Above Photo: The disappearing Burbot. (Fresh water ling cod)
First let me say I am grateful to those members of the Ministry of Environment who do care about the state of our lakes and rivers, but they are left largely underfunded by politicians who want your vote and could not care if they lose the last fish in BC to get it.
How can the ministry say they care about state of our lakes and the fish in them when they never in modern history check on species and numbers in the lakes they brag about to the world, and brag that tourism should be the opportunity we need to exploit? Many of the lakes were last checked between the 50’s and 70’s and they have no data since those dates.
I cannot find any evidence that indicates lakes are being checked for quantity of fish or number of fish species at all anymore despite all the claims about conservation and or justifying catch limits. Is there any testing done at all of water quality, has there ever been any testing? Its the fundamentals of conservation and its all absent from the Ministry of Environment.
Unless we shout and scream to have our voices heard, nothing will happen, actually fixing problems only matters in how many votes they will lose or gain.
It takes no imagination to see we are still using treble hooks in lakes, and in some lakes fishing with nets is still permitted, a great way to invite extinction of the species.
Right now we are living at the mercy of an NDP Goverment, and one would think they care more about our environment than do the right wing BC Liberals or before them the Social Credit Party.
Math and science do not lie, math and facts do not care what political party is in charge, and based on that math is it not absolutely ass backwards that almost all of the testing of lakes for both numbers of species and numbers of fish were done under right wing governments? You would never have thought so from the NDP sales pitch, and the Greens have proven they are only in it for the pension plans.
I don’t give a damn about your political preference, I do care that if were going to have fishing for our children in the future, we need to consistently count fish and that has not been done properly or at all in the last 20 years in our region. Like I said this is not a problem created by the employees of our Ministry of Environment, but by the politicians who run the Ministry of Environment.
This is a reckless waste of valuable resources.
The one thing I have learned setting up this website is that the government only cares about votes and not about fish stocks.
Could one of the reasons for refusing to count be that it would expose an ugly truth? That government is milking tourism as much as it can before there is nothing left, as per what we witnessed with our salmon stocks?
I sort of agree with aboriginals who say that once the government has taken everything worthwhile from the land and lakes, they want to give it back to aboriginals in exchange for their votes.
We need to do more, we are not loud enough, maybe we need to talk to truck drivers as they seem to care more about our nation than governments do.
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