Guest Post from the Pacific Salmon Foundation
The Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) is proud to announce the winners of the 2020/2021 Salmon Conservation Stamp Art Competition. It was an exciting evening with 20 entries in total, one of the highest number of submissions to date. Each piece was unique, and we had several new artists participate this year.
Joshua Hansen was awarded first place with his piece “Untouchable”. Second place went to Eric Jablonowski for his painting titled “River Bound”. Heather Brown was awarded third place for “Happiness in Releasing”. Congratulations to all!
“What an honour it was to be a part of the Pacific Salmon Foundation Salmon Stamp Competition 2020/2021 alongside many talented artists! A cause dear to our hearts focusing on conserving Pacific salmon and their ecosystems”, said Joshua Hansen.
Hansen comes from a Norwegian family who pioneered on the coast out of Port Neville and a long line of commercial salmon fishermen. He taught himself how to draw at a young age then taught himself to paint in his late teens, but gave it up a few years later. Having been inspired by wildlife he has come across in his adventures, he recently took back up the craft. He has been determined to use his work for wildlife conservation to give back to the wildlife he is so passionate about and the salmon that are a very large part of his life and family history. Joshua is an outdoorsman who is passionate about fly fishing, mountain backpack hunting, living slowly, and living off the land with his wife Brooke and son Oly.
Each year, the Pacific Salmon Foundation works with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to produce the Salmon Conservation Stamp. An recreational angler wishing to retain any species of wild salmon must purchase and affix a Salmon Conservation Stamp to their Tidal Water License. Purchasing a Salmon Conservation Stamp makes you a key contributor to Pacific Salmon Foundation programs as 100% of the revenue from the sale of these stamps is returned to B.C. These funds are directed at salmon restoration and enhancement projects, supported by PSF through its Community Salmon Program.
The Salmon Conservation Stamp image is used as an additional fundraising source for PSF with the production of Limited Edition art prints. These prints are sold through the Foundation and can be viewed on their website: www.psf.ca.
The original stamp agreement between Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Pacific Salmon Foundation was established in 1987. The Salmon Conservation Stamp (originally, Chinook Conservation Stamp) was established in 1989 as part of the 1989/90 – 1990/91 Contribution Agreement with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to develop and manage a “conservation stamp” program in conjunction with the Department’s sport fish licensing program.
The Salmon Conservation Stamp is issued under the Fisheries Act by the Minster of Fisheries and Oceans Canada pursuant to the BC Sport Fishing Regulations as a means of promoting conservation, restoration and enhancement of the salmon resource and salmon habitat.
An example of a Community Salmon Project that PSF has recently funded, underwritten by Mosaic Forest Management’s generous contribution, is through Kate O’Neill’s climate change study that she has been working alongside the Tsolum River Restoration Society to research methods for monitoring water temperature changes and influences of cooler groundwater in the Tsolum River. This study was timely, given summer drought conditions in the Comox Valley and the vulnerability of juvenile salmon to low water levels in the Tsolum River. The results of the study will inform management decisions and will be added to the other data O’Neill is collecting for a temperature-monitoring program that can be applied to other salmon-bearing streams in BC. This is just an example of one of the approximately 200 projects granted by PSF through our Community Salmon Program each year, roughly half of which are located on Vancouver Island.
