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Fish will no longer be caught and left to die in shut-off ponds during low water periods at Cottonwood Island Park in Prince George, British Columbia.
It comes after a local conservation group successfully reconnected a small side channel of the Nechako River that regularly dried up.
The park is surrounded by a river and a 1.4 km long side channel, which is used by many species of fish as a refuge and spawning ground.
However, as the water receded, the side channel dried up, leaving fish stuck in the sediment or vulnerable to predators.
“The fish were stuck there and the water had run out of oxygen and dried out completely,” said Jesy Lauzon, operations coordinator for the Spruce City Wildlife Association.
“It can be very cold in winter.”
In early December, the team used an excavator to remove the last bit of dirt and permanently reconnect the canal to the Nechako River.
“In the past, it became an area of death and destruction pretty quickly,” said Lauzon, who has been working on the restoration project for more than five years.
Lauzon says she was first inspired to take on the project after her basset hound, Daisy, got out of her leash and ran into a drained canal while they were walking at Cottonwood Island Park.
“She came out black and smelling really bad because she got caught in that horrible stuff.”
Lauzon was also studying fisheries biology at the University of Northern British Columbia at the time and was planning a project to conserve aquatic ecosystems.
“We had to develop a habitat proposal and kind of determine what it would take to do a restoration project,” she said.
The local nonprofit Spruce City Wildlife Association, where she volunteered, was eager to help bring her academic project to life.
After two years of monitoring the canal to obtain baseline data, Lauzon was able to prove that the canal was not a safe winter refuge for salmon.
Volunteers then spent time each fall setting traps and moving all the salmon caught in the canal to a better location while Lauzon and her team worked on the restoration project.
Lauzon says now that the canal is reconnected to the Nechako River, she's excited to see the differences in the types and numbers of fish and wildlife that use the canal.
“It was a very long process, but it was great to take something from school and have so many people help me bring it to life,” Lauzon said.
The coordinator said many community organizations helped the project, including the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation fishing team, which planted willows along the canal to stabilize the banks and create more wildlife habitat.
“People gave up their time and businesses brought their entire offices together to volunteer for one day. It was a huge, fair and collaborative effort from so many people,” she said.
“I can’t be grateful enough because I couldn’t do it myself.”
