Stream Keepers

With April fast approaching plans are in the process for the cleanup of Knarston Creek at the end of Normarel Rd adjacent to the recently logged woodlot. The date set for the cleanup is the third Saturday of April the 16^th at 9am.

Over the past month we have seen high flows on all the streams again due to high rain events. As said in last months article this has caused some concern for the Chum salmon eggs buried in the substrate. With runs being unusually low last fall over the entire coast our concerns are for the main spawning creeks of Nanoose and Bonnel creeks. Nanoose Creek is relatively stable in regard to the gravel during periods of high flows so we are not too worried for this system. The same cannot be said for Bonnel. With a severely impacted watershed flash floods are common all through the winter bringing large amounts of sediment downstream filling in pools while scouring out new ones. Some eggs will be washed out while others will be buried deeper in the gravel making it difficult for the fry to wiggle out. Only time will tell. Over the past month we have been out doing some Willow staking to try and stabilize some of the newly formed gravel bars and erosion sites, this takes the form of using large diameter cuttings and driving them as deep as possible into the substrate down into the water table, this will allow them to root well while supporting vegetative growth above ground. One site we went to was alongside the new flood control structure on Knarston Creek, as this is a highly visible site we were concerned with the barren nature of the site left after construction was complete. Due to the large amount of rock used the planting of trees is restricted to small polygons away from the rock. Over time nature will revegate this site returning it to a more visually pleasing site. The control structure has been working well to prevent flooding below Lantzville road over the winter bringing relief for the residents. Some concern has been expressed as to the beach with the creation of a new seasonal flow regime from the outlet. While the water itself does not pose any problems for the beach but the new scouring of the foreshore habitat has disrupted the foreshore habitat for all the animals living their and will take time to readjust to these new environmental conditions. This area of foreshore is now a Clam lease for Snaw Naw As First Nations. With the high levels of coli form counts along the foreshore from the Hammond Bay Road sewer pumping station all Clams and other shellfish are not fit for human consumption all along the foreshore of Lantzville unless placed in areas of clean water and allowed to flush clean. In the old days we had septic systems, yes some along the foreshore leaked directly into the foreshore habitat especially those installed along the rocky sections of beach, now we have the big pipe solution which has moved the problem further down to the big outlet pumping into the ocean. This takes longer to flow back along the beach with the currents and tide but the results for the foreshore are the same.

The ocean is very forgiving and if it is only waste can to a certain extent handle sewage disposal but as with all sewer systems it is what else is flushed down the toilet and drains, 2,000 flushes always blue, harsh chemical cleaners, bleach etc, and any thing else, out of site out of mind. So please think before you flush or drain for the sake of the beach and all its inhabitants.

