[cheer] Nice move Kathleen!

Scientists and DFO spar over equipment stranded at Experimental Lakes Area

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is refusing to say whether scientists who have left equipment at a shuttered research lab in northern Ontario will be allowed to retrieve their things.

Over $205,000 in research tools and vehicles owned by universities – some of them American – have been left in limbo ever since the federal government announced the sudden closure of the Experimental Lakes Area in last year’s budget.

The ELA was officially padlocked on March 31, but DFO isn’t giving inquiring researchers a clear answer on whether they can recoup their equipment that was meant to be used in ongoing experiments.

“There’s a lot of sensitive equipment that cannot be moved by people who don’t know how to move it,” said Britt Hall, an assistant professor at the University of Regina and spokesperson for Save the ELA, a group petitioning Ottawa to reverse the closure.