NEWS: Trip to China
Sports: Photo feature
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Telkwa caribou herd funding By Jackie Lieuwen Houston Today
VISITING China
Photo submitted
Bill and Louise Sullivan riding a rickshaw in China. See page 3 for story and more photos.
The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF) is investing $85,900 for a project to preserve the declining Telkwa Caribou herd. A recent press release says the Telkwa caribou herd is declining almost to extinction, and the foundation funded project will look at the causes of the decline including displacement by winter recreation and predation by wolves. The study will quantify the impacts of those factors and GPS and web-based technologies will increase awareness and reduce recreational impacts to caribou. The Telkwa caribou grant is one among 139 grants from the non-profit HCTF organization. They
are distributing over $6 million to projects to protect B.C.’s fish, wildlife and habitats. “This money is critical to conserving and managing the diverse range of habitats and species that make B.C. special,” said Harvey Andrusak, Chair of the Foundation. “Without these grants, much of the critical conservation work happening around the province simply couldn’t get done.” The primary source of HCTF funding is the sale of fishing, hunting, guiding and trapping licences, rather than donations. “The conservationists of this province chose to go beyond simple stewardship of the resource to become instrumental in preserving a whole range of species and habitats, to everyone’s benefit,” Andrusak said.
Protests continue over trout and char fishing ban By Anna Killen Black Press
The new regulation banning and restricting the retention of trout and char caught in Skeena region rivers and streams is an example of the wrong way to make policy, and has ended up dividing a community that used to be united. Those are the words of incumbent Skeena
NDP MLA Robin Austin, who spoke to the issue along with NDP environment critic Rob Fleming who visited the area April 5. The two met with angling stakeholders in an attempt to understand the divisive regulation, which came into affect April 1 and allows for the retention of one rainbow trout during the
summer and early fall months, and no retention of Dolly Varden or Bull Trout yearround. “You have people who, for the longest time, have been on the same page always advocating for the protection of fish,” said Austin. “And [the community is] completely split – some basically saying this a good thing, others go-
ing it’s only anecdotal evidence, you don’t even have the proof.” Not only is this split troublesome, but a lack of hard scientific data puts the government’s decisions in question, he said. “It’s no way to be making fisheries policy, if you don’t have science and data,” he said. “[Government] needs to figure out a way to be able to do
that science.” One way to do that would be to use money from fishing licence sales to pay for fisheries bodies and research, he said, noting that is what was originally supposed to happen when the province shifted to the freshwater fisheries society model in 2003/2004. Instead it’s been going into general revenue, he said.
But a lot of people believe the freshwater fisheries societies model – an armslength, independent, financed by government through license sales – works, added Fleming. “The discussion we’re having is whether that could be expanded,” he said, noting the program should also be reviewed periodically to ensure it is
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working properly. Some angling groups have questioned the validity of the process as of late, citing the fact that the BC Wildlife Federation and local rod and gun chapters have not been at the table during recent angling advisory committee meetings where proposals are debated and put forward. See FISH on Page 2
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