Thomas Kervin’s recent column on Fish Farm Protests and Indigenous Peoples misses the real issue. His last paragraph makes sense… There is a trade-off between jobs and the environment. What he fails to mention is that the Norwegian trade council, Norsk Industri, announced last May that it was moving to closed containment. The reason? It is not economically feasible to use open net and do a good job of protecting the environment and controlling disease. This council has as members most of the major industry of Norway, for example StatOil, Norsk Hydro and, yes, Marine Harvest. THIS is the issue: can we protect our wild salmon and the entire ecological chain to which they belong and still allow open net? The answer, in the opinion of many sensible people, is no.
This struggle is not just about First Nations, although their heritage is central, it is about protecting a complex and endangered ecological system that has endured for thousands of years.
Jack Macki,
Parksville
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