Trudeau to make final decision on dangerous Skeena River development

British Columbia’s Skeena River is a globally important wild fish stronghold home to some of the largest chinook and steelhead ever recorded. A liquefied natural gas cooling and export facility at the river’s mouth is currently awaiting approval. And by early October, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet will decide whether or not they’ll kick the $11.4 billion mega-project to the curb. 

The facility would be built next to and over prime wild salmon habitat, a sandy eelgrass bed called Flora Bank that harbors hundreds of millions of juvenile salmon every year on their way out to sea.

Scientists, conservationists, and First Nations leaders up and down the river have stated that the project, backed by Malaysia’s state oil company Petronas, is an existential threat to salmon. And salmon advocates have said that extensive efforts by Petronas and the federal government over the last six months have failed to shore up the dodgy science behind the proposal and accommodate First Nations concerns.

“The work done to date by Petronas’ consultants has been rejected by [Canada’s Environmental Assessment Agency] at least five times as being flawed,” said Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief and spokesman Chief Na’Moks, one of the project’s fiercest critics. “Now [the agency] seems to be buying into the deeply flawed justifications for a project that was simply sited in the worst possible place.”

Wild Salmon Center has been partnering with local conservation group SkeenaWild to make the scientific and legal case for rejecting the development.

Now is the final call to tell PM Trudeau: Don’t Put the Skeena at Risk

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Tom Bie
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Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

Category: Daily Drake
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Author: Tom Bie

Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

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