SKEENA ANGLER
ROB BROWN

Spawning grounds

tives from community groups, including a small
. time hatchery, a couple of enhancement projects, a friend-
ship centre, First Nations, DFO and the Bulkley Valley
Branch of the Steelhead Society af B.C.

Their purpose is to, “sirengihen communication and
make more efficient use of the resources regarding
salmonicVhabitat projects in working towards the rebuild-
ing of salmon stocks in the Bulkley and Morice water-
sheds.”

The goals of this community confederation are to “con-
tribute ta the overall health of wild salmonid stocks or the
enhancement of salmonid stacks in freshwater life stapes,” ,
and to “carry out this work in an ecologically sound, eco-
nomically viable and scientifically defensible manner.”.

In the fall of 1998 the DFO undertook a program at
Moricetown <esigned to estimate the number of coho
Tetuming to the Bulkley River, The program involved the
capture and marking of returning fish, \

Part of the summer steelhead: run bound for the upper’
Bulkley and Morice Rivers passes through the Moricetown
fish way al the same lime as coho. Since these steelhead are
the same size as coho, the crew captured a large number of
them. The steelhead could have been retumed to the river
unmarked, but the overseers of project chose to tag them
with a different colour of tag than the one they were using
for the coho in the hope that the recapture of these steelhead
by anglers upstream might provide useful data,

When they heard the DFO was tagging accidentally
caught steclhead, members of the Bulkley Valley Branch of
the Steelhead Society seized an opportunity to get a spring
steclhead fishing opportunity on a river normally closed to
protect spawners. Some 50 fishers were hastily assembled
to fish ripe Bulkley steelhead to do a population study,

The project smelled so bad that scientists in the federal
fisheries department and the environment ministry object-
ed ta it, as did prominent sporsmen like Bruce Hill of the
Sierra Club, former Sport Fish Advisory Board Chair, John
Brockley, Steelhead Socicty Director and lifetime BC
Wildiife Fed member, Joe Saysell, Robert Taylor of Totem

The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, May 10, 2000 - BS

638-7283

Play ball: Season starts

strong for loca

| midgets

THE TERRACE midget girls fastball team are shaking
up their schedule in hopes of becoming B.C. champions.

Coaches and players decided to join the Smithers La-
dies Fastball League this year after fastball registrations
crashed in Terrace and shut down this city’s midget
house league this scason, ©

“We're going for gold this year,” said Nolan Beaudry,
one of Iwo team- coaches who have worked with some
players for up to 10 years and isn’t about to give up the
dream just yet. oo

; . . “After seeing us play on Tuesday, then again last
he Bulkle : sc ‘ : Bs pay y &
(OMSPG) s npaeat eration mon night, [ think they’re going to-do just fine.” Beaudry said
a pi pride up prese after the midget’s first week of play against more senior

ladies’ teams.

Officially, the Tuesday, May 2 game will be charted
as a 7-0 Terrace loss after Janine Garneau blasted a hard
pitch over the plate late in the game, hitting teammate
Jen Vanderlee in the catcher’s mask.

Vanderlee later returned with a bruised jawbone but
her absence left the team short legal substitutes which
offset the team’s six runs and gave the Kitwanga Stea-
lers a win in their first game of the season,

Terrace regained the win in an away game against
the Moricetown Mustangs Thursday, May 5.

The girls fought hard to regain the lead after errors in
the first inning allowed five Mustang runs. Another error
in the fourth gave Moricetown their final run.

But the Mustangs coulda’t pen Terrace’s strong hit-
lcrs, who finally came together to bolster ihe team’s
struggling offence.

“Two or three of the girls had some really nice hits,”
Beaudry said.

The game was called due to darkness at an 11-6 final.

He credits last year’s disappointing losses at provin-
‘cials lo a weak hitting section and an inexperienced
‘raster after the girls, most of whom were in their first of
three years of midget play, moved from the C-division to
the more competitive B-level.

For too long the team has also been riding on the coat
tails of their strong pitchers ~ Ianine Garneau, Pam
Austin and Stacey Clark, Beaudry said.

