Fisheries committee  Thank you for asking that question. I'm not an expert in endangered species listings, but my understanding of it is that the proposal to list this was published in the Gazette and there was a one-month public comment period. We had one month to do our legislative review and res

Fisheries committee  I'd like to jump in on that. I think the important thing here—I'm sure you can ask my friend the professor here about his technical terminology—is triage. You're looking at what will have the largest impact on your environment. In the west it might be cheatgrass, which increases

Fisheries committee  I would like to add to that. I think the key here is that eradication is almost impossible in most cases, once an invasive species gets established. There are some exceptions. If you have a lake that is very well defined, you can add rotenone to it and you can eradicate things on

Fisheries committee  On the other hand, there are some things that have to do with genetic engineering of a bacterium and things like that, which have potential. There have been a lot of bad examples of natural enemies being released, but there also have been some cases of things working. There are s

Fisheries committee  In the Okanagan we're thinking of having a GoFundMe campaign to get dogs. That's the level we're at.

Fisheries committee  I'd sign on to that as well.

Fisheries committee  I think I presented on it. I thought about the statement I made, that after climate change, aquatic invasive species are the biggest threat to our regional economy. I asked myself if that was a true statement. I really believe it is. People really come to the Okanagan for the

Fisheries committee  There is so much work that needs to be done on stream restoration in the Okanagan. Most of those ocean-going salmon are river or stream spawners, and there is a lot work that needs to be done to bring those streams back and to improve the habitat. A lot of our habitat was channel

Fisheries committee  In the Okanagan, the Okanagan and Similkameen Invasive Species Society is the group that's on the ground. We provide a good chunk of their funding. They have a few different funding sources, including the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. We have them under contract for $30

Fisheries committee  Yes. We get “this much” from any other level of government.

Fisheries committee  It's zero from Ottawa, zero from the province. All of our funding is from the local property tax base.

Fisheries committee  Well, I can't talk about it for invasive species, but I can certainly talk about it for a lot of other projects we're working on. For one of the other biggest projects we get, we get some external project-based grant funding from senior governments for things such as flood mappin

Fisheries committee  Yes. There's some really inspiring work that's going on. One of my other hats is that I'm on the IJC's International Osoyoos Lake Board of Control, and we're working on managing the waters coming out of the Okanagan into Washington state. One of the things we manage them for is

Fisheries committee  Let me just say that there are some laws in place, of course, at the federal and provincial levels to stop the spread of invasive species, but if people are not enforcing the laws, if they only have part-time or part-year inspection stations, although it's illegal to bring invasi

Fisheries committee  Thank you for inviting me to appear as a witness. I was asked to say something about my background. I have a Ph.D. in population biology from the University of California, and my research was focused on factors that lead to the spread of invasive species. However, I have been wo