Try this on:
It’s late August. You’re sitting on the banks of a river in northwestern BC, tall spruce trees stand behind you and thickets of highbush cranberries cluster along the riverbanks. Then the steady sound of the river changes for a moment and a dark flicker in your right eye becomes a grizzly - a big female grizzly - busting her way up the riverbank about 20 feet away with a fat wriggling salmon in her mouth. You don’t move. You can’t take your eyes from her. She barely notices you or your awe as she eats. Then she rambles back down the bank into water that is shimmering, thick with the shadows of spawning salmon.
To an observer this moment has visibly moved you. Yes, at first you were a bit afraid, but now that it’s passed, you feel something else, something more edifying. You are amazed. You know you have had a once in a lifetime experience. In this time of climate change, declining wild salmon populations, and disappearing wilderness, you are aware that what just happened is unique – increasingly, terrifyingly unique. You also know that the future of that place, the river, is endangered.
What if you could change that? What if you had a chance to influence the way environmental decisions are made in British Columbia; to radically raise the bar on the role ecological and cultural values play in land use decisions – would you take it?
The Taku Watershed in northwestern BC has no roads, no sea lice, and no industrial development. It spans nearly two million hectares of intact wilderness ecosystems, ranging from deep cool rivers carving through broad fertile valleys to airy mountain peaks.
It is home to all five species of wild Pacific salmon, as well as grizzly and black bears, wolves, mountain sheep, caribou, moose, goats, wolverines, and countless more animal and plant species.
But the BC government is currently negotiating with the Taku River Tlingit First Nation in a land use planning process that could allow acid-generating mines to open in the watershed, destroying the character and quality of habitat in this watershed for wild salmon, and all that depend on them, for generations to come.
You can do nothing. Or, you can use this opportunity to influence the way we value wilderness, wild salmon, and grizzly bears; to act for those places that are intact, that are abundant with life, that are strongholds for wild salmon; to protect the future of places with the power to touch you at the edge of your being.
In the Taku there is an opportunity to protect salmon before they are imperilled. Let the BC government know what the Taku and places like this mean to you. Remind our representatives that wild salmon need wild rivers.
You have a chance to change everything.
Take the chance. Take action.
For more information:
www.takulegacy.org
www.riverswithoutborders.org
Nola Poirier is a freelance writer, living in Powell River, B.C.
She is the author of many wonderful stories, a campaigner, a leader and an inspiring presence.
