Indigenous elders at national gathering warn of dire need to react to environmental disasters

‘We want to practise our traditions but our medicines, the animals, the environment is affected,’ says elder

Rita and Tommy Monias travelled to the gathering from Cross Lake, Man. (Brandi Morin)

By Brandi Morin, CBC News, September 15, 2017

Some Indigenous elders who live traditional lifestyles that include hunting, fishing and trapping on lands and waters long utilized by their ancestors say they have noticed a rapid shift in the environment over the last several decades — a shift some attribute to climate change.

Skeena River sockeye returns at historic lows

Closing will ‘have a crushing economic impact on the entire northwest,’ says MP

By Ash Kelly, CBC News, June 28, 2017

This year’s return of Skeena River sockeye is setting up to be the worst on record.

As a result, First Nations along the river have agreed not to remove sockeye from the river, a decision made only once before when the same run returned in dismal numbers in 2013.

The low numbers have also prompted Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to close the region’s lucrative sports fishery to all salmon species until July 15.

‘New salmon run:’ Planes now fly in fish as Yukon chinook decline

Chinook salmon.

‘It is funny, but it’s also sad,’ says Duane Aucoin of the Teslin Tlingit Council

The Canadian Press, August 2, 2016

Salmon no longer collect in the nets along the Teslin River where the Tlingit people have harvested them for
thousands of years. Now, they come from the sky.

“It’s the new salmon run,” Duane Aucoin, member of the Teslin Tlingit Council, said recently.

Toxic ‘red tide’ in Chile prompts investigation of salmon farms

Dead sardines washed up on a beach in Chile, May 2016.

Algal bloom ‘of biblical proportions’ has led to protests and health emergency as concerns raised over dumping of rotting salmon in ocean

by Jonathan Franklin, The Guardian, May 17, 2016

Chilean authorities are investigating the country’s salmon-farming industry after an algal bloom carrying a virulent neurotoxin spread for hundreds of miles along the rugged coastline of Patagonia, triggering a health emergency and angry protests by fishermen.

The huge “red tide” has grown rapidly over recent weeks, in what has been described as the country’s worst environmental crisis in recent years: dozens of people have been poisoned by the algal bloom which makes seafood toxic and has deprived thousands of fishermen of a living.

Fort Mac Blaze: Brace for New Era of Infernos

Homes and cars burned in Fort McMurray, May 2016. Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

What’s turning northern forests into tinder? Biggest reason is climate change, but that’s not all.

A sudden shift in the wind at a critical time of day was all it took to send a wildfire out of control through Fort McMurray, forcing more than 80,000 people out of their homes in what has become the biggest natural disaster in Canadian history.

Earlier this week, Darby Allen, the regional fire chief for the area, minced no words when he was asked what might happen now that more than 1,600 homes have been destroyed.

Tree-ring data suggest B.C. is facing harshest droughts in 350 years

Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail, May 4, 2016

British Columbia is facing droughts more severe than any in the past 350 years, according to new research that used tree-ring data to reconstruct the coastal climate back to the 17th century.

The study suggests recent droughts in the West – which have dried up streams, led to provincewide restrictions on water use, and triggered intense fire seasons – are likely to be surpassed by more severe events in the next few decades.

New study predicts significant declines in B.C. native fish catches due to climate change

A spawning sockeye salmon is seen making its way up the Adams River in Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park near Chase, B.C. Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

By Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, January 13, 2016

Climate change will slash aboriginal fishing catches by as much as about 50 per cent by 2050 as marine species move farther north along the B.C. coast in search of cooler waters, a new study concludes.

Published on Wednesday in the online journal PLOS ONE, the study of 98 species of fish and invertebrates utilized by 16 First Nations communities along the coast suggests that the average catch will drop by 4.5 to 11 per cent at a loss conservatively estimated at $6.7 million to $12 million annually in commercial fisheries values alone.

World’s lakes are warming surprisingly quickly due to climate change

Lakes around the world are warming, and that’s expected to lead to an increase in algae blooms like this one on Lake Erie in 2011, which made tap water undrinkable in places like Ohio. (NOAA/Associated Press)

Canadian lakes, including those that are ice-covered in winter, are warming twice as fast as others

By Emily Chung, CBC News, Dec 17, 2015

Lakes around the world are warming surprisingly quickly due to climate change, threatening the global water supply. And lakes in Canada are some of the fastest-warming in the world, a new study shows.

‘We are moving into unchartered territory at a frightening speed’: Greenhouse gases hit new high

In this Nov. 24, 2014 file photo, smoke streams from the chimneys of the E.ON coal-fired power station in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The U.N. weather agency says levels of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most important greenhouse gases, reached record highs last year. Martin Meissner/ Associated Press

by The Washington Post, November 9, 2015

Greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere reached another grim milestone earlier this year as carbon dioxide levels surpassed the symbolic threshold of 400 parts per million across much of the planet, the premier global meteorological association confirmed in a report to be released Monday.

Figures compiled by the World Meteorological Organization showed strong growth — and new records — in the concentrations of all three of the most important heat-trapping gases, continuing a long-term trend with ominous implications for climate change, the group said.

B.C.’s iconic Adams River salmon run off to a ‘grim’ start

A spawning sockeye salmon is seen making its way up the Adams River in Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park near Chase, B.C. Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail, Nov 4, 2015

British Columbia’s iconic Adams River salmon run, a spectacular natural event that has become an international magnet for tourism drawing up to 250,000 visitors a year, appears to have collapsed.

Instead of 1.2 million fish, as was hoped for in preseason forecasts, only about 3,000 sockeye have returned to the river, which flows into Shuswap Lake, about 75 kilometres northeast of Kamloops.