Request for Grant-in-Aid (Letter from MBDCS)

I am writing to your counsels because we don't know how best to proceed and interact with greater Victoria municipalities.

Our Mill Bay and District Society (MBDCS) is a non profit organization of volunteers that operate under license from DFO to capture and relocate wild Coho salmon in the Shawnigan watershed. We also provide brood stock to Shawnigan Lake school and Goldstream hatcheries. The Goldstream salmon fries are raised and eventually released into the Colquitz and Craigflower waterways. Our broodstock was instrumental to the recovery of those Coho salmon runs, and we continue to respond to hatchery requests for more brood stock.

All donations to our Society are needed for basic operations – none of our volunteers recieve any monies, except for truck gas refunds. Our major expense is storage locker rental space to house our special trailers (Rotary donations) and related operational equipment. We are now advised that these costs will now be increased by 30% – monies we don't have. Consequently we are trying to purchase a used 40 foot SeaCan container, that would be hosted on Shawnigan Lake School property, at no cost to us. This acquisition will translate into a $7,000 to $10,000 expense.

Our CVRD directors are pitching in monies, and we are asking greater Victoria municipalities that benefit from our volunteer's work to also consider giving us grant monies to make this happen, so we can continue to focus on providing our community service.

Wild Coho salmon are important to the west coast and our success rate continues to improve – last fall we transported over 7,300 fish and we have a small Web presence at www.mbdcs.ca that showcases our efforts.

We would be honored to present and discuss what we do, so please advise.

There is a rush to move out of our expensive rental storage facilities, so hopefully counsels can respond and advise with minimal delay.

We thank you for considering our financial assistance request.