Gov't permit under fire for salmon deaths
Contracted mining of gravel by natives blamed for loss of 2 million fish

David Carrigg, The Province
Published: Thursday, April 20, 2006

The federal fisheries department is under fire after two million young salmon died as a result of gravel mining in the Fraser River.

Kathryn Molloy, executive-director of the Sierra Club of Canada, yesterday called for an investigation into the deaths, uncovered last month by a group of B.C. Institute of Technology students doing field work.

"When salmon in the Fraser are already severely threatened by other environmental factors we cannot allow these kinds of human-caused threats to continue," Molloy said.

The Cheam Indian band contracted a gravel company to mine gravel and reroute a Fraser River channel.

The gravel mining was authorized by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The permit was issued following the recent lifting of a commercial gravel-mining moratorium on the Fraser.

BCIT program department head Mark Angelo said a probe by students and staff shows that the gravel mining rerouted the river and left several hectares of spawning beds high and dry, leaving millions of pink salmon to die while they were in the most vulnerable stage of their lives.

Angelo estimated that under normal circumstances, about 40,000 adult pink salmon would have survived from the original hatch of 2.25 million fish, known as alevin when they first emerge from their eggs.

The Sierra Club and the Fraser Valley Salmon Society claim the fisheries department failed to properly monitor the gravel operation and failed to ensure that it would not threaten salmon spawning beds located in the immediate area.

Vicky Husband, the Sierra Club's conservation chairwoman, has called for the reintroduction of the gravel- mining moratorium.

"It is clear these gravel-mining operations threaten critical fish habitat and have nothing to do with flood control," Husband said.

According to the Sierra Club, many of the Fraser River's famous salmon runs are already threatened by record high temperatures and overfishing.

Last year, sockeye runs on the Fraser were so low that most of the sockeye fishery was closed.

A Cheam band spokesman could not be reached for comment.