March Log

This past month we have been busy with tree planting and doing more stream surveys to line up our coming activities for the next few months. Bloods Creek has seen some flooding since the last snowfall though no major disruption to the habitat has occurred. Knarston Creek’s flood control structure seems to be alleviating the flooding for those that live downstream of Lantzville road while in the upper watershed some small erosion sites have been identified and will get some attention over the next month or so. Small erosion sites are a natural process of stream morphology [fluvial geomorphology to be technical] what this means is that when you look at a stream you tend to see it in a relatively stable state but unless in flood state you do not tend to see how the hydraulic effect of flowing water is changing constantly what we term as the stream bed and banks. Small particles are constantly being eroded from the banks and the streambed as the water flows downstream. Consequently small particles of suspended sediment are constantly flowing downstream, depositing when encountering barriers. These barriers can be as small as gravel and as big as log jams. Good old gravity tends to allow the banks to ever so slowly creep down allowing for the water to carry away material, this can also occur when wildlife [or humans] cross the stream eroding the banks. Even the action of small animals burrowing into the banks to create homes or in the search of food creates erosion. So as you can see erosion is a natural occurrence of a healthy stream environment. Nature’s way is to grow plants where by the roots can hold the bank material in place slowing the erosion process down. When we find eroded banks we have to assess whether it needs some plants or do we just leave it, if we decide to intervene we will do what has become called Bio-Engineering, the use of plant’s to remediate erosion sites as apposed to bringing in machinery and loads of rock to armour the banks. Over time we have realised that plant’s will do a more natural job of alleviating the erosion than riprap. Rocks tend to be the hard engineering solution so often used because it is easy and satisfies our need for control of our environment. Using plant’s on the other hand is working with the ecosystem using its own methods to help to heal the site while providing habitat and as we often find out when using Willow providing food for the Beaver. One of our first Willow plantings was at a site used to transport logs across a stream from a small clear-cut, as you can imagine this made a big mess. We went in and drove stakes into the banks and wove branches much like basket weaving to provide a vegetative barrier to the forces of the flow while softly dissipating the energy against the banks. Rip-rap was all we heard, that is the only way to go, well within a year the stakes had taken and the weaving had collected sediment [Barrier] and along with the planting of trees we achieved bank stability without the ugly look of rip-rap which in most cases tends to bounce the energy of the water around the channel usually creating more erosion downstream. Back to the Beaver, he or she taught us our first lesson in planting Willow stakes, shade being important to the stream we had left most of the stakes full length with about 3 feet in the substrate and a equal amount or more above grade, along came the Beaver and chewed off all the stakes down to around a foot tall then left them alone. What he had done was limit the vegetative growth above ground while allowing the roots to fully form without the desiccation [drying out] of the stakes by having too much growth on top. I personally think he was thinking of the lovely lunches he would have when all that new growth would come over the following years.

March will see the return of the Herring to our shores, which will hatch out just in time for our young Salmon who will be leaving their natal streams. The young Herring will provide a huge biomass of food to help them grow into healthy Wild Salmon before heading out further into the Pacific to complete their life cycle.

April will be the month we will cleanup upper Knarston, date and time will be in the April Log, hope to see you their.

Best Fishes John Dunn

Hi everyone , the previous posts are to roughly bring you up to date on the past year. These articles are printed in our local paper which comes out every month The Lantzville Log. If I can post these as I write them I will be able to stay up to date and I will try to make some more entries in-between the articles for the paper. Best Fishes John Dunn

Stream keepers The Log Artical for Febuary 2011

Well we missed the deadline for the December issue, I wrote the article but forgot to send it in. Duh/ Yes I did get in trouble from readers who look forward to reading the column so this year I have to be more diligent.

Over the holidays we were out every day except Xmas day and New Years day being that they were on Saturdays one of our regular days.

Well over the past month we have been mainly walking the watersheds observing wildlife and the changing forest.

All the Wild Salmon eggs are tucked nicely into the gravel beds, incubating away as the fresh mountain waters wash over them.

I found some good Oyster Mushrooms growing on old Alder logs along the stream banks, excellent eating. [Hmm-Wild Smoked Salmon and Wild Oyster mushroom’s, stop before they beat down the door at suppertime.]

Had a discussion over the past month about the sexual maturity of Salmon and how important it is for the Salmon to reach sexual maturity unhindered. Salmon in order to achieve their goal of passing on their evolutionary adaptive genes to the next generation need to be able to complete their life cycle. What this means is selecting their mates as they reach maturity and going through their own courting rituals before spawning and fertilizing. By selecting their own mate this ensures that the survival of the species continues. Science is catching up to nature in the understanding of fish behaviour; no longer are fish just fish. Salmon are able to evolve from generation to generation faster than us humans ensuring their adaptation to their ever-changing habitat from cycle to cycle. Interruption of this process can do untold damage to thousands of years of adaptation, which could result in the loss of priceless genetics if all fish become hybrids. Any gardeners out their knows that the same holds true for plants, try saving the seeds of a hybrid hoping that next year your plants will turn out the same. That is why you must buy new seeds every year to ensure getting the results you want, which is why most serious gardeners try to save their own seeds from what are called heirloom varieties. Last week [at the time of this writing] I heard the most eloquent and informed talk on Salmon I have ever heard even from those who purport to know all there is to know of Salmon. Check out the CBC Ideas web site for one of the most enlightening talks by the champion of Salmon Alexandra Morton entitled Saving Salmon; it should be available as a pod cast soon hopefully or for purchase as a CD.