“Nobody’s going ta get too many runs on us,” said
Beaudry, adding each pitcher has a different slyle and .
ability, lending ils own strength to the-team.

_ Many of the players know what it’s like to win a pro-
vincial title after taking the provincial C championships
. in their peewee year four years ago.

But in order to recoup their title, Beaudry plans to
shake up his lineup, moving players, who have played in
the same positions for years, around the field to give
each player experience in all situations,

“We want the ability to put anyone in any position,”
he said. “We've [only] got 12 girls on the roster right
now.”

If a couple. girls get hurl, Garneau’s injured knee

Fly fishers, and many others who expressed their surprise
at the issuance of the permitand their stout opposition to the
putative population study.

In a letter to Paul Kariya, of Fisheries Renewal BC, Hill
went right to the core of the matter.

flares up, or the team’s hefty twice-a-week game sche-
dule in Smithers starts to affect some of the girl’s Grade
12 marks, Beaudry and co-coach John Austin need to
prepare for the worst.

“So far so good,” Nolan said of the two-and-a-half

oe Mate acme ne ai

COMING ON HOME: Ashley Mackenzie heads for home during the Terrace .
midgets fastball game against the Kitwanga Stealers Ladies team at Riverside
Fields May 2. The game - lost 7-0 on a technicality — was the girls only home

“Steelhead conservation in this watershed has always
been fiaught with canflict,” Hill wrote. “While there arc
serious needs to resolve some of the science surrounding
how steelhead population estimates are arrived at, this.
study will not provide this data and will not provide any res-
olution to the ongoing conflicts sunounding steelhead on
the Skeena. Indeed, by funding a study that has been con-
demned as invalid by the leading scientific authorities on
this subject you have inflamed this conflict and have added
to the burden of fisheries managers alreacly strugelinp with
diminished resources and ever increasing and conflicting
demands on their time and the resource itself.”

The project was canceled. The original praponents went
back to the drawing board, made modifications, then reap-
plied to the environment minisiry for a collection permit.

Once again the proposal was reviewed; once again fed-
eral and! provincial scientists expressed their reservations
with it, as dida private consullant who was asked by MELP
to review il; once again Mr. Reid White, biologist, engineer
and the regional manager in Skeena issued a permit,

In his reasons for duing so, White acknowledged that the
project was scientifically questionable and the technical
benefits insignificant, but the purpose of improving rela-
tionships with the proponents of the project was enough to
offset the potential damage to this year’s larger steclhead
population. As a result of the issuance of this permit, well
over a thousand steelhead were caught. At a very consery-
ative mortality estimate of seven per cenl, some 100 spawn-
ers were released lo die, The shaky information generated
from this unethical spawning derby jibed roughly with the
population estiniate already obtained at the test fishery,

About $30,000 of government money was spent on the
derby itself, while thousands of tax generated dollars were
spent to pay for the time and resources of MELP staff
forced to participate in the program. By bending over back-
wards to placate the parochial interests of a small segment
of the angling community that lives in fear of govemment
bogey men, and figures it deserves special rights because it
lives near the Bulkley River, Reid White has demonstrated
why brains alone do not a good manager make.

As for the noble ideals of the BMSPG, did they work
toward the rebuilding of salmon stocks in the Bulkley and
Morice watersheds? Was the work carried out ecologically
sound, economically viable and scientifically defensible?
Lofty ideals notwithstanding, it appears not, The acquisi-
tion and distribution of public money is the over arching

- principle of the BMSPG, and similar community boards,
The project was a misuse of public money, a make work
project that has highlighted the administrative dysfunction

in MELP and it has done bad by fish.

game this season.

hour road trip. “But we've only done it once.”

Peaks tops ath

THE TERRACE Peaks
gymnastic team edged
Prince George by .03
points to win the all round
high score at the Peaks In-
vilational April 29.

The award is given to
the level one team with
the best three scores in
vault, bars, beam and
floor.

Terrace pymnasts com-
peled against 55° girls re-
presenting three teams
from Smithers,
George and Kitimat to
place first, second and
eighth in the midget level
one event. ~

But: the. battle wasn’t
easy, Se

Courtenay Fenton only
beat out teammate Jessica
Ames by a .15-point: lead,
thanks to a focussed per-
formance on the vault and
floor. Fenton finished with
29,55 paints for first place.

