Indigenous Food Systems Network

Hi Flora
PicI am writing you today to ask that you send off a quick letter before November 7th to the federal government about a trout-filled lake on BC's Chilcotin Plateau west of Williams Lake. If the feds take the action we are asking them to take, they will be saving the lake and whole lot of time and money as well.
The lake I am talking about is Fish Lake. If that name sounds familiar it should.
Just last week we presented Chief Marilyn Baptiste, of Xeni Gwet'in, the 2011 Eugene Rogers Environmental Award for her work on behalf of the Tsilhqot'in Nation to protect Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) from being destroyed by the proposed Prosperity gold and copper mine.
You may remember that back in November 2010 the federal government announced the findings of their Environmental Assessment on the Prosperity Mine proposal. The mine proposal was turned down because to build it would have involved killing Fish Lake by turning it into a toxic mine dump site. The damage to the lake (home to 80,000 trout) and surrounding lands, forests and waters was just too devastating to allow.
First Nations people and conservationists, including Wilderness Committee members, cheered heartily when we heard the decision to turn down the mine! Wilderness Committee members had sent in stacks of letters and emails demanding that the Tsilhqot'in Nation's wishes be honored and that Fish Lake be preserved.
Now the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has been asked by the mining company Taseko Mines Ltd to investigate a new mining proposal called the "New Prosperity Mine".
This new proposal would use nearby Little Fish Lake as a toxic dump site, and then drain down into Fish Lake eventually polluting that lake too.
The Environmental Assessment Agency will decide by November 7 if they will agree to consider the revised mine proposal.