Nanoose Streamkeepers

January 2015 came in rather chilly last week with the New Year. With all the Salmon eggs tucked away in the substrate slowly going through the incubation stage we are hoping that we get no more flash floods ripping out the gravel and flushing the eggs downstream. Some may rebury and survive but most that get flushed end up food for hungry Trout, Ouzels, and Kingfishers etc. [You tube Nanoose ≈SKS Water Ouzel eating breakfast] Some may get buried too deep to wiggle out come spring due to sediment flows increasing from erosion and logging run off. Our most recent walk as of this writing was last Saturday January 3^rd on Bonnel Creek to assess the movement of LWD [large woody debris] after the winter floods prior to Xmas. Several large first growth logs that had remained within the stream channel from long past logging activity had moved considerable distances from their resting place of many years. Back in the 70’s past stream work done by well intentioned fish techs and biologists who were under the misguided idea that log jams blocked fish access upstream started at the lower reaches chain sawing out the middle logs in what were very large log jams every few hundred feet all the way upstream to the large falls.

What this misinformed action resulted in was the release over the following winters of huge amounts of sediment once trapped behind the jams sometimes to a depth of several feet extending back upstream for 50 feet or more.

As before mentioned this resulted in the flushing and burying of many thousands of fish eggs deposited the previous fall. Not content with this action they then decided to fall large Cedar trees along the banks to then anchor them along the banks trying to slow down the erosion caused by the previous action of removing the logjams. As we walked upstream this past Saturday we observed the remnants of the old jams with the centre removed and the remaining logs stacked along the banks showing where the new logs that had moved down stream had come from as the lower logs had washed out during the periods of high flow. Some logs had some old Aluminium stay wire still attached which had been used for tying them back into the bank along with old greasy logging cable.

As stream keepers our main goal is to help the streams to stabilize and see them come back to fully productive Salmon streams like they were only a few decades ago before all these negative actions resulted in the continued decline of these remaining stocks of wild fish. Over the coming months we will attempt to stabilize any LWD that has moved down stream and try and help slow down the erosions caused by the sudden flooding that happens on a regular basis over the winter months. If log jams reform the only action we will take is to help the returning Salmon navigate to higher habitat by removing only enough small debris to allow fish passage for particularly the Chum Salmon who have a hard time leaping over too high a barrier unlike the Wiley Coho who have no problem jumping over most barriers even falls that are not too high.

With no end to logging in the watersheds as the market for trees continues to call for smaller and smaller diameter trees as saw mill equipment changes from big log production to smaller logs the rotation within the forest industry is now down to around 25 years giving them a tree that can produce a 2x4 or 2x6 or even smaller logs if going for pulp. Any one who has waked within the wood lot above Lantzville will have seen industrial logging clear cutting whole hillsides with all the resultant runoff rushing across the ground into newly installed culverts and ditches. Sending all that water that at one time was being absorbed into the ground and vegetation now exiting the forest at alarming rates of speed right into the streams that give life to mother Salmon and her offspring carrying with it huge amounts of sediment. Now imagine the same logging only on a larger scale just a few hilltops further into the forest with all the resultant sediment that flows where? Downhill into the streams bringing with it all that sediment. As you can see most of what we do is trying to help nature revive from all the destruction and misguided schemes of the past when in the 70’s and early 80’s everything that was done was from a industrial perspective and had very little to do with fish stocks unless it involved funding for a hatchery. We had a local biologist and his crew wanting to put a hatchery on Nanoose Creek back in the 90’s all the time while the Salmon were struggling to survive all the habitat destruction that had taken place. When saner heads prevailed that hatchery was stopped before it got too far and all we had today was hatchery Salmon even less capable of survival than the few wild ones that remained. All the work stream keepers have done over the years has proven beyond a doubt that leaving the fish alone and improving habitat was the way to go with the result that we have today some stocks holding there own and on some streams a steady improvement. Preserving the wild stocks has proven today to be the most important action a stream keeper group could do with all the scientific evidence pointing more and more to the decline of Salmon stocks being directly related to the over use of the hatchery system combined with the unprecedented decline in habitat quality.

Thousands of years of habitat integrity gone within a mere hundred years, sad to say the least.

Haig Brown   said once upon a time that hatchery’s were the easiest to do instead of improving and protecting the habitat from excessive logging practices and the subsequent destruction of said habitat.

Today we can see exactly what he saw all those years ago.

                              If only we had listened.