Dismal sockeye run sparks downtown rally

Suzanne Fournier
September 17, 2009
The Province

People dressed as fish and a new group called the Wild Salmon Circle were joined by broadcaster Rafe Mair at a protest yesterday outside the federal fisheries offices in Vancouver.

"We're in the fight of our lives to save the wild salmon. Every fisheries minister has been a blithering idiot, and the one we have now takes the cake," bellowed Mair, 77, but still in possession of his radio hotliner's voice.

Mair criticized federal fisheries for mismanaging wild Pacific salmon stocks and encouraging fish farms, which he blamed for "disastrous" Fraser River sockeye salmon runs this summer that collapsed from a predicted 13 million to fewer than two million.

Read the full story in The Province

Read background news stories on the crash of the Fraser River sockeye