First Nations

Metro Vancouver was planning on dumping more than 660,000 tons of trashannually in a Washington state landfill. But after the provincial government announced plans to outlaw international exporting of garbage, the region is looking for places closer to home to deposit its waste, according to Kelly Sinoski of the Vancouver Sun.

One solution proposed by Environment Minister Barry Penner is to expand the Cache Creek landfillnear Ashcroft instead of shutting it down next year as originally planned. The nearby Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council heavily opposes the suggestion, saying the landfill already pollutes local rivers and affects salmon in particular. An independent study suggests the dump doesn't pose a hazard to humans or wildlife, but the council still would rather shut down the site.

Another possibility would be sending the trash to an incinerator at Gold River on Vancouver Island – a facility that hasn't been approved or built yet.

“It makes sense to deal with our environmental problems here in B.C., rather than exporting our problems to somewhere else,” Penner said. But is depending on potential expansion of an already full landfill to store garbage for the next three to 20 years the solution?

As Vancouver, B.C., watches Fraser River stocks of sockeye fail, the count of steelhead passing the Bonneville Dam in Vancouver, Wash., is soaring. And while low Alaskan Yukon runs of king and chum salmon predict a devastating winter for subsistence fishermen, salmon are even making a comeback in the Seine, as InvestigateWest reported last week. What differences could account for these drastic population changes?

Multiple environmental factors could be affecting populations. Warmer weather can heat up rivers, especially those overdrawn by humans, and discourage the cold-water-loving fish from heading upstream. Shifting ocean currents or other predator influences could be altering food sources. Pollutants from stormwater can accumulate in the fish. Overfishing can deplete numbers. Sea lice from farmed salmon could be transferring to wild salmon, weakening them and increasing the likelihood of succumbing to disease or predators. Even superb returns from previous years could be problematic, as too many fish spawning and then decomposing could produce excess bacteria, possibly resulting in disease.

A first nations group says B.C. forest fires could have been prevented if the federal government had removed wood killed by pine beetles, reports Richard J. Dalton Jr. in the Vancouver Sun. Hundreds of millions of dollars normally reserved for the pine beetle program were used instead to improve infrastructure and help those who lost jobs in forestry, and the government did not set a dollar amount for dealing with the pine beetle infestation. Trees killed by pine beetles burn more readily and quickly. The B.C. First Nations Forestry Council says had the government used the funding to clear dead wood, fire breaks would have been created that kept the fires from coming so close to communities, minimizing the overall damage.

– Emily Linroth

It looks like the British Columbia sockeye salmon runs are crashing -- at what should be a high point in their cycle, David Karp reports for The Vancouver Sun. The spring runs showed up at a fraction of their forecast abundance. The big question now is whether the much-more-abundant summer runs will follow the same pattern. If so, it poses a serious dilemma: Should fishing be limited even for poverty-stricken first nations that depend on the sockeye as a major protein source?

Ownership of about 90 percent of the province of British Columbia is in dispute because of aboriginal land claims. After four years of trying to develop a "new relationship" with the provincial government under the Recognition and Reconciliation Act, First Nations leaders are growing impatient with Premier Gordon Campbell, according to a story today in the Globe and Mail by Justine Hunter. The native leaders are suspicious that Campbell may be stringing them along to buy peace until after the 2010 Olympics are over.

As news emerges that government inspectors contracted swine flu while visiting a pig farm, Canada's First Nations are arguing that they should be first in line for swine flu vaccine. With First Nations from around Canada meeting in Calgary, the Calgary Herald's coverage by Michelle Lang and Deborah Tetley notes that swine flu has been "particularly tough some First Nations communities," with natives accounting for two of the three swine flu deaths so far in Alberta. The inspectors who were infected took off facemasks when the equipment fogged up inside a hog barn, Lang reports.