Over the coming months we will be having another stream riparian garbage cleanup, this time in the upper watershed of Knarston Creek adjacent to the recently logged woodlot at the end of the road beyond Normarel rd. [I am reluctant to use its name in print as I have been told by my Salish friends that the current name is considered not PC and is actually a derogatory term]

Most of the garbage lining the old logging road has been removed by Gregsons during the logging of the woodlot.

What remains is lying off in the bush and down the bank of the creek; again we have every kind, old truck bodies, stoves etc. Luckily none is in the creek proper. Talking with John Gregson before the holidays he has offered any assistance he can in this cleanup. So look out for the date which I hope can be arranged for some time in March. As stream Keepers we are also making plans to do some restoration of the heavily eroded banks at the site of the old bridge, this has been made worse by the traffic from 4x4’s and ATV’s, Gregsons has placed rocks and gates to restrict this traffic which has helped to excluded them from using the road and crossing the stream. Most importantly this is a source of water quality for the entire fish habitat downstream all the way to the beach and beyond as the fresh water affects the foreshore habitat also.

Concerns are being raised about the continuing trend to place riprap along the foreshore, which has far reaching impacts on foreshore health and habitat. The trend is to see all beach erosion as a bad thing but erosion is a natural process for the foreshore and throwing rip rap around as a panacea results in major disruption of endangered foreshore habitat for all forage fish who use this crucial habitat to spawn in. We lose the foreshore habitat and eventually we lose the Salmon as these forage fish are important food for rearing Salmon fry as they venture out into the Ocean.

Anchoring drift wood logs along the foreshore will control erosion naturally by dissipating the wave energy while allowing for the natural drift of foreshore material along the beach. Some erosion will continue but without the downward scour created by riprap and concrete structures with the resultant loss of beach slope. Imagine going down to the beach one day to lay on the beach to sun bath and finding all the beach rip rapped and no beach slope to lay on, in fact no low tide beach due to its erosion leaving only a narrow strip of large cobble and boulders.

Hope to see some of you out for the cleanup in March, time and date will be in the next issue of the log in March.

Eat more seafood and live a healthier life, my Salish friends have a very good saying ; “When the tide is out the table is set”.

Best Fishes John Dunn

Stream Keepers The Log Artical November 2010

The past month has been a little on the wet side with rain on most days we were out and about. The last few weeks we have been walking the creeks looking for the returning Wild Salmon. This year so far we have seen poor returns of Wild Chum Salmon on all the streams visited from Bloods through to Craig. The returns of Wild Coho have been overall better than previous years and we still have the late runs to show up. These runs of late Wild Coho return well into December. Some speculation is that these late fish are the remnants of the true Wild Coho and seem to be overall a smaller fish. On the 6^th of November we had a class of home school high school students out for some field experience for their biology class. First thing we did was to give a talk on the importance of the riparian zone while they gave a hand to plant some trees. Next we walked downstream to the Bears fishing camp, which gave the opportunity to talk about the importance of nutrient transport from the ocean to the forest by the Bear and all the other animals that benefit from the returning fish. Though the amount of fish being carried into the forest may seem small when compared to the expanse of the forest vital nutrient exchange takes place mainly along the stream banks. When leaves and needles fall into the stream and along the banks these nutrients are slowly released back into the streams over the winter providing nutrients for all kinds of bugs [invertebrates] both in the stream and along the streamside. By the time the young of the spring hatch out of the gravel the streams are teeming with life providing rich feeding grounds. We were hoping that the heaver rains of November would bring more Chums but it seems that the few we have had return may be it for this year. Down at the famous Gold stream the tourists have not seen the amount of Chum that usually returns. From observations locally even the two hatcheries at little and Big Qualicum Rivers have been low this year.

This year the commercial fishery in Johnstone Straits was closed early due to a lack of returning Chum. This does not bode well for 4 years down the line but we never know from year to year how many will return, if ocean conditions are good we may see more show up.

