Dear Editor,

Will the public remain silent while wild salmon disappear?

The Fraser River is home to one of the world’s most spectacular and inspiring salmon runs in the world. Or at least it was.

Here we are, three years after the alarming 2009 collapse of the Fraser River Sockeye salmon, the $26 million dollar inquiry into their decline, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) forecasts for returns are way off, two years in a row.

Here we are three years later, with another bleak run predicted.

Meanwhile, DFO remains mostly mute about the ever-mounting evidence that the arrow is pointing directly at salmon farms correlating with the suffering salmon runs.

Young salmon smolts are swimming by salmon farms that are infected with a deadly outbreak of IHN (Infectious Haematopoietic Necrosis).

World-renowned labs have confirmed the presence of the deadly European strain of infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv) in market-farmed salmon and a wild Vedder River chum. Positive tests have also come in for the potentially lethal piscine reovirus. Salmon leukemia was found by DFO scientist Dr.Kristi Miller, and she was muzzled by the Privy Council to speak of her findings.

Salmon farmers refuse to allow Dr. Miller or independent scientists to test the farmed salmon.

The BC Liberal government wants to ram through a legislation that would fine and jail people like wild salmon advocate Dr. Alex Morton for speaking out about diseases coming from fish farms.

Why are we allowing this to happen? Government is protecting an industry that has decimated wild salmon around the world. Why? So stores can sell “fresh” diseased farmed salmon?

The public must speak up on behalf of wild salmon and demand better for the salmon that give so much to this world, before we lose this precious species forever.

Elena Edwards, Mission