Well as we know, that is the nature of salmon, they are migratory. If travel and other activities near the river, such as fish farming are suspended or markedly lessened during fish migration times, and breeding in the upper pools, then impact is lessened to acceptable levels. I agree with conservationists that impact has to be studied, but I disagree that all industrial activity has to be stopped.
In fact recreation requires access, and many groups argue that their impact is less than the industrial. In fact I find that is often not true. Whilst industry may cause damage and are short sighted, their attempts to be good environmental stewards not very innovative, I find it is more often the commercial fishers, sport fishers, poachers native and non, and other boaters who comprise the greatest impact to a wilderness area.
Few workers at a mines have the time to engage in much back country depradation. They generally want their fly out back to families in the city. I think that much of the road impact has been exaggerated.
I can understand why greenies make these kind of predictions. Many do not understand why the eastern cougar and the cuckoo disappeared.
I can fill them in.
1. clear-cut l-o-g-g-i-n-g. remove habitat for some animals and the animal moves on.. sometimes to the great beyond. Others adapt or even flourish with human habitation. (fur bearing animals frinstance are more plentiful by far in the Laker Erie region than on the Montreal River.
2. excess trapping. yep, kill em all and let god sort it out is not a great conservation method. it works for the marines, but that is a different sport.
3. industrial pollutants that get very widespread dispersion.. how? The spraying kerosene, bacteria, and other insecticides and herbicides on farm and forest tends to wipe out vast ranks of the phylogenetic scale who are vital links in the eco-system. It destroys not just a few pest insects but also the forest and flowers they pollinate and the amphibians and birds that feed on them. As the animals go, so goes their habitat in turn.
Where is the DFO investigating this major source of damage? hmmm... they seem to concentrate on a few structures and the odd truck trundling down the road and miss great clouds of poison gas wafting thru the atmosphere, with animals dropping dead left and right as they pass ... any of them ever read Silent Spring? Birds stop singing when you spray DDT.. I wonder why (dusting pilot's reports from the 1950's.. they noticed the forest noise dropped dramatically once they had passed) ..... sheesh!
Ahh but its the government, their employer doing a lot of the spraying, and large companies putting bucks in their pocket to keep it going.. can' fool with that multi-billion chemical industry.. they know best, yessir. Now go up to their company head office and ask them to drink a liter of water with say, 1/10 of a percent of their company's product in it.. would they do it? How fast would they get cancer? I would say about ten to 15 minutes before it took hold* Well why ask ten million animals to do it? And why get our children to eat the grains with unknown concentrations of that product on it?
* if you think I am exaggerating ask a farmer what happens if he gets a rip in his environmental suit he must wear when spraying insecticide on crops.. ask him if would have shortened his life significantly.. answer is one exposure is deadly.. DDT and agent orange are used on CDN wheat.. and they laugh at me when I say I eat organic..
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Redfern Resources Ltd. has announced a major shift in its proposal to reopen the Tulsequah Chief mine in the Taku River watershed.
Instead of building what has been a hugely controversial 160-kilometre stretch of road through pristine wilderness from Atlin, B.C. to the mine site, Redfern now wants to use air cushion barges to ship ore up and down the river to Juneau, Alaska.
The shift in plans will save the company about $45 million or more when compared to the cost of building the road, project manager Rod Giles explained this morning from Redfern’s Vancouver office.
As the company worked through an update of its feasibility study for Tulsequah Chief over the last year, it wiped the slate clean and looked at all options of improving the project’s viability, he said.
"When we added up all of our numbers, we realized this was not only the most economic of the options, but it was also the least footprint."
Giles said construction of the road was estimated 10 years ago at about $35 million. That cost, he noted, has risen to $50 million to $70 million, and even those numbers are not certain.
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