A great time was had by all at the 2022 Christmas Potluck. A great big thank you is due to all who made it come off flawlessly: Andrea, Linda, Nancy Derek, Jim, Joe and many more. A great thanks is also due to the Legion itself for being so welcoming and helpful. It was great to be able to get together for a face to face social occasion. Thanks also to BCWF President Chuck Zuckerman who joined us for the evening.
We also raised $240 as well as food donations for the food bank!
The Federal government has made some poorly thought out amendments to Bill C-21. It appears to be very excessive over-reach that is designed more for political advantage than for public safety. It enjoys little support among law abiding firearms owners.
BCWF has issued a statement on the amendments, copied below:
Canada targets law-abiding Canadians while gang violence sets new records
Amendments to Bill C-21 introduced this week would effectively ban millions of hunting and sporting rifles, in addition to the models already included in the proposed legislation.
“The federal government is laser-focused on regulating firearms that are rarely used in the commission of crimes and punishing Canadians who are the least likely to commit crimes,” said Jesse Zeman, Executive Director of the 44,000-member B.C. Wildlife Federation. “Meanwhile, gang violence and gang related murders are the highest on record since Canada started tracking it in 2005.”
About 74 per cent of gang-related murders are committed with guns, most with a handgun, according to Statistics Canada.
“The government knows that gang-related crime is through the roof, but their proposed regulation targets the wrong people and misleads Canadians about the perpetrators of gun crime,” said Zeman. “Gangsters don’t follow the rules, so more rules are not going to address the problem.”
Bill C-21 was originally introduced by the government to implement a mandatory buyback program for so-called “assault-style” firearms. The original list of affected firearms included more than 2,000 models, the vast majority of which are used for hunting.
Changes proposed this week expand the definition of a prohibited firearm to include semi-automatic rifles and shotguns “designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine with a capacity greater than five cartridges of the type for which the firearm was originally designed.”
The amendments proposed will affect millions of hunting and sporting firearms, according to the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights. Those firearms are worth at least $3 billion, including $1 billion worth of inventory in the hands of small businesses across the country.
Confiscating these lawfully owned firearms will cost Canadians between $1 billion and $5 billion, according to a Fraser Institute study. Plus, it will cost up to $750 million in compensation to legal owners, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. More than $200 million will be spent to destroy these firearms.
That’s a big investment for a display that experts agree will have little to no impact on crime.
“Banning and buying back rifles that are used for hunting and sport shooting will only affect law-abiding, RCMP-vetted Canadians who rely on wild game to feed their families or enjoy a day at the shooting range,” said Zeman. “In contrast, smugglers are literally using drones to fly illegal handguns across the border to gangs, and the federal government is looking the other way because investing in better border security isn’t in their political interests.”
Licensed owners of firearms are demonstrably less likely to commit a crime than other Canadians. Holders of a Possession and Acquisition License (PAL) are vetted carefully by the RCMP before a license is granted and the list of PAL holders is checked every 24 hours against the identities of people charged with criminal offences.
The “continuous eligibility screening” program is administered by the RCMP to ensure that the owners of legally obtained firearms are not a threat to public safety.
The statistics are clear.
The homicide rate in Canada is 2.12 accused persons per 100,000 adult Canadians. In contrast, between 2000 and 2020, only 1.04 persons were accused of homicide per 100,000 PAL holders, so an adult Canadian who does not hold a PAL is more than twice as likely to be accused of homicide than a PAL holder. In fact, firearms owners are careful to avoid criminal activity because they know that even a minor offense will prevent them from being able to feed their families or enjoy the sport they love.
The BCWF is urging the federal government to properly fund law enforcement agencies to catch and prosecute people who commit criminal offences with firearms and to bolster the Canadian Border Services Agency to stop the flow of illegal handguns across our borders.
More than 90 per cent of gun-related crime in Canada is committed with firearms smuggled from the United States.
Please contact your MP to express your unhappiness with this development. This link will take you to a page that will give you your MPs contact info.
Many conservationists are aware of the danger of M.Ovi. The full name for this infectious bacteria is Mycoplasma Ovipneumoniae (M.Ovi). It is passed from domestic sheep to wild sheep. Although domestic sheep can tolerate the bacteria it is almost always fatal for wild sheep.
