The Spruce City Wildlife Association had a partnership with SEP pretty much right from the inception of SEP. There was a funding cutback at one time, which was the same one that shut down the Penny hatchery, as well as the Quesnel River Research Centre hatchery that was in this area. That currently leaves only Spruce City left.
Right now we are the recipient of funding from the B.C. salmon restoration and innovation fund. However, besides that we don't receive any funding from SEP. We have a community adviser here and he's extremely dedicated to helping us, because we are the only hatchery in his region. Unfortunately, when we need advice, whether it's hatchery advice or upgrade advice or that sort of thing, we have to reach out of region or out of area every time, just because we don't have that advice here. We don't have those resources here.
Where that's left us with local stocks, quite frankly, is high and dry. Along with not only no programs running, only a fraction of the streams up here are being monitored and it's kind of one of those things that, when people have something to lose, it's really easy to get people involved and engaged. Since we rebooted everything in the hatchery about four or five years ago with Spruce City, it's been really interesting and really neat to tell people that there are salmon here, that salmon do swim right by the city. Previous to that, again, we've lost so much and we've lost so many stocks that those numbers just aren't there for people to see them and realize that there still is something to lose.