Quality Waters strategy failed the community
It’s the prime time of the year where the rivers and angling become the equivalent of our recreation centre for many living in Stikine. And fishing is an economic driver too – especially the fly fishing, catch and release steelhead fishery.
Right now it’s in full swing and people are coming from all over the world to fish in our waters.
The sport fishery sector, including components like guiding, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, hotels, lodges and retail spending, accounts for $9 million year on the Skeena River system alone. If managed properly, it’s sustainable.
And that is why proposed projects, like Enbridge’s tar sands oil pipeline and Royal Dutch Shell’s coal bed methane drilling plans in the Sacred Headwaters, bring far morerisks than benefits for local people, economically, culturally, socially and ecologically.
Managing the steelhead population from a habitat perspective is one thing. But the management of anglers has created problems for our steelhead fishery as well.
The Quality Waters Strategy, an effort to develop new angling regulations on our rivers, could have been a community building exercise. Instead it was a divisive process, pitting guides against other local small business owners, with the result that no real solutions to issues like tourism sector sustainability or illegal guiding were achieved.
To top it all off, local Quality Waters Strategy working group members that I talked to weren’t even given the courtesy of a heads up when the new regulations were announced in a government news release Oct. 13. The new regulations are set to be implemented April 1, 2012.
Despite all this, on a beautiful day on one of our great steelhead rivers, with the late autumn light filtering through the goldencoloured aspen leaves, with a crisp breeze flowing down from fresh, snow covered peaks, with your fly line laying out flat on the surface of clean, free-flowing water, and with the prospect of a steelhead to be landed and released, it’s easy to forget about all life’s problems no matter if you live locally or come from away.
Let’s hope that such a sought-after opportunity remains available and viable for well into the future.