No longer can Blinky claim to be the most famous mutant fish. At least not in Alberta.Mutated fish alarms delegates at northern Alberta water gathering
Days before a conference on water quality began in Fort Chipewyan, Alta., last week, residents say a strange fish with two mouths was found at the nearby lake.
The deformed fish, which residents say children had caught off the dock at Lake Athabasca, has since been turned over to park wardens at Wood Buffalo National Park. Some residents, including officials from the Mikisew Cree First Nation, took photographs of the fish over the weekend.
It was found just days before the Keepers of the Water conference began Friday in Fort Chipewyan. The conference wrapped up on Sunday.
The event brought together western and northern Canadian aboriginal leaders and environmental activists, all of whom expressed concern with the quality of water in the Athabasca River, downstream from oilsands development in Fort McMurray.
"It's already mutating the animals, the pollution that they're causing. We need to do something quickly," Shaylene Wiley, a 16-year-old Mikisew Cree delegate, told CBC News during the weekend gathering.
"It's scary when you think about it," delegate Lionel Lepine added.
"For me, personally, it does piss me off, you know, knowing that it's not under my control right now. It's the Government of Canada that has the control over it; they have monopoly over our land. But industry … somehow they got the licence to pollute."
Said one commenter: 'That's one political fish! One blind eye to ignore the reality of the tar sands and two mouths to talk like politicians from Alberta when they defend the oil industry.' --HuntingTheSnark
1 comment:
TWO YEARS AGO a cultural representative from wood buffalo park (also a unesco world heritage site) warned the Garden River Band in wood bufalo not to eat more then one serving of fish per person per week. This rez is alongside the peace river. BUT the athabasca watershed runs into just about everything in wood buffalo.
up river from the rez is DMI, a japanese pulp and paper company who are the suspects in the seemingly high cancer rate on this rez. DMI is only required by the feds to test the water ONCE EVERY THREE YEARS and to do it themselves. so they contract an international firm and guess what, the numbers show the river to be clean. huh? all those dioxins???
the health station on the rez only tests for microbacteria like ghardia unless they suspect something.....but news of the fish rations were never passed onto them.....why????? and why is it cancer statistics are considered as deaths when these days cancer treatments make it a chronic disease, rather then necessary death???
besideds the oil sands for the athabaska, you can google earth wood buffalo and see a lake...seemingly. but zoom in and the apparently blue water turns grey....it's oil and gas insdustry tailings. what, no concern over this? why in a national park that's also unesco????
band councils in the region - well, some speak up but others have contracts with saw mills and DMI for the wood and are more concerned about myopic concerns of today....employment (and you can bet it's doled out to family members).
there's a lot of correlation between the peace and the athabasca. want to work on some stuff together?
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