The December 2014 Seymour River rock slide has made the river impassible for the fragile stocks of coho salmon and steelhead trout.
So far, it’s taken volunteers physically catching and carrying the spawning fish above the slide location to keep the life cycle alive.
But the good news is, the Seymour Salmonid Society has spawned a plan that could ensure the Seymour lives on for future generations of humans and salmonids alike to enjoy.
Our local governments, First Nations, the province and the federal government are all in agreement on the plan to use low-velocity explosives to slowly break open a channel in the debris.
Except, when it comes to picking up the $1-million-plus tab, the feds and province appear to have left their wallets in another coat, even though they have jurisdiction over the river and its fish. The society is frantically trying to raise the money to go it alone.
Downloading of responsibilities has been raised to an art form in Canada. Municipalities tend to catch the brunt of it, but increasingly, it’s our non-profits and volunteers who are being looked to as unpaid civil servants. It is totally unfair to put a burden this heavy, literally and figuratively, on a tiny NGO. They risk losing their volunteer base, who might rightly feel taken advantage of.
We urge our new federal government and our election-primed provincial government to show up at the Seymour and start doing their jobs.
As environmental fixes go, this one is a hell of a lot simpler and cheaper than solving climate change.
Come on in, we say. The water’s fine.
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