Stay out of sensitive salmon habitat.

Reference Number
13
Text


I am writing as a landowner, farmer in training and citizen with an engineering background. I am in opposition to this Cedar LNG Project in Kitimat.

We do not need this project or the LNG capacity. We need to preserve critical salmon habitat and stop maintaining the status quo for rampant industrial activity. We only need to look to LNG projects in Siberia and havoc wreaked upon once thriving salmon populations.

Why do we care about salmon populations? Because they are an integral part of the riparian and forest ecosystems on which sustainable forestry and water use are built. Salmon are beautiful creatures, but we can take an economist lens and reduce them to potential tourism dollars, but more importantly, nitrogen packets. These packets of nitrogen feed out forests by their behaviour/life cycle in swimming up river to spawn and die. Their bodies are food for a wide range of animals, who pick up their meal at the river and carry it some distance into the forest by land travel or flight. It sounds small, but over the collective actions of multiple species, these packs of nitrogen are spread over the forest floor, either directly or as scat and fertilize the woodlands. Preserving salmon habitat goes hand in hand with watershed conservation and health monitoring. These are basic systems that we depend on, no matter how removed our daily activities.

We can double down on ecological destruction and later wonder why our natural systems are suffering, or we can finally stop accepting every oil and gas developement thrust under us and look to a brighter future. We can select a better site, not on the mouth of a major river. We can avoid encroaching even more into the headwaters that supply our agricultural industries (and those of our neighbours to the south).

I realize I sound idealistic, but what where does progress start, if not looking to a more idealistic scenario. We need to be an example in putting ecological conservation before industrial activity. We can have both. It is difficult and it is expensive to give a damn about the environment. Two common excuses if ouright ridicule isn't the response. The reality is that the benefits the biosphere provide us with are real and tangible, and we as a species have beaten it to shreds, past the point of no return in many localized cases that quite quickly harm us in return. Let's take some preventative medicine and not plant a massive floating facility in a fragile habitat. Let's give ecological conservation even a fraction of 1% of the oil/gas subsidies we dole out as taxpayers.

As well, I am in full support of proper consultation with First Nations. This is their land, and it is unceded. Proper meaning actual town hall style meetings, televised results and real coverage. Not lip service and faint/unreported complaints from First Nations that weren't actually consulted.

Thank you for your time,

Leanna

Submitted by
Leanna Sturley
Phase
Planning
Public Notice
Public Notice - Public Comments Invited on a Summary and Request for Substitution
Attachment(s)
N/A
Comment Tags
Indigenous Consultation Method Fish and Fish Habitat Surface Water Quantity General opposition to project Tourism Visual Aesthetics
Date Submitted
2019-09-23 - 1:19 PM
Date modified: