The Herald, Tuesday, July 3, 1079, Page 5

Babine Lake native Indians. are involved

by Chick Childerhose -

Babine Lake! is in north-central British
Columbia, It is 160m (105 miles) long, averages
_ ten kilometres in: width and drains a 10,00)

‘ squage:iciomene watershed which is the major

- Spawning area for the Skeena River sockeye
 galmon.

'. Each year, between May and June,. sockeye -

"smolts Jeave their rearing areas in Babine Lake

'’ to‘swim’ downstream to the sea. From June to.
November adult sockeye leave the ocean to.

| move aren to the ancestral apawning
groun
‘They follow the Skeena inland to the Babine

; River, through Nilkitkwa Lake into Babine Lake. -

"The commercial fishery harvests them off the
mouth of the Skeéna; the native food fis
takes more as the survivors ascend the freah-
water streams to spawn. -

Since 1975 the Babine Lake Indian band fad
conducted a commercial harvest of ‘jack’
sockeye in the Babine River. The jacks, known to
the natives as Ta] Lock, are young males who~

for unknown biological reasons-return from the:

sea.to spawn a year early,

These sexually precocious male salmon have
 alwaya been present in spawning runs. Too amall
to compete with mature male fieh for a female
, the jacks round the spawning pairs

during the mating ritual.

When the mating sequence climaxes with the
simultaneous ejection of milt and eggs into the
- gravel nest, the jacks rush in to add their semen
to that of the adult male spawner,
* Since jacks are amall enough to awim through
the nets of the commercial - fishing fleet,

proportionately more and more jacks appear on |

generations of sockeye.

The problem of too “many jacks on the
spawning streams draining into Babine Lake
wan sclved through the cooperation of the federal
Fisherlés Department and the Babine Lake
Indian band. The natives dipaet the jacks from
holding pers at the Department's fish counting
‘fence on. the Babine River.

The fish are layer-packed in ice for truck |

shipment to a-Prince Rupert cannery. Cleaned,
with heads removed, the pan-sized jacks are
ready for marketing to Japan where the deep red

Sage and Havor ate sockeye ls prized as gourmet -

~ woe goo

For the Babine Lake Indian band the jack
fishery. is ‘a welcome source of income. The
pays.75 cents a pound ‘at the fence’, -

Some 21 natives are employed this year, wor

- in twoshifts at an agreed-on wage rate of $5 per -

to Alex West, band. member and

According
supervisor of the Babine jack fishery, this wage’ -

rate should providefor an end-seasonprofittobe «

divided as a bonus among the work force or,
alternatively, to be applied to community im-
_provement projects.

- ‘The profits from the jack fishery vary widely
from one season's spawning
1975. the natives took some $6,000 jacks: in 1978 it
went to 180,000 jacks but dropped the following
year to 22,000. The 1078 was total 40,273,

’ The counting fence oa the Babine. River was
installed in 1046 to permit fisheries researchers

’ to monitor salmon movements both in'o and out

of Babine Lake. One of the leadin sockeye
producers In British Columbla, 2 ‘lake

historically provided the Skeena "Raat com:

mercial fishery with half a million fish annually.
Eiteical studies made in the 1950s revealed

run to the next, In ©

*. in the lake iteelf,

. levels of abundance,

* that 90 per cent of Babine Lake was underutilized
_ aga rearing area for sockeye fry. From‘thisfact
researchers deduced that If more fry could be gb fa 4
produced by the Jake’s tributory spawning
streams, more seageing smolts could be reared

In 1965 the Department of Fisheries began an
*Y millon --cgram to Increase sockeye
production : Babine Lake by artificial Si
propagation, Spawning channel complexes were
built alongside two of the lake's larger tributary
streams, Fulton River and Pinkut Creek.

These channels were designed to produce, |

_ annually, an additional 125 million sockeye fry,
The fry migrate from the channels to the nearby
lake for a year of feeding and growth before |
leaving for the sea as emolts.

At a one per cent fry to adult survival rate the
object was to produce an added one and a
quarter million (1,250,000) sockeye annually to
the Skeena River commercial fishery.’ soy

Such gains in productivity are seen as --
necesBary, not only to support a more viable
commercial salmon fishery but to offset declines
{n salmon stocks due to environmental damage
caused by dams, industrial -wastes and urban
emroachment. ,

In nearly 1076 Fisheries Minister Romeo
LeBlanc announced the 15year, mult{-million
dollar Salmonid Enhancement Program to ;
reatore Pacific salmon stocks to their pre-1900

- While the initial emphasis is on improving
fresh-water habitat through stream
rehabilitation and obstruction removal, the
program also involves the construction of fish-
ways, hatcheries and more spawning channels.
By 1990, with all SEP facilities in place, west
coast salmon stocks will be double those of to--

y

the spawning. grounds with. enccoets

ra

WORLD WIDE NEX T

‘Canadian tractor firm movin

WINNIPEG (CP) =
' Versatile
Co,, already an established
supplier of fourwheel-drive
tractors in Canada, now has
an arrangement to explore
the markets of the world,

- The company, owned by
Versatile Cornat Corp. of
Vancouver, recently signed

a agreement: withthe Fiat: lengthy

OF ganization; giving" i6 ‘wes:
. cess to the Itallan company's
‘7$-nation

system,
Expectations of expanded
Bales through the alliance
have aroused thoughts of
expansion at the’ Winnipeg
plant, said Versatile
president Paul Soubry in an

Manufacturing

distribution’

interview.

mat plant already employs.
1,20 workers and
covers 640,000 square feet of

factory space.
Veraatile now exports
throughout North America,
Mexico, Australia and some

European countries but

Soubry says it would be a
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"isetupa tiarketing syaten as
extensive as Fiat,
The company has grown in

$2 years from the ime when,

said Soubry, “two Hitle

fellows" started the com:
pany “right under the noses
-of the glants,"

Those “little fellows” were

Peter | Pakosh and Roy

WASHINGTON (CP) —
President Carter said
Monday that although
some progress has been
made toward easing the
US. energy crisis,
Americans still faced the
prospect of a lengthy
gasoline shortage.

The president also
granted state governors

e@ power to shift up to
five r cent of a state's

e supplies to cities
om ‘rural areas,

Before the private’
session started, Carter
paid ie crisis yiawed

tile sign of le up.

“With ite warldwide
energy shortage, we w.

_ be. faced with shortages
ona continuing basis,
both in the short term and

CAR TER SEES |
SHORT SUPPLY

‘the Jong term,'’ he said,

But he added that aame
progress has been made
in getting more diesel fuel
for truck drivers and
farmers and in easing
spot shortages.

Carter also said he
thinks the shortages have
ipl Soy

pri v
tax Windfall profits that
US, ofl companies stand
to make out of his
decision to deregulate
domestic oi] prices,

He gald the new 16-per-
cent rise in the price of oll

‘imports might cost the
United States 800,000 obe,
cut economic by
2.5 per cent and add 2.5
per cent to the inflation
rate next year.

“enough

, problem, Jack

Robinson, brothersiniaw, :
who began by turning out a

‘Imited line of grain augers

and
They ‘moved ahead with

plans for the tractors in 1964 |

and sold their controlling

interest to Cornat Industries |
in 1976. Early last year the ©

.b e just as ke
chased the ut Sie as it
istanding shares, ~ovAmerica, -

Vancouver company pur:

the cofounders with having
courage and
foresight" to take a lead in
the four-wheel-drive tractor.
market,

He said they reallzed they
‘would have to find a tractor,

Gasoline for.

" farms got larger.

Rome, other paris of the

ts put itself into a global.
position now- while the“

which now wells for about
$50,-000, with the maximum
amount of horsepower 4s

While farming in Europe is
not’on the same acale as

world, Soubry said, the in:
terest in fouraheelers" will

He said if Versatile hist

market is still in its infancy,
it could miss ‘a lot of op
portunit lea. '

The pany pres president
said the al simplicity of
Versatile tractor design "

the holiday

NEW YORK (AP) —
Government and Indus
officials are cautiously

timistic about the gasoline

tuation over the Fourth: of

July bollday, as the arrival
ol mon! gas allocations
alleviate es In many

areas,

"T don't anticipate a real
ouston, a
for the Georgia
Aasociation of Petroleum

Retailers, sald Monday.
“The situation should be
better than the past two
Weekends,” sald Pete Hines,
ident of the Arkansas
asoline Retallors

ociation,
Canadian gas ‘station

‘pauployees fin some Ontario

T° polnts, meanwhile,

; Washington, D.C.

reported some increase In
US, motorists at thelr
stations.

Jack Nesbitt of a station in
Sarnia said he belleves there
were fiva per cent more
custamers than usual during
the weekend,

In Windsor, station em-
pl Steve Fraser sald:

ere are definitely more
(Americans) coming over
than Inet year at this time.”

At Niagara Falls, station
employee Danny Galante

“We've had a few more
(Americans) but not too
many more than usual” last
week,

The most serlous problems
seamed to be in the U.S.
Northeast and in

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company has built a
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“That? D say changes
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. “But decisions are
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An expert |
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tected them against bad

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Rubles range in co
from Howish to a nace
e@ rarest Ones are a
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n-blood.” These are
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& British company which
to give the largest
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Burma who wae known aa
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Usually rubies are not
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because their beauty lies in
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Some of the finest of
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her to Moaleo when
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