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The Atlantic Salmon Federation has significant concerns about the environmental preview report from Mowi Canada East to facilitate the expansion of the company’s Indian Head Hatchery in Stephenville and its network of open net-pen salmon cages along the south coast of Newfoundland. This expansion will have disastrous impacts on wild Atlantic salmon and the marine environment.
Please help by sending an email to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change for Newfoundland and Labrador, Bernard Davis, to express your concern and call for a full environmental impact statement.
To: Honorable Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Bernard Davis
I am writing to express significant concern about the environmental preview report from Mowi Canada East for its proposed hatchery and sea cage expansion on the south coast of Newfoundland.
This project will result in 2.2 million additional domesticated Atlantic salmon smolt being stocked in existing, newly approved, and pending cage sites, including in places where the industry is not currently present and the status of rare and threatened wild fish populations is unknown.
The salmon aquaculture industry has had severe negative effects on wild Atlantic salmon and the environment in Newfoundland. Peer-reviewed studies on escapes and interbreeding, and mass pollution events like the 2019 Mowi mass die-off are examples.
Everywhere open net-pen salmon aquaculture exists in Atlantic Canada wild Atlantic salmon are considered threatened or endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, including the south coast of Newfoundland. This expansion will put more rivers and more wild populations at risk of collapse and extirpation.
Because the environmental preview report only provides “readily available information” it does not sufficiently consider the effects of Mowi’s expansion in the marine environment.
I am urging you to not release the project and instead order a full environmental impact statement for the sake of wild fish, wild fisheries, and the environment.