This film explores the impact of M.Ovi, following Dr. Helen Schwantje, the lead wildlife veterinarian for the BC Provincial government and a sheep farmer. Helen is at the forefront of the battle against M.Ovi.
If you do not know about M.Ovi, or you want to learn more, check out the trailer:
Transmission | Official Trailer from Filter Studios on Vimeo.
North Shore Fish and Game will endeavour to screen the film in the near future. If you’d be interested in attending, please contact us.
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I just bought a wall tent off Facebook Marketplace and the seller threw in two wood frame folding camp cots.
They are the same design as what you’d get from Cabelas, only made of wood. If you find yourself camping in a wall tent in the winter these are exactly the kind of cots you need.
They are completely functional. Call/text me at 604-230-4225 or email rob@robchipman.net
During our club spring bear hunt the kids found this skull:
So, what is it? Given that it was a spring *bear* hunt the obvious guess was bear, except it’s kind of small.
Here are some pics of a bear skull from a mid-sized sow I got a few years ago:
There are a lot of obvious similarities. The sow was probably about a 5 1/2 bear.
Our speculation? The skull the kids found was that of a black bear cub. Cause of death? Who knows?
What do you think?
The plight of steelhead in BC is not well known to the general public. Some Fraser River system steelhead are in particularly bad straits.
What are termed “Fraser River late-run summer steelhead” is actually 10 different spawning stocks that utilize the Fraser watershed upstream of Hell’s Gate. A sub-group referred to as “Thompson and Chilcotin Steelhead” comprises 6 out of these 10 stocks. Although the label “Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead” has been hitting the news fairly regularly for the past few years, the problem is still not well enough understood.
If you do a quick Google search of the term and click on the “News” option you will see headlines like:
The bad news goes back years and years.
This year we got some good news. On October 19 Robert Bison, Fisheries Stock Assessment Biologist, Fish and Wildlife, BC Ministry of Forests, released some numbers:
Here’s the problem: steelhead have been down so long that *everything* looks like up. That “great news” that I’m referencing? As Rob Bison points out, those numbers qualify as “Extreme Conservation Concern”. The spawner abundance for the Thompson ranks 40th out of a 44 year monitoring timeframe. The Chilcotin is just as bad – it ranks 44th out of a 52 year monitoring time frame.
For those who like graphics to demonstrate what’s up, here are two:
You can find Rob Bison’s release here. If I understand his release properly these numbers are spawners that return in late 2022, but will spawn in 2023.
What does this mean? Simple. It means we have to pull all the levers to save these fish, that we have to pull them hard and we have to pull them now. Habitat destruction, pinniped predation and unsustainable bycatch needs to stop. BCWF has been championing this issue and you can get some good background from the BCWF website. (North Shore Fish and Game is a BCWF member club and proud of it). You can find lots more info about the plight of steelhead on the web as well – for example at Steelhead Voices.
What should you do? The simplest thing is to contact your MLA and let them know that you care about steelhead. It’s really simple. Click the appropriate link below and send an email. You can use my text or put in your own.
“Dear [insert your MLA’s name]
I live in your constituency and you are my MLA.
Interior Fraser steelhead are on the brink of extirpation. Something must be done. We need an immediate COSEWIC listing for IFS as well as a SARA listing (something the BC Ministry of the Environment has pressed the Feds for in the past). I am very concerned about this issue and want you to take some kind of action. Please let me know that you support saving these fish by return email.
Thanks and regards”
If you’re on the North Shore here are quick links:
If you’re not on the North Shore you can find your MLA here.
Sending these emails isn’t hard but it is very helpful. Take a minute and give it a try It’s a great habit to develop.
Ed has created a Facebook community chat group called “NSFGC community chat“, which you can reach by clicking on the link. It’s a place to connect get advice and share information about fishing ,hunting and Conservation for the members and friends of the North Shore Fish and Game Club.
The idea is to create a group chat to improve communication between members and potential new members of the North Shore Fish And Game Club. In the past we’ve used our monthly bulletin as well as WhatsApp chat groups to share information about club hunts, derbies and other events, but this community page should be a great improvement.
You can join by clicking the link, going to the community page and asking to join. Ed will get a message and add you. It’s that simple!
We have a club hunt planned for November 5-12 on Texada.
We plan to camp at Shelter Point on Texada and hunt from there.
