Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing us this opportunity to present the views of the Miramichi Salmon Association to this parliamentary committee on wild Atlantic salmon.
The Miramichi Salmon Association was formed 63 years ago to try to be a voice for the preservation of Atlantic salmon, especially on the Miramichi River. Over time we have been quite effective in raising awareness of conservation, and raising funds to benefit the Atlantic salmon.
We are now in a position to be able to assist Fisheries and Oceans Canada in obtaining information on the status of Atlantic salmon stocks and participate in research with universities, government, and other non-profits. Moreover, we have assumed responsibility for the operation of Canada's oldest salmon hatchery from the DFO to stock salmon in the Miramichi. The MSA spends about $1 million annually in its conservation mission on the Miramichi, yet the salmon are still in decline.
The Atlantic salmon has suffered at the hands of man from the time European settlers arrived on our shores, and although we've come a long way in improving harmful practices of the past, we are still faced with global challenges such as acid rain and global warming.
The Miramichi River has been the great producer of Atlantic salmon in North America as a consequence really of underdevelopment in our area. There are no dams in the watershed, very little agriculture, no operating mines, and no large industrial polluters. The watershed is sparsely populated and is mostly forest land, so water quality is good, and if salmon can't thrive here, then there's no hope for the other rivers in the Maritimes that have far more problems than we do.
Salmon is king in our region and it employs an estimated 636 full-time equivalent jobs, which is like two medium-sized industries with over 300 employees each in a very rural area. It's very important to our economy. The citizens in our area are very concerned for the future of the Atlantic salmon and don't want the river closed to recreational fishing for salmon like every other river to the south of us in New Brunswick. The Miramichi is the front line in the battle to preserve the Atlantic salmon.
I worked for 18 years with DFO. I started my career in the 1970s in the Atlantic salmon enhancement unit, which no longer exists. Our job was to restore populations of salmon to rivers that weren't meeting their conservation levels. We tried to identify the cause of the decline and the possible solutions to restore the populations. For example, today the rivers adjacent to the Miramichi to the south of us, the Kouchibouguac, the Richibucto, the Bouctouche Rivers, have been closed to salmon angling for approximately 15 years and there is little if any effort on the part of DFO to do anything to restore the population. The salmon are not extinct on these rivers, so DFO is content to close the rivers and do nothing.
When this happens, local citizens can become detached from the river and the stewardship of that resource is lost. People will work for a cause if there is hope for success, and they look to government for the leadership to plan a recovery strategy.
The Miramichi Salmon Association clearly believes that any harvest of a species needs to be based upon abundance, but there needs to be community engagement to save a species. One way to do this with Atlantic salmon is to allow catch-and-release angling while the population rebuilds.
The MSA promotes catch-and-release angling on the Miramichi until stocks rebuild. Many people support this initiative, but some tell us that once you take the harvest away, you will never get it back and that if DFO ever closes the river to salmon angling, then it will be lost forever. This is because DFO has become a regulator only and has lost its capacity to direct recovery strategies, at least in our region.
We would like to see DFO add more biologists to its staff to regain this capacity. In this vacuum, a group called CAST has emerged to tackle some of the bigger issues for salmon recovery in our area. This coalition of non-profit groups, large industries, and academia has been formed to identify some of the larger issues and propose solutions that will complement the DFO response to the ministerial advisory committee report.
During a year of planning and discussing the required actions to restore the population by CAST, we could not get DFO participation at a meeting, as they simply said they didn't have enough human resources to send somebody.
The federal government should be taking the lead to recover the Atlantic salmon, but you're not alone. There are eager partners who have the expertise, dedication, and cash to support a federal government recovery program, and we are ready now to partner with you to save the Atlantic salmon. Please don't ignore us.
We understand that many of the problems facing Atlantic salmon are encountered in the marine environment, and MSA has partnered with the Atlantic Salmon Federation over the past number of years to put transmitters in salmon smolts and adults, to track their movements in the ocean to determine mortality zones. We would like to see a balance in nature where, for example, striped bass populations are healthy, but not dominating as they are now. It's the same for grey seals in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
For river groups such as ours, there is always important work to be done at the local level. We have an issue with an invasive species in our area, namely smallmouth bass, which was illegally introduced to Miramichi Lake on the southwest Miramichi River. To eradicate this invasive species, we have been pushing for changes to the Fisheries Act to allow for the use of rotenone, a pesticide that will kill only fish in a body of water. Although these changes to the act are complete, we have been discouraged by DFO. While it is one of the largest threats that we have in our freshwater system, permission to use rotenone to eradicate this species is remote.
With climate change here now, we also need to create cold water refugia for salmon in areas where the water gets extremely warm. We appreciate the DFO initiative called the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program, which can provide up to 50% of the funds for habitat-related projects. We are using this money to create these sanctuaries, and we plan to continue to identify potential sites and do the required work.
We took over the operation of Canada's oldest fish hatchery from DFO in 1997 with the mandate to stock the river with salmon, in a similar fashion to what DFO had done over the previous 100 years. Times change and new techniques need to be developed. We have consulted with other professionals and have developed a top team of research scientists to direct a newer technique, which is the capture of wild smolts, raising them to adults in the hatchery and then releasing them to spawn naturally in the river.
We understand there might be theoretical risks associated with this technique and that is why the scientific team has developed an extensive monitoring program to address these issues. We know this technique doesn't address the fundamental reasons for the salmon's decline, but if successful, it can buy time until these issues are resolved. It can also save unique salmon stocks from a particular river, such as DFO has been doing with its gene banking program at the DFO Mactaquac hatchery for the Bay of Fundy rivers.
We need a comprehensive recovery strategy to reverse this decline in salmon populations, and we are hoping that DFO will announce this strategy in response to the report by the Minister’s Advisory Committee on Atlantic Salmon that was tabled in 2015.
Thank you very much.