After the unexpected run of sockeye this year there is a lot of speculation as to why such a big run returned this year after so many lean years. Some research attributes the great abundance of food production in the North Pacific due to an increase of terrestrial nutrients from the Kasatochi volcano way off in the Aleutian Islands in 2008. The ensuing iron rich ash cloud deposited in the Ocean resulted in huge algae and plankton blooms providing rich feeding for the Sockeye.

Up on the central coast north of the Island some concern is being expressed for the health of the Grizzly Bear populations not being able to find enough Chums to fatten up on as they go into winter hibernation. This also will hold for our Black Bear locally if they cannot get enough fish to gain that extra fat required for healthy hibernation especially for the pregnant females.

We wish everyone a great holiday season coming up and we will be out walking the streams right through the holidays though I expect we may cancel our Saturday meeting on the 25^th, this will be the only Saturday during the year we will miss.

Happy New Year and do not forget that the winter solstice takes place on the 21^st of December. If anyone has a live tree and want to donate it for streamside planting we would be happy to plant it for you along one of the streams.

Stream Keepers The Log Artical March 2010

Since last month the rains have continued on and off with a big downpour last night

(15th Feb) Down in the estuary yesterday there was no water flowing over the banks but this morning it was just starting to slow down and flow back to the stream from the field as the tide dropped. We were down planting trees again; taking advantage of the nice weather we were all down to our T-shirts wishing we had brought deck chairs. The Red Wing Blackbirds were all chirping away and Ducks coming and going with a big Red Tailed Hawk cruising the estuary looking for lunch. Even though we just wanted to take in all this sun and nature we did manage to plant 38 Spruce Trees bringing the total for this year so far to 106. These trees all varied from 18inches to 4 ft tall. While planting I wandered into a small area we had planted several years ago and found 5 nice Spruce trees, nice and bushy with lots of healthy growth, if all the ones we planted do as good their will be a nice stand of Spruce in a couple of hundred years. In years past we took all kinds of advice ( Foresters, Biologists etc) as to what trees would do well in the estuary and over the past years we have planted hundreds of Fir and Cedar tree plugs with the vast majority falling to the Beaver, Deer, Mice and Voles chewing off the bark. The only ones that were left alone were the Spruce except for one Spruce planted way down in the Nootka Rose which a Buck has used to rub his antlers on, the tree survived and is still doing well. This area gets flooded with tidal waters during high tides and big rain events so salt tolerance may have something to do with how only the Spruce do well. We have a few Cedar trees growing but they have a tough time with the Deer and Beaver who seem to love chewing Cedar trees. We have a family of bank Beavers trying to survive but have to outwit the trapper who seems to make his appearance once the Beaver get too close to the bridge, usually just a small 1 to 2 foot dam to try and impound enough water to last over the summer months and is flushed out by the first big rain event of the fall.

We were up on Bonnel last week checking out the small school of Wild Coho fry that has been hanging out in this one small piece of off channel habitat. After one of the floods the pool now has a sand bottom from the back eddy depositing its load as the flood roared downstream. Hope fully any more over wintering fry will have found good refuge like this and survived the floods. It will be interesting to see how many Wild Chum return next cycle (4 years), we had a good return this fall with Wild Chum spawning all the way up to the power line. Next year they will be able to move as far as the falls due to the big logjam opening up during one of the floods. Usually just Wild Coho went above the Jam to spawn, next fall we will be able to see how many Wild Chum make it up their. Over the coming months we will be losing the only intact watersheds on a tributary of Snaw Naw As (Nanoose) Creek due to logging. This will affect the water quality for all downstream habitat and have a long-term effect on the overall health of Snaw new As Creek.

On the positive side over the past week all governments have decided to change the name of Georgia Strait to the Salish Sea. Many years ago we put the name Snaw Naw As Creek on the signs denoting Wild Salmon habitat on Nanoose Creek. We would like to put all the correct names of the creeks on the signs but are having a hard time finding out what the streams were called before colonization. So if anyone has any names on old maps or if any one can remember what they were called before they were named after the early settlers let us know and we will add them to the present names.

Crane unloading into dumpster

Volunteers hard at work on the cleanup.

