Government laziness the issue

Page 5

Dear Editor:

As usual the environmental protectionists are using a pneumatic hammer to kill a flea, and as usual they are pointing it in the wrong direction.

The solution to fish farm escapes is not to shut them all down, but government action to allow indigenous species to be farmed in British Columbia.

B.C. is the only place, possibly on the globe, that does not allow farming of local species. Instead fish and game farmers must import buffalo from the prairies, salmon from the Maritimes, deer from Britain and elk from Montana.

Then escapes become fodder for the hysteria of the protectionists who can't grasp that shutting down the fish farms will increase the food fishery pressure on the Pacific salmon they claim to be protecting.

If B.C. would end its shortsighted policy on game and fish farms, a policy no doubt entrenched in old guard bureaucratic laziness, and allow farmers to raise species natural to B.C. we could ensure a steady supply of desired food products while lessening the pressure on the wild, drastically reduce the impact of any possible escapes and enroll the private sector (and their money) in endangered species renewal.

The counter claim the protectionists will put forth that indigenous farmed escapees would pollute the wild population is laughable when you consider elk, deer, moose and other game species already winter on B.C. farms, often among domesticated imported stock. Farms are in more danger from diseases brought in from the wild than any wild species could ever be from healthy farm stock.

D. Simpson

McBride, B.C.