each season.

Runoff from houses, driveways and roads can turn a salmon stream into a contaminated raging river that scours salmon eggs to their demise.

Agassiz resident Eric Fryer says local salmon need debris to survive their youth.
British Columbia
With sprawling LNG tax breaks, the province just took its most significant environmental step yet but the details reveal a murkier reality than government talking points let on.
On pivotal issues, Liberal and NDP agendas have aligned.
Citizen called provincial reps, who told City of Chilliwack about the slough appearing reddish pink.
Although still well below normal, there has been modest snowmelt from warmer than normal temperatures in the Puntledge River and Campbell River systems.
Brandi Morin examines the pressure on a First Nations community in central interior B.C. when Enbridge, with an oil pipeline proposal, and then TransCanada, with the Coastal GasLink project, came calling.

Approximately 30,000 litres of sewage poured into Hastings Creek late Friday night following the breach of an underground pipe near Ross and Allan roads.
 The story starts with a freshwater bug seemingly flouting the laws of nature.
Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson announced that recreational harvesters who catch and retain lingcod or chinook salmon will soon be able to record their catch electronically. 
Canada
In the Arctic, polar bears feeding in landfills get an unhealthy serving of stomach-blocking plastic bags.

Single-use wipes labelled “flushable” can't actually be flushed and the brands tested did not pass through the sewer system safely, according to a new report by Ryerson University.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation has awarded its top national honour to members of the Parks Canada team at Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

The CAST (Collaboration for Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow) team of six scientists recently completed the largest study of wild Atlantic salmon genetics in a North American river.
Cigarette filters aren’t biodegradable, and Toronto has launched a campaign to get smokers to stop flicking them away.
United States
This week Washington state celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Forest & Fish Law, a collaboration of federal, state, tribal, county governments and private forest landowners that led to the protection of 60,000 miles of streams running through 9.3 million acres of forestland.
Despite snowstorms in Skagit County in early February and a flurry in March, there’s less snowpack than normal in the North Cascades.

Federal officials say they may restrict salmon fishing off the West Coast to help the Pacific Northwest’s critically endangered killer whales, but two environmental groups are suing anyway to ensure it happens.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to hear from the public about how it maintains and operates 13 dams in the Willamette Valley Project. 

A study by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game asks what happens when wild salmon interbreed with hatchery fish?
International
The creatures are not just incredibly clever, but also carnivorous, meaning a huge amount of wild fish will be caught to feed them, putting pressure on the ecosystem.
To the Native Tlingit, "taku" is "salmon." The river has long been central to the lives of people here and it's one of the most important salmon fisheries in the world.
In a new scheme, fishermen are paid €200 a month to recycle waste found in nets rather than dump it in polluted waters

As the world struggles to cope with its garbage, places like this suffer the most.

MSPs yesterday called for urgent action to preserve wild salmon in the Dee, Spey, Tay and Tweed amid warnings that Scotland is facing its “last generation of angling”.

In a bold step for the sustainability of its fisheries and the world’s second largest barrier reef, the government of Belize has approved a plan to set aside 10% of its territorial waters as no-take marine protected areas (MPAs), nearly tripling the size of its existing zones.
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