Dear Editor:
During December, 2011 the Cobden Conservation Club tasked me to address to the Whitewater Region council concerning the pollution of Muskrat Lake.
In attendance were area newspaper reporters and MP John Yakabuski, who subsequently spoke to a standing room only audience of local residents and the home and private landowners living around the lake.
During the meeting, concerns about the increased pollution were voiced, as well as a threat to the indigenous Rainbow Smelt that had been living in the lake since the last ice age 12,000 years ago.
As the meeting progressed several comments were made suggesting the “Fish Problem was a separate issue from the pollution issue” which it was not, as the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and Ministry of Environment (MOE) designations and other restrictions around the lake were entirely predicated on the MNR assertion that “Lake trout were always in our lake,” which they had designated as a “Deep cold sensitive trout lake” while declaring trout were always present in its waters over the last 12 millennia.
The truth is they were not. But, after stocking fingerling for decades — starting in 2012, the MNR stocked at least 50,000 large trout in Muskrat Lake in a deliberate attempt to eradicate the smelt, and for the next six years from 2012 to 2017 they refused to admit that was their agenda, while trying to discredit every attempt by myself and others to establish the fact that trout were never in the lake saying, “No one could prove otherwise” while knowing they were lying — and the proof they were lying was only 50 miles away up in Round Lake.
The fact is while Round Lake never had Rainbow Smelt living in its waters, it did have a Lake Trout population, that is until someone introduced smelt into the lake probably from a bait bucket, after which the smelt all but eradicated the trout population in a few years by eating all the trout eggs as soon as they spawned — which is exactly what the smelt would have done to any trout in Muskrat Lake if they had been in its waters 12 millennia ago.
The MNR however refused to admit this, or the fact that they stocked tens of thousands of large trout beginning in 2001 as a deliberate attempt to eradicate the smelt, and then used the stocked trout as an excuse to apply a “Deep cold sensitive trout lake” designation on Muskrat Lake, after which they used “bogus MNR information” to apply further restrictions on the home and landowners around the lake.
A few weeks ago, I was shown a trout stocking list for the last six years, which showed the MNR had kept on stocking six to seven thousand trout a year beginning in 2012. But, the difference was they were stocking fingerlings instead of large trout which begs the question of “Why would they need to stock fingerlings after stocking 50,000 big trout over the previous 10 year period from 2001 – 2011 – which they said “were spawning successfully”.
As a result of this abrupt change in 2012, three years later in 2014, the smelt started to rebound, with the result that every year since 2014 more and more ice shacks began to appear. And, over the next few years as the word spreads we can expect to see the hundreds of shacks that used to dot the lake in former times, while the other indigenous species will proliferate due to the abundance of smelt they feed upon.
As for the MNR stocking fingerlings every year, they can stock 50 thousand a year if they like, because the smelt will gobble them up immediately as they always have, while all the other fish species in the lake will rebalance themselves naturally, just as they would have eliminated any trout in the lake12,000 years ago, which is exactly what are doing now to the benefit of our local economy. The restoration of our traditional winter fishery, is to the delight of area residents and sportsmen from all over the county.
However, until I was shown the MNR stocking records a few weeks ago I never realized that after the Cobden conservation clubs initial “Smelt Gate” address to the Whitewater council in 2012, the MNR abruptly stopped their attempts the exterminate the smelt and began stocking fingerings again, yet never mentioned a word about it publicly. That is because they did not want to admit what they were doing and thus expose the truth about the reasons why.
Now that we know we won, all those who supported the Cobden Conservation Club for the last six years have a reason to celebrate, because even though it took six long years to realize it, the Rainbow Smelt issue was resolved after our first meeting, and with that battle won it’s time to address the pollution issue by calling the MNR / MOE to account, and most especially so after a recent letter from a Renfrew county administrator told us “We have no property rights.”
The county municipalities should refuse to accept anything until after the June election in the hope that Doug Ford is elected with a majority. Doug Ford is not another lunatic liberal like Kathleen Wynne. I don’t believe he will sit idly by knowing the property owners in our area received a letter from a functionary like Charles Cheesman, informing them that after the County Official Plan is approved the powers that be can essentially do whatever they want on private property whether we like it or not. Renfrew County isn’t Soviet Russia and as far as its landowners are concerned Kathleen Wynne and her lunatic liberal agenda can go straight to hell.
Donald E. Broome,
Cobden
