"It is not my role to micromanage DFO by suggesting detailed improvements to every element of its work relevant to Fraser River sockeye. Instead, my recommendations reflect those matters so important to the future sustainability of the Fraser River sockeye fishery that I must urge DFO or the Government of Canada to act."
Justice Bruce Cohen, Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River - final report, Oct. 31, 2012
IF one statement can be said to justify a $26-million, 1,100-page analysis, Justice Bruce Cohen delivered it in the executive summary to his final report on the decline of Fraser River sockeye, released last week:
"The ultimate authority over the management of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery should rest with the (federal) minister of fisheries and oceans."
Implied in Cohen's statement, of course, is that accountability for the health and survival of the fishery also must rest with the minister - and on the shoulders of scientists and staff of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
But anyone who hoped Cohen would be able to identify a single, definitive cause for what has been a fluctuating but steadily declining fishery since the 1940s will have been disappointed when the judge said he had found no such "smoking gun."
From industrial activity and land development to fish farms and warming migration waters, the report implicates a range of factors as stressors that have exerted an adverse and cumulative effect on salmon habitat.
Disappointing, also, is that it was beyond the Commission's purview to comment on the extent and influence of diseases associated with farmed salmon that were and are being analyzed at the urging of salmon advocate, biologist Alexandra Morton.
As one might expect, Cohen's open-ended statement, "The idea that a single event or stressor is responsible for the 1992-2009 decline in Fraser River sockeye is appealing but improbable," has encouraged a variety of interested individuals and groups to draw their own preferred emphases from Cohen's analysis and 75 recommendations.
Nevertheless, the two and a half years of cross-province hearings and sworn testimony crystallized and gave legitimacy to the opinions and problems British Columbians have been learning about - from Morton, Rafe Mair and groups like Save Our Salmon and the Watershed Watch Salmon Society - for well over a decade.
But if our provincial and federal governments do not treat Cohen's recommendations as binding, the report will gather dust on the shelves of their respective ministries, and Canadians will be left at Square One - minus $26 million.
The thought that could happen is anathema to Morton, who attended the report's official release Oct. 31.
"During the press conference," she wrote, "Judge Cohen concluded that the potential harm posed to Fraser River sockeye by salmon farms is serious or irreversible." That statement - far more unequivocal than the overall diplomatic tone of the written report - seemed to throw gasoline on Morton's unrelenting fire.
In the wake of the event, she is urging British Columbians to send letters to Premier Christy Clark demanding that provincial leases for the open-net salmon farms sited in the migration paths of wild salmon not be approved when they come up for renewal (see her petition at change.org).
Although the Campbell-Clark government's history is not encouraging in this regard, there is reason for hope: B.C. is only six months away from an election. Clark needs every vote she can muster, so there may never be a better time for us all to come together and make this demand.
Prominent among those immediately affected are B.C.'s First Nations, as well as commercial and sports fishing interests. Centuries of culture and today's livelihoods could disappear within a decade if DFO fails to implement Cohen's recommendations.
Over the years, many groups have been vocal about their "rights" to the annual fishery.
But placed against the backdrop of warnings from people like Morton, those disagreements and federal-provincial disputes are reminiscent of squabbles between geese at feeding time: They're all so busy fighting over territory, they don't even notice the food has disappeared.
And although international aquaculture corporations may dream of the marketing opportunities that would follow, the disappearance of wild salmon would be a home-grown environmental disaster.
Devotees of man-made climate-change may point to Cohen's report as evidence to further their cause; but if we sit idly by as wild fish disappear from our waters, it will be what we have NOT done that accelerates a change for the worse in our B.C. environment.
Wild salmon are the canary in the mine for our generation.
As First Nations and other Canadians alike depend on wild salmon stocks to provide what can be argued is the finest nutrition on the planet, so, too, does the wellbeing of the entire ecosystem along the coast of British Columbia.
That environment is not ours to destroy with our negligence; we hold it in trust for generations yet to be born.
And as Judge Cohen's report describes, there is much work yet to be tackled if wild sockeye salmon are to survive.
Let's hope we are willing to carry the banner.
rimco@shaw.ca
