| While I have seriously considered for a couple of years now somehow making my way into British Columbia and becoming a full-time Vancouverite; 30,000 Atlantic Salmon in a fish farming operation 125 miles north of Vancouver do not apparently share my admiration of that beautiful Canadian Province. They've escaped from a fish farming operation near Desolation Sound in British Columbia, and are currently making their way into the Pacific Ocean to screw with the indigenous fish population and spread disease.
From the Seattle PI article also linked to above -
The Atlantic Salmon Watch Program run by the Canadian Fisheries Department reported more than 1.4 million Atlantic salmon escaped into British Columbia waters between 1987 and 2002, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands' most recent statistics reported 19,000 escaped fish in 2006.
"The B.C. government can't continue to put our wild salmon and marine ecosystem at risk by pretending that they are addressing the problems of open net-cage salmon farming with tighter regulations," Stewart said release. "This latest escape is another example of the need for a better system for farming salmon and not another Band-Aid."
Marine Harvest Canada holds 77 fish farm tenures in British Columbia and Backman said the company is currently operating at 41 of those. Marine Harvest is the world's largest aquaculture company with operations in British Columbia, Scotland, Norway and Chile.
From the Victoria (BC) Times-Colonist -
Backman predicted that the majority of the escapees would be eaten by seals and killer whales in the area. "Few will survive more than a few weeks or months."
But Blaney disagreed, saying Atlantic salmon have increasingly been found in rivers in the area that are depleted of Pacific salmon stocks. Blaney fears the Atlantic salmon will acclimatize to the streams, permanently affecting Pacific stocks.
An opinion piece from the San Francisco Chronicle by Paul Johnson and Brian J. Johnson -
Those who love to dine on salmon today are faced with a choice: wild-caught salmon harvested by fishermen or farmed salmon grown and harvested in captivity. This year, with the collapse of the West Coast's commercial salmon fishery, locally caught, wild California salmon is not available, but wild-caught Alaskan salmon is. We must continue to choose and demand wild, rather than farmed, salmon - on our plates, in our markets, and in our restaurants.
Why? Wild salmon are better for the environment, our health and for the communities that depend on them. Farmed salmon jeopardize wild salmon populations, directly and indirectly. Even organically, ecologically, or sustainably farmed salmon have a devastating effect on wild Pacific salmon species.
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An article on the pressures facing food banks, and the current inadequate levels of food assistance from the (Salem, OR) Statesman-Journal -
Like many families, the Joneses are finding their food budget being squeezed. For people on food stamps - about 471,000 in Oregon (JayinPortland note: that's roughly 15% of our population, obviously not including the large homeless population and those who don't qualify but are still near hunger themselves...) - rising food prices are even tougher to manage.
The average monthly food stamp benefit is at $176 per household, with a maximum of $426 per family of three.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees both the food stamp and food bank programs, said that the cost of feeding a low-income family of four has risen 6 percent in 12 months, making it the highest increase in food prices in 20 years.
From the same article -
Tim Mathiason receives about $300 in food stamps.
The vegetarian father of five was laid off from his job six months ago and is receiving $1,180 in unemployment benefits.
His family has been going to the food bank since March, but Mathiason eats mostly pasta, rice and canned foods. He says his family is able to eat fresh healthy foods, such as produce, only at the beginning of the month when he's got the resources to pay for them.
"I've gained weight," Mathiason says. "Partly because I quit smoking, but also because produce is so expensive and pasta is not."
From the (Boise, ID) Idaho Statesman -
Central Assembly's food bank isn't alone. In many church-run food operations across the Treasure Valley, the food boxes are more lean than they used to be or churches are having to dig deeper into their offering plates to keep supplies going. Central Assembly's food handout rose by about 10 percent this year. Many of the church food distribution centers get their food from the Idaho Foodbank.
Thirteen percent of Idaho's 1.4 million people face food uncertainty (JayinPortland note: Can we cut the 'food uncertain' and 'food insecure' stuff? These people are at risk of starving, let's call it what it is...), which means they may not be sure where they will get their next meal.
In Washington State, Gov. Gregoire is providing a little more assistance to food banks by reaching into state emergency funds to help cover their fuel costs -
Gregoire also announced Thursday in Seattle that state food stamp programs are receiving over $16 million in state and federal money.
Northwest Harvest's executive director Shelley Rotondo says rising fuel costs have put an increased strain on food banks' resources.
"A couple of months ago it cost us $1,200 to truck food up from California. A couple days ago, that same delivery cost us $3,800," she said.
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Certified Organic farm acreage is up 27% in Washington State -
Organic farm acreage in Washington grew 27 percent in the latest count, although such farming remains a mere blip on the agricultural landscape, the Washington State University Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources said Tuesday.
The 2007 estimate of certified organic land statewide was 81,472 acres, up from 64,325 acres in 2006. The number of organic acres has grown 86 percent since 2004, the center said.
"We've been conservative with our analysis, so this report represents a low-end estimate of organically farmed land in the state," said David Granatstein of WSU.
Organic farming is still small potatoes in Washington, with about 700 farms growing $144 million worth of products. The state has some 34,000 farms, which in 2006 grew $6.87 billion worth of raw farm products.
There is of course much more land in Washington State being farmed under sustainable methods than that, though - I regularly frequent a few Washington State-based growers at multiple farmers markets here in Portland who aren't technically (certified) organic, but who for all intents and purposes are.
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From the Portland Tribune, Oregon Health & Science University is planning for its new satellite campus to be one of the greenest in the nation -
Although ambitious, the goal is not unrealistic. For starters, by building the campus in the downtown area, OHSU is complying with state, regional and local land-use goals of concentrating development in the urban core instead of sprawling outward.
"Building here will create jobs, educational opportunities and health care services near transit and where people already live," said Mark Williams, OHSU's associate vice president for campus planning, development and real estate.
But more than that, the site - approximately 19 acres of industrial land donated by the Schnitzer family - essentially is a blank slate that allows OHSU officials to specify practically every detail, from the alignment of future streets to the percentage of open space.
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Also from the Portland Tribune, native northwestern birds of prey are thankful to Pearl District human residents for the tasty non-native meals being left for them in the pond of the (beautiful) one square city-block Tanner Springs Park, which was originally intended to recreate the original ecology of our area before development -
But last summer some Pearl District residents decided to add their own bit of nature to the park. In the dark of night they began dumping goldfish and koi into the pond - decidedly non-native and a threat to the pond's water quality, according to parks officials. The fish defecate, they said, and the poop was causing an abundance of slimy green algae.
Parks officials tried scooping the fish out of the water but the fish were too quick and frisky. And Pearl residents, enamored with the bright orange and red and yellow the fish presented against the plainer, more natural colors of the park, kept adding to their number and feeding them. By last summer, hundreds of fish were schooling around the pond.
Not anymore. Nature seems to have found a way to restore the balance of the park - at the same time tweaking the less-than-natural tendencies of Pearl District urbanites - in the form of ospreys that have been dive-bombing into the shallow pond and making away with the fish that weren't supposed to be there in the first place.
"The big birds have left their mark" -
But the the big birds have left their mark - windows on the top floor of the Northwest 10th Avenue building where the ospreys most often perch now are streaked with osprey poop.
(chuckling...) |
