The Seymour River may yet survive as a home for coho salmon and steelhead trout, thanks to the Seymour Salmonid Society.
The tiny NGO and its dedicated team of volunteers have devised a plan to break apart the 50,000 cubic metres of rock that slid into the river in 2014. For the spawning salmonids, it was a matter of life and death.
Perhaps more impressive was the society’s bringing together of six different governments at the local, regional, provincial, federal and First Nations levels, and raising the money to get the project started. Talk about swimming upstream.
The West Vancouver Streamkeepers Society too has done phenomenal work aiding our salmonid friends in their waterways.
The start of the Seymour rock slide mitigation project comes as we get the news the Fraser River sockeye return is perhaps the lowest it’s ever been.
Whether it’s pollution, warming oceans, degradation of spawning grounds, disease, parasites or fish farms, our salmon – which have been a life-sustaining staple of the Coast Salish people for thousands of years and perhaps the most iconic symbol of our West Coast culture today – have perhaps never been at greater risk.
We’re heartened and grateful for groups like the Salmonid Society and Streamkeepers. In the fight for survival, you couldn’t ask for better allies.
But it’s incumbent on the rest of us to support them in their efforts, whether it be through donations, volunteering or making sure our governments know protecting wild salmon is a priority.
When we tell fish tales to our grandchildren, we should all have a story about the time we saved a fish “this big.”
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