Hi Once again my apologies for not doing any updates since last August. One thing led to another with work then off I went to Oaxaca for the month of October and upon my return could not find my camera, a long story well I found it last saturday in all of the places my field vest Duh//.

Anyway now I am back and will be updating on a regular basis once again.

The fall and the winter month's brought a return of our Wild Salmon to all our streams . Runs were about average for all species for our small streams Wild Coho and Wild Chum.

During the winter month's we had some very big rain events which resulted in two floods roaring down the stream beds and making some dramatic changes to habitat. Our big log jam on Bonnel was opened up releasing large amounts of LWD and SWD into the lower reaches.

A lot of this was deposited on the bends lower down and luckily the main logs were just folded back unto the banks at the jam site. It will remain to see what the effect of the flood has had on our reds both for the Wild Coho and the Wild Chum.

Our willow wattle project of last year on Snaw Naw As Creek (Nanoose Creek) at the base of a big erosion site was taken away leaving no soils to re-do the site. The floods carved the bank back to hardpan of a clay nature, too hard to get willows to root or even plant.

Many pools changed shape and location, some infilling with gravel others being gauged out deeper, again the dry summer months will tell the real tale when we can estimate our fry counts.

A quick jump ahead in time because I will be writing for a week to catch you up on all our activities, but be reassured we have been at it every Tuesday and Saturday, lots of trees have been planted and potential work planed out.

Last Saturday we returned to Bloods Creek in Lantzville to remove the garbage dump which has been slowly growing since our last visit. With a cash donation I was able to hire a 80 ton crane and 40 yard dumpster to lift up the garbage out of the gully. With some advertising on the TV A channel and local papers we got out around 60 volunteers to join the 16 stream keepers in this endeavour. Even our mayor came out with two council members and they were among the hardest workers taking on the job of cleaning off the upland slope.

With a donation of large rocks from the Gregson brothers ( Copcan) we were able along with the donation of time and an excavator to block off the main area used to dump over the bank. Later in the summer during the fish window we will go back with our newly purchased winch and pull out the big truck tires embedded in the stream bed.

Reds and emerging fry prevented us from doing it on Saturday.

See pics at top of page.

Today we were up in the bush using our winch to pull a big log back onto the bank from its position pushing up against our foot bridge, as it was not in the creek proper but suspended over the bank we felt it was okay to winch it back 6 feet away from the bridge where it threatened to push the bridge over.

Wild Salmon Versus Hatchery fish.

Mr R. Haig Brown said back in the 60's that the easiest method of increasing fish stocks is hatchery's instead of addressing the real issue's affecting their decline, loss of habitat.

It would seem that even back then some among us could see the writing on the wall, maybe some among us could not read.

Lately more and more information is coming into the public domain in regard to hatchery fish and the detrimental impacts on Wild fish. It would seem that once more information comes to light we will see that the introduction of hatchery fish into the wild has had dire consequences for wild fish. It would seem that even the small scale community hatchery's have long term effects on wild fish, in fact even the use of hatchery fish to supplement the low wild populations once or twice will contribute more to the decline of the wild fish than any other factor. In the Salish Sea it is estimated that hatchery fish are as high as 80% of the population in effect swamping out what wild fish remain with their genetics. It is time conservation and stream keeper groups took the high road and stop any further dilution of our wild stocks with the quick fix attitude of hatchery's. In effect once a hatchery comes to a stream near you that is goodbye wild salmon even if the consultant biologist tells you that oh we will only take mating pairs and produce only F 1 hybrids, next year it will be F2-F3 who knows and when they breed with wild fish then the cascade effect takes over and that may be the end of your wild fish replaced with domestic fish. Wild Salmon need to complete their sexual mating rituals and taking them for artificial breeding does not allow them to complete their life cycle . Oh they are only fish is the answer I have heard from biologists as if they are unthinking and unfeeling animals. Check out the blog from an Oregon fisherman who is not afraid of speaking out. Bakke-native fish.blogspot.com This blog will point you in the direction of information that it seems some among us would rather you did not have access to.