The year 2017 could be good for the salmon and steelhead that spawn in the Seymour River.
The project to revive the Seymour as a fish-bearing habitat after it was blocked by a rock slide in 2014, is being fast-tracked, thanks in part to a boost in funding.
North Vancouver MP Jonathan Wilkinson recently announced that the Seymour Salmonid Society, which is leading the project, would receive a $235,950 grant from the Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnerships Program.
The society has hired contractors to use low-velocity explosives to slowly break apart some of the 50,000 cubic metres of granite that slid into the river. The fall and winter rains will then help disperse the debris, eventually making the river passable for salmon again.
The consultants are using sophisticated tools and drones to measure exactly how much the boulders have shifted, but, to his untrained eye, Salmonid Society president Shaun Hollingsworth said he believes the first year of the project has been successful, thanks to the oh-so-rainy fall we had.
The project, which also involves the work of federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, provincial Ministry of Environment, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, Metro Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver, was originally expected to take two to five years, at a budget of $250,000 per year. But the consultants are now hoping to have the entire project done within three years.
The federal funding helps the society leverage grants from other governments and non-profits, Hollingsworth said, among them: the province, the Freshwater Fisheries Society, the Habitat Conservation Trust
Foundation as well as the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
“I’m so thankful for the money from the federal government,” he said. “We’re the first in the pool. Nobody wants to be in alone and to get matching funding is a lot easier than saying ‘Could you give us X?’
