017 - Alex Morton

Masters of Regeneration Radio

For nearly forty years, Alexandra has dedicated her life to restoring the balance between the people and wild salmon off the coast of British Columbia.

When the salmon farms first appeared, they were told they would be good for them. Then the toxic algae blooms and sea lice developed, and the wild salmon die-off began.

First the whales Alexandra was studying left, then the salmon populations crashed and then her community began to fade away. Today there are only 8 people left in the village and 27 Norwegian-owned salmon feedlots dot the area.

Her website tells the story of an ongoing battle. It references science, activism, films like Salmon Confidential, and legal battles she has undertaken with the help of many to keep British Columbia alive and thriving.

So here we stand up against biosimplification, for bio-diversity. That’s what life does, it evolves creating as much diversity as possible, to mute, adapt, refining itself into the best version it can.

We tend to do to the environment what we do to ourselves. What we’ve done to vegetables and animals, we’ve done to ourselves: through reductive simplification of wild, dynamic, complex systems, we have gotten sick. It’s now time to heal.