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SEA SHEPHERD Conservation Society

The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble by Andrew Nikiforuk

Burns Bog
Conservation Society

Watershed Sentinel
Hotspots of Western
Canada Map

Global Compliance Project by Joan Russow

Get the Farms Out Emergency protection for Wild Salmon Narrows

Subscribe to the Watershed Sentinel
Call to cancel spring grizzly-bear hunt as numbers fall

BC Government Confirms Grizzly Bears Missing on BC North Coast


Member organizations within the Network advocate for environmental responsibility and community participation in activities leading to ecological sustainability.
Taseko Mines Ltd. is proposing the use of Teztan Biny as a acid tailings lake, a practice that since 2002 has been supported by controversial changes to the Fisheries Act under Schedule 2 which allow for the redefining of any lake as a “Tailings Impoundment Area.”. The proposed mine's two kilometer-wide open pit, tailings pond, waste rock piles, roads, and transmission lines would destroy the entire sub-alpine ecosystem around the lake and Teztan Biny.
British Columbia Environmental Network Proposed Resolution
“WHEREAS extensive environmental and health damages are being caused to the Residents of Peace River Area, their animals, their water and their livelihoods by sour gas wells, pipeline malfunctions, and leaks due to the sour gas industry,
“WHEREAS extensive environmental and health damages are caused by horizontal drilling and high pressure hydrofracturing gas extraction techniques due to the contamination of water, soil and air by the toxic chemicals used in drilling and fracturing, and the naturally occurring toxic chemicals brought to the surface from deep in the ground,
“WHEREAS these environmental and human and animal health damages will have damaging economic consequences on agricultural and residential property use and value, and on farming, tourism, forestry, and ecological and educational businesses,
“WHEREAS the infrastructure costs of building and repairing roads, water treatment facilities, and other public services would far exceed any economic benefit to local communities, and
“WHEREAS it is yet to be proven that the green house effects of the production and use of natural gas produced by horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing are any less than those of the production and use of coal when the life cycle emissions of natural gas production and the higher impact of methane as a green house gas are taken into account.
“Be It Resolved that the British Columbia Environmental Network calls on the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia to enact a ban on permitting sour gas wells on Peace River Farmland and on unconventional gas extraction that uses horizontal drilling and hydro-fracturing to release gas from sand or shale formations."

Inspired perhaps by the standing ovation she got in the Qualicum Beach facility before she even began, Morton delivered a strongly worded indictment of the effects fish farms are having on wild salmon stocks in B.C. and the world over.
It would be nice if fish farms and wild salmon could co-exist, she said, for the sake of the people working the farms, but the science shows it can't be done. The wild salmon, which she called the lifeblood of the west coast, won't survive unless open-net farms cease to operate.
Closed-containment farming on land can work, in her view. The winner of a recent court case which wrested authority over fish farms out of provincial hands and placed it in federal jurisdiction, the author of five books and seven papers, Morton said an "enormous army" of people have taken up the cause of wild salmon and made the difference, and "their very biology depends on us now."
She urged people to write their MPs relentlessly to oppose fish farms, which have depleted natural fish stocks in Norway, Ireland and Scotland as well as in Canada. The legal victory, which cost $100,000, is just another step on the way, she said. "It's really now or never. This is not a dress rehearsal. These (wild) fish are going down," she said. "But we can turn it around."
Morton lives in Echo Bay in the Broughton Archipelago, near Port McNeill, surrounded by about 22 fish farms which she has documented are harming wild salmon stocks. Her home has become a stopping point for various marine researchers. She raised her children there and has lived in that wilderness setting since about 1980.
