Petition Seeks
International Investigation of Canada’s Farmed Fish Operations,
Protections for Wild Salmon
by Center for
Biological Diversity
San
Francisco — Conservation,
fishing and native groups in Canada and the United States filed a
formal petition today requesting an international investigation into Canada’s
failure to protect wild salmon in British Columbia from disease and parasites in
industrial fish feedlots.
The petition was submitted to the Commission for
Environmental Cooperation under the North American Agreement on Environmental
Cooperation — an environmental side agreement to the North American Free Trade
Agreement — and seeks enforcement of Canada’s Fisheries
Act.
"The
Canadian inquiry into the collapse of Fraser River sockeye, the largest
salmon-producing river in the world, suggests the primarily Norwegian-owned
British Columbia salmon-farming industry exerts trade pressures that exceed
Canada's political will to protect wild salmon,” said biologist Alexandra Morton
with the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society. “Releasing viruses into native
ecosystems is an irrevocable threat to biodiversity, yet Canada seems to have no
mechanism to prevent salmon-farm diseases from afflicting wild salmon throughout
the entire North Pacific."
Canada has
permitted more than 100 industrial salmon feedlots in British Columbia to
operate along wild salmon migration routes, exposing ecologically and
economically valuable salmon runs to epidemics of disease, parasites, toxic
chemicals and concentrated waste.
The petition documents Canada’s failure
to enforce the Fisheries Act in
allowing industrial aquaculture to erode the capacity of ecosystems to support
wild salmon. The proliferation of salmon feedlots is linked to dramatic declines
in British Columbia’s wild salmon populations and the detection of a lethal
salmon virus.
“Fish farms in Canada
are an unholy marriage between various levels of the Canadian governments and
foreign-owned companies,” said Chief Bob Chamberlain of the Kwikwasu'tinuxw
Haxwa'mis First Nation. “We continue to explore, identify and act upon whatever
means possible to rid our traditional territories of open net cage fish
farms.”
“The Canadian government’s disregard
for wild salmon stocks in pandering to multinational salmon farming corporations
is outrageous,” said Zeke Grader, director of the Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen’s Associations. “Salmon feedlots put wild salmon, the communities that
depend upon them, a billion-dollar fishing industry, tens of thousands of
fishing jobs, and our nations' shared natural heritage at risk of
extinction."
“Industrial
salmon feedlots function as disease-breeding factories, allowing
parasites and diseases to reproduce at unnaturally high rates,” said Jeff Miller
with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Marine feedlot waste flows directly,
untreated, into contact with wild salmon. Putting feedlots hosting a toxic soup
of bacteria, parasites, viruses and sea lice on wild fish migration routes is
the height of biological insanity.”
When a country signatory to NAFTA
fails to enforce its environmental
laws, any party may petition for enforcement. Canada’s
Fisheries Act prohibits harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish
habitat or addition of “deleterious substances.” The petitioners seek an
investigation and finding by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation that
Canada is violating its Fisheries Act with regard to industrial
aquaculture. Such a finding could lead to international action to force
Canada to protect wild salmon,
ideally by relocating fish aquaculture into contained tanks on
land.
“Applying
the Fisheries Act to fish
feedlots as it is applied to all other marine users and removing feedlots from
salmon migration routes will benefit wild fish and the economy of British
Columbia,” said Miller. “Moving to contained aquaculture on land will benefit
areas starved for employment and clean up the rivers to restore wild salmon
runs.”
Scientific
evidence of harm to wild salmon swimming through B.C. waters from fish feedlots
has been mounting, as has public concern that feedlots could spread epidemic
diseases. This is a threat that jeopardizes the health of every wild salmon run
along the Pacific Coast, since U.S. and Canadian stocks mingle in
the ocean and estuaries.
The Canadian petitioners are the
Pacific
Coast Wild Salmon Society in B.C. and Kwikwasu'tinuxw Haxwa'mis First
Nation, a native tribe whose territory off northern Vancouver Island is being used by 27 Norwegian-owned
salmon feedlots. The U.S. petitioners are the Center
for Biological Diversity and Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen’s Associations, the largest trade association of commercial fishers on
the west coast, representing family fishing men and women. The University of Denver Environmental Law Clinic helped
prepare and submit the petition.
