Salmon farms pose significant threat to salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, resear...( ing and community disruption Naylor e...)

ing and community disruption," Naylor explained. "The social impacts of salmon aquaculture in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska have been equally, if not more, acute than the environmental impacts."

Despite the obvious environmental and social impacts of salmon aquaculture, the United States, Canada and other salmon fishing countries have yet to implement and enforce effective measures to protect coastal ecosystems and communities, Eagle said: "There are inherent difficulties in imposing environmental quality measures on a politically powerful industry that faces fierce international competition. Scientific uncertainty and intra-agency conflicts have also played a role in delaying regulation."

Given these obstacles, the authors suggest the following strategies to minimize the potential harm caused by aquaculture operations:

• Enforcing an international moratorium on salmon farming - as was done in British Columbia - to allow environmental policy to catch up with the rapid growth of the industry;

• Creating a single agency to regulate commercial fishing and aquaculture in each country;

• Increasing demand for environmentally friendly fish by marketing them with eco-labels such as "Wild Pacific Salmon" or "Sustainably Produced Farm Salmon";

• Creating an international treaty with specific environmental and product-quality mandates.

"Unless some actions are taken on a national and international level, local communities and ecosystems will remain at high risk from the expansion of the global aquaculture industry," Naylor said.

The ENVIRONMENT report also was co-authored by Whitney L. Smith, a CESP research fellow. Research for the report was funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

CESP is a specialized research center within the Stanford Institute for International Studies that mobilizes a multidisciplinary network of scholars, students, policymakers and leaders
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Contact: Mark Shwartz
mshwartz@stanford.edu
650-723-9296
Stanford University
22-Sep-2003

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