Dear editor,
Thanks to Tanis Gower for her op-ed in the Dec. 13 Comox Valley Record outlining the longstanding lack of federal protection for our precious wild fishery and the habitats it requires.
We have been without a strong Fisheries Act since it was changed in 2012, and fisheries research and on-the-ground and on-the-water protection has been deteriorating for much longer than that.
There is a skeleton crew on the Island charged with upholding what regulations there are to protect our wild fishery and even in the Comox Valley, where there has historically been a huge wild fishery, there isn鈥檛 even a fisheries office the public can access any more.
I hope our Island members of Parliament are working hard to have a new act passed, and budgets to accompany it, that will reflect the importance of our wild fishery to local, provincial, and federal economies and to Canada鈥檚 national and international identity as a place that treasures and husbands its resources.
Barbara Wellwood
Comox