For those who don’t know, Texada is an island just off Powell River. There are multiple ferry rides involved but the trip is short overall.
The bag limit on Texada is 3 deer
The provincial bag limit for deer is also 3, so if you are successful with three deer on this trip please remember that you can’t go get more deer in November in the Interior. Exceptions to this rule apply for those who hunt on Haida Gwai.
For more review click here and look at the 2022-2024 Hunting Synopsis.
Some members will stay the whole time while others will leave earlier (some, no doubt, to hit Region 3 or 8 for a big muley!) Carpooling can be arranged. There is a WhatsApp chat about the hunt that will keep you up to date. Contact Ed Powell at (604)-358-5417 to get included in that chat or contact me directly at 604-230-4225 for more info.
I was fortunate recently to travel to the Interior with three BCWF staff members, Jesse Zeman, Neil Fletcher and Tobias Rohr, to meet with elders and staff of a First Nation that BCWF has collaborated with in the past.
A 4:30 wake up call was in order so that we could make it to the band office by 10:00, and like most trips to the Interior the first half hour or 45 minutes sucked, but once we were on the highway and driving through the Valley everything looked better.
We looked at two different sites. The first was a high altitude lake whose surrounding are had been very over-grazed and whose shores had been damaged by cattle. A good solution in this case is to reduce the amount of cattle in order to leave some food for ungulates, and failing that, fencing all or most of the lake to protect the shoreline. Another issue is that much of the water from the lake is utilized for irrigating hay crops. This can be bad for fish because it can lower the level of the lake further than normal, exposing spawning beds.
With so many competing interests a lake like this is hard to rehabilitate. Ranchers need water and grazing and restricting that costs them real money and hardship. They have range leases and water licenses and it’s hard for conservationists to overcome those challenges.
At this lake we met with the band elders, some of whom had lived on this site in the 1950s.
You can see at the top of the picture a cattle guard removed to restrict access, but that doesn’t stop cows, only drivers. The cows just walk over the fences, go down to the lake to get water, and destroy the shoreline.
The second site was much better. It is completely contained within a parcel of private land so there is only one person to make the decision about whether we can do something on his land (and he is supportive). He has a large field that is bordered on one side by a river and on the opposite side by a hill. Along the base of the hill is a secondary watercourse that takes floodwater and groundwater from the river for a length of a few kilometres before emptying back into the river.
The plan is to deepen the watercourse and add dead end branch stems whenever possible, and feed it from an intake on the upstream side on the river. We’ll connect the hillside watercourse to the river by way of a ditch across the field. During high silt flood times we’ll close the intake to prevent sedimentation, and re-open it when the water clears up again. The picture above shows where the intake would be placed. The picture below shows the field that the water already crosses during floods, but which we’ll manipulate to have a constant, controllable flow (and by “we” I mean all member clubs of BCWF).
This will create what some fish nerds and wetlands nerds refer to as “frog water”. When you find the kind of water where you’d imagine finding frogs it’s often great habitat for coho. Good habitat can increase coho fry density by a huge factor.
The images above show the in-grown watercourse. An excavator will spend about 20 days cleaning these out, making them at least 3 feet deep and adding branch stems for more habitat.
This is the end of the rearing channel, where the water taken out of the river a little upstream feeds back into the river again.
A long time, very experienced fish nerd, Sean, explains that not only will coho use this channel to rear fry, but will most likely return to spawn. In the picture with Sean is Jesse Zeman, Executive Director of BCWF, and First Nation member Keith. Although the nation’s elders accompanied us to the second site as well it was a long walk and most of them stayed back at the ranch buildings.
The total cost is expected to be somewhere between $125,000 and $200,000, and the habitat could easily add 200,000 fry each year, so it’s good value for the money. In fact, the project is so good that when I asked Neil Fletcher to rate it on a scale of 1-10 compared to all the other projects he does he gave it a 9.5.
What’s interesting about this project though, really, is the collaboration. The BCWF, the rancher and the First Nation are all going to be hands on in making this happen. The First Nation will provide some funding, equipment and staff to work on it. It’s unlikely that their members will ever catch any of the coho, but even if they do there is no question that non-Indigenous saltwater anglers like our club members will get a crack at them first, and probably land a few.
Overall it’s a great example of how consultation and reconciliation is good for conservation.