Thanks for inviting me here again.
I'd like to talk about a specific example of invasive species, small mouth bass in Miramichi Lake in the province of New Brunswick. We've been working on this file for 10 years.
I should say, first of all, that the Miramichi historically has the highest run of Atlantic salmon in North America. Over the years it has been assaulted by low sea survival, other predators—striped bass being one—and the growing seal population along our coast, to the point that whereas there used to be a 10% survival of young salmon going to the ocean who would come back as adults, now we're down to 2% or so. It's really affecting our communities, our rivers—and not only in the Miramichi but in all of eastern Canada.
Ten years ago, when we discovered smallmouth bass as an invasive species in our watershed, we all panicked. What can we do? We responded right away, put a barricade in at the mouth of Miramichi Lake and started searching for an action plan.
We consulted with the North American expert, a chap in California who basically gave us a blueprint of what to do. It involved applying rotenone, which is a compound derived from a root in South America. It will kill fish but not other species. When we went to DFO, they said no, sorry, this is illegal, and we said this can't be true because they're doing it every year in Quebec and in British Columbia and Alberta. Everywhere uses rotenone. Unfortunately the Maritimes had never signed an agreement with Ottawa for a shared jurisdiction and, therefore, it was illegal for use in our province. Regulations were therefore changed.
In the meantime, we were lobbying pretty hard for the rotenone application, and DFO came up with a plan. They said we will eradicate in three years by electrofishing. We'll put barricades in, we'll gillnet, we'll use spike nets—we'll use everything at our disposal to eradicate. Three years, it will take.
It's 10 years later and we still have juveniles, adults, and there is evidence now that maybe the fish are getting out of Miramichi Lake. It's from eDNA, which I don't know too much about and am not sure is very reliable. There seems to be an indication, however, that there may be some trickling out of this lake.
It has been 10 years, and now the legislation is passed and DFO has the authority to issue a licence for rotenone. We, therefore, went to DFO—and by the way, we commissioned the study at the Canadian Rivers Institute by this now retired expert from California, and we have a clear, legal, sound plan to eradicate smallmouth bass.
We presented it to DFO, who said, no, it can't be a proponent. It will be the regulator but someone else will have to take the lead. Our group thus formed, and we have our North Shore Micmac District Council as the leader of this now.
We've put an application in. It will be reviewed. It will probably take a year or so to look at it. There's no funding, by the way, for this. It will cost about a million dollars to eradicate, but the salmon sport fishing industry on the Miramichi is a $20 million a year industry, and it's going to be in jeopardy because once the invaders get into the system, they're just going to keep multiplying.
The irony is that this was an illegal introduction. If I run a bulldozer down the stream, I'm going to jail. They can enforce that, but put an invasive species in a waterway, which will change it forever, and we can't even lay a charge.
That, then is a difficulty. We need enforcement and we need a champion instead of a regulator. We need regulators too, but we also need to have a few champions. That's where DFO has to come to the forefront and say, yes, we have a problem here, and we're going to help you address it.
They don't have to do it. We'll be a proponent but we need help, not hindrance. That's the case in Miramichi Lake.
Thank you.