Councilor Norman Ward made the following post – great news for the Northwest…

 

Everyone is aware of the low numbers of salmon returning to the Northwest Miramichi river over the past few years and not enough large females making it up river to meet spawning requirements. Because of this the Chief and Council of the Metepenagiag First Nation (Red Bank) which I am a part of have decided not to use gillnets to harvest salmon under our AFS agreement with DFO. Only trap nets will be used to and we have further decided that we will only keep male salmon from our AFS salmon allocation and release all female salmon. We are aware of the importance of conservation and are doing this to try and help salmon numbers rebound in the Northwest Miramichi.