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The Bay of Fundy debates future of its disappearing salmon cont'd...

Endangered listing urged 

In Atlantic Canada, the rivers with some of the lowest returns run clockwise along the inner Bay of Fundy, starting north of the St. John River in New Brunswick, to the Annapolis River in Nova Scotia. Before 1985, the annual returns to these rivers ran as high as 40,000. But by 1999, only a few hundred salmon had returned to spawn, a drop of more than 99 percent. On the Big Salmon River in New Brunswick, counts used to top 5,000. This fall, fish officials tallied 20 adult salmon.

"We're groping for explanations and treading water at the same time," says Peter G. Amiro, a salmon specialist for Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). 

Amiro and other fisheries biologists fear that without the safety net of a larger population to replenish the species, the salmon's fate may be doomed. To keep genetic stocks alive and to help the fish develop beyond the critical early-development stages, the DFO is collecting young wild salmon, called parrs, from the Big Salmon River and the Stewiake River in Nova Scotia, and raising them for brood stock. The hatcheries are currently incubating over a half a million eggs. After they hatch they will be raised to the fry stage (five to eight centimeters, or two to three inches long) then released into the rivers from where their parents came. The purpose, Amiro says, is to boost stocks and preserve the genetic character of salmon in the inner Bay of Fundy rivers.

Amiro has twice petitioned the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) to list the salmon in 33 rivers along the inner Bay of Fundy as endangered. The national panel of scientists, government representatives and conservationists, compiles an annual listing of species at risk of extirpation or extinction. Though it has no legal mandate, once COSEWIC lists a species, it nearly guarantees federal financing for recovery efforts. 

(Last month Environment Minister David Anderson reintroduced the Species at Risk Act (SARA) in the House of Commons. The legislation is designed to protect endangered species and provide for recovery efforts. If SARA becomes law, COSEWIC will be given legal recognition.)

Conservationists say they are tired of the federal government pouring millions of dollars into saving the Pacific salmon, while Atlantic Canada has received a fraction of the financing needed to rescue its East Coast cousin. "The mindset is, throw money at British Columbia for the salmon and at Atlantic Canada for the cod," says Lewis Hinks, the regional director in Nova Scotia for the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF). "They don't seem to recognize that the salmon here are just as important ecologically and culturally as the salmon out west, if not more so."

Dr. Jeffrey Hutchings, a biologist at Dalhousie University who sits on the Marine Fish Committee of COSEWIC, says Atlantic salmon are already protected by law under the Fisheries Act, "so the protection measures are in place." 

Though he declines to comment about whether a listing of the salmon in the inner Bay of Fundy rivers is imminent, he says, "From my reading of the data they are in big trouble. I'd be surprised if they were not listed as either endangered or threatened."

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