Prince ;

Ames then beat Fenton
by .30 on the beam and
lied Fenton for second on
the parallc] bars behind
Smithers gymnast Stacey
Irvine, who scored high on
the bars placed third over-
all with 28.10 points.

Erica Dykes, who also
competed: as a level one
midget for the Terrace
Peaks, placed cighth,
scoring 7.00 on the vault.

She finished with 26.80
points overall...

“Siobhan Sloan-MeMul- -*

len, who competed as the

only midget level ‘three’

competitor. at. the meet,
scored 32.07 points over-

“all, charting an-8:17 on the
vault. and two. 8.20 scores

on the-beam and floor.

She scored 7.50 on the |

parallel bars.

Terrace. did not field
any gymnasts in the tyro
ievel one event or any of

‘place.

three open events.

Prince George’s Danicl-
le Applejohn took first
place in the tyro level one
while Kelscy Hill of Smi-
thers took second.

In the open level one
competition, Smithers
Colleen Bush won first
Alana’ Kean of
Smithers beat out Cyndy

Fendelct of Prince George

in open level: two. after
Fendelet.. plummeted to
fifth on the bearn, ,
Fendelet placed first in
all her other events.
Kelsie Miller, of. Prince
George, swept the: level
three open, notching three
high. eight scares and re-

cording a 9.10 ~'the taur--

nament’s highest: score: ~
on the parallel bars.

Marla Schulmeister, |
the only other competitor
to come close to Miller's
marks, competes as the

Marla Schulmeister

northwest’s only level four
gymnast earning slightly
lower scores al a higher
skill level.

Schulmeister scored an
even 8.00 on the vault,
8.45 on the. beam, and 8.73
on the floor, an event in
which she also won the

’ best choreography award.

She finished the tourna-
ment with a 7.35 on the
parallel bars for a 32.53
total.

Power, Gagne, McFarland
top zone bridge playofts

B.C. SENIOR games participants :
sharpened their skills at social. home first place in the four's.
bridge, carpet bowling and cribbage ™... t
playoffs across the northwest last Jensen and John Besignano domina-
ied the pair competition in the car-
pet bowling playoff on April 26.
_Another Terrace team, “Evelyn
Baxter and .Ed Cote, grabbed first
place in the. cribbage. playoffs on

week.

The social bridge playoff in‘
Prince Rupert saw May McFarland,
Rolande Gagne and Hugh Power and .
Olga Power come. out on top.

- Terrace’s carpet bowling. team
made up of; Vera McKenzie, Dolly .-
Roberts, Clara Turner, Albert Coos-

April 29,

man and Alice Troelstra, brought

Kitimat’s Dan Seminak, Emil.

Second’ place’ went to’ Kitimat’s

Yvonne Besignano and Sandra Patri: .

quin, Terrace's Lola Hull and Mike
Nelson clinched third piace.

Prince Rupert’s, Phyllis McRae
and Ruth MeConnell. rounding out
fourth place.

The B.C. Senior Game Zone 10
regular monthly meeting will be held:
at the senior centre in Prince Rupert,
on..May 13.° Senior athletes are
= asked to meet. 2pim° 0°
- The B.C. Senior Games will be
held in Kelowna September 6-9,

, added to the Terrace

Sports
Menu

Wednesday, May 10
7B.C. Senior Games
Social bridge and five-
pin bowling playofis at
the Happy Gang
Centre.

Sunday, May 21

wOpening race day
al the Terrace Speed-
way, featuring the
Cruising Mama’s can-
fest for moms whoa
just want to drive.

eeTerrace to Kitimat
road race, call McBike
at 635-5225 for more
information.

veTerrace Drag Race
Association races at
tha Terrace Kitimat
Airport. Continues
May 22.

Monday, May 22
wRedsand Root
Chute, mountain bike,
cross country, Call
McBike at 635-5225
for more information,

Saturday, May 27
veUniform Day at t
Terrace Speedway

To get your game,
event or meeting

Standard Sports
Menu, fax us at 638-
8432, attn: Sports
menu.