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"Wild salmon stocks in the Atlantic have dropped to historic lows, and the species faces extinction without strong action, a conservation group warned Thursday.
According to a report from the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF), scientific projections show that the number of large salmon returning to North American rivers is less than half the minimum needed for conservation.
“Since 1974, we have gone from more than 1.5 million salmon to fewer than 500,000 today,” ASF president Bill Taylor said. “Our most pressing concern is the salmon populations from rivers in the Bay of Fundy, the Gulf of Maine and on Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast.”
Mr. Taylor told a news conference in Halifax that resuscitating the wild salmon will require government regulation and a sharp increase in public concern. He called for consumers to recognize and value the difference between farmed and wild salmon. “When people go into a supermarket and see ‘Atlantic salmon' fillets selling for $4 per pound, they should know that these are all mass-produced products of today's commercial sea-cage aquaculture operations,” he said. “When the public values wild Atlantic salmon – as an economic asset worth $200-million to Atlantic Canada and Quebec, as a cultural symbol and as a barometer of the health of our environment – the government will respond.”
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