COHO salmon and cutthroat trout have a new home in West Vancouver, thanks to the latest effort by the West Vancouver Streamkeepers.
The group is inviting the community to join them at a grand opening ceremony for the Memorial Park rearing pond this Saturday.
After decades of development in West Vancouver, McDonald Creek changed from a relatively shallow, slow moving stream that was prone to flooding to a fast-moving channel, making it much harder for juvenile salmon to survive the year in fresh water they need before heading to sea.
By digging out a new pond in Memorial Park and feeding it with fresh water via an intake pipe from the creek, the fry will have a "comfortable place to stay" and the creek has another chance at becoming hearty fish habitat.
"Its not enhancing nature, it's mitigating what we've already done," said Bill McAllister, West Vancouver Streamkeepers' treasurer and one of the project leads.
The group approached the District of West Vancouver last year with the faint hope they could get district permission. "I thought we'd get thrown out of (their) office, coming and saying 'We want to rip up your park and put in salmon habitat,'" said John Barker, Streamkeepers co-ordinator.
But it turned out to be something of an elegant solution, as the district was looking for a way to revitalize the increasingly boggy and overgrown park. Barker and McAllister won the approval of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the surrounding neighbourhood, and the group got to work on designs and soliciting the roughly $100,000 it would cost to complete the pond. The district contributed only staff time to the project.
So far, the pond is already yielding more than Barker and McAllister had even hoped. During a recent visit to inspect the pond for invertebrate and fish life, Barker tossed in a fish trap and returned the next day.
"I just started to lift the trap and I saw a flash and thought, 'Oh good, we got a fish or two in there.' I lifted it up and the whole thing is thrashing fish," he said. "We ended up with 11 coho smolts . . . and six cutthroat trout and to us, is just outstanding. That's just over the top," Barker said, beaming.
"Every year a few coho would come in but not a lot, and so this will hopefully help boost the stock and stabilize and enhance the run. That's really our purpose," Barker said.
Saturday's ribbon-cutting ceremony starts at 11: 30 a.m. at Memorial Park, opposite the library.
brichter@nsnews.com
