Systemic Problems at Canada's DFO

The Skeena Fisheries Blog has posted excerpts and a link to the Office of the Auditor General Canada and her "2009 Spring Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development." The report confirms what critics of the DOF in Canada have been saying for years.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada cannot demonstrate that fish habitat is being adequately protected as the Fisheries Act requires. In the 23 years since the Habitat Policy was adopted, many parts of the Policy have been implemented only partially by Fisheries and Oceans Canada or not at all. The Department does not measure habitat loss or gain. It has limited information on the state of fish habitat across Canada—that is, on fish stocks, the amount and quality of fish habitat, contaminants in fish, and overall water quality. Fisheries and Oceans Canada still cannot determine the extent to which it is progressing toward the Policy’s long-term objective of a net gain in fish habitat. There has been little progress since 2001, when we last reported on this matter.

LINK

US expands laws protecting Atlantic salmon

The federal government dramatically extended protection yesterday for the imperiled wild Atlantic salmon in Maine, declaring that the few remaining sportfish in the Penobscot, Kennebec, and Androscoggin rivers and their tributaries are endangered.

Maine officials are not pleased.

LINK (Via: The Boston Globe)

California's Lost Salmon

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Because of a sharp decline in their numbers, the entire salmon fishing season in the ocean off California and Oregon was canceled in both 2008 and 2009. At no other time in history has this salmon fishery been closed. The species in the most danger is the California coho salmon. Quest looks at efforts to protect the coho in Northern California and explores the important role salmon play in the native ecosystem.

As Wind Power Grows, a Push to Tear Down Dams

Environmental groups contend that the Bonneville Power Administration’s shift to wind turbines buttresses their case for tearing down dams in the agency’s territory, particularly four along the lower Snake River in Washington State that helped decimate one of North America’s great runs of wild salmon.

LINK (Via: The NY Times)

Scientist discovers beavers building prime salmon habitat in Skagit Delta

A interesting story on tidal beavers, their vanishing habitat, and their role in building predation refuges for juvenile salmon.

As sometimes happens with science, Greg Hood went looking for one thing, and found something else: Tidal beavers.

LINK (Via: The Seattle Times)

Feds step in with $260 million for California water projects

The biggest allocation is $110 million to build new pumps and fish screens at the Red Bluff Diversion Dam on the Sacramento River. The facility diverts water into the Tehama-Colusa Canal to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland, mostly on the west side of the Sacramento Valley.

The archaic facility is the largest unscreened water diversion left on the Sacramento River and is blamed for killing endangered salmon and sturgeon. Improvements were authorized in the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act but never funded.

LINK (Via: The Sacremento Bee)