The president of the Nakusp Rod and Gun Club says they’re trying to decide what to do next to revive a project to restore fish habitat on a creek that feeds into the Arrow Lakes.
Hank Scown says he plans to contact the provincial government for details on just how much more its departments need before going ahead with improvements on Heart Creek.
“The project gets shelved because their concerns are not enough studies have been done,” he says. “Well, the Ministry of the Environment has been involved in this for years. They’ve known what’s going on, so I don’t know what more studies they need.”
Scown says he got the news in late February that one of the club’s big projects- the restoration of Heart Creek, near Fauquier- was being put on hold for a year. He says an official with the Ministry of Transport told them that Environment needed more information on fish numbers, wanted them to consult with First Nations, and to clear other requirements before getting any more money for the project.
That decision has put $600,000 in funding for creek restoration in limbo.
In 2015, the province spent $1.6 million through its habitat restoration programs to remove a culvert from the creek and replace it with a clear span bridge. The creek bed had eroded downstream from the culvert, preventing kokanee and other species from spawning on the creek for more than 30 years.
“No sooner we put that bridge in those kokanee were there, going up the creek just like trained pigs,” says Scown. “They had been spawning in the little bit of creek between culvert and the lake, enough for the population to survive, for decades.”
While the first project was a success, about 150 metres farther up the kokanee now face another impassable barrier: a log jam, and a second too-high culvert. That’s the project Scown says they are waiting for funding to fix.
“Wouldn’t it be marvelous to replace that culvert as well?” he says. “Beyond that there are kilometers of spawning capacity, a beautiful natural system for rainbow trout, kokanee, bull trout… it’s just sitting there, dormant.”
He says the government’s new requirements before starting work on the next phase of the project are vague. For one thing, he says he’s not sure which First Nations group would be proper to consult with. The Westbank First Nation plans to establish a new reserve near the mouth of Heart Creek — but that action’s being challenged by the Colville Tribal Confederacy, which represents members of the Sinixt. The Sinixt were declared extinct in the area in the 1950s by the federal government, but descendants of the First Nation have recently won legal challenges that have established their aboriginal rights in the territory. However, those court cases are being appealed.
“Do we consult with the Okanagan Alliance, with the Westbank First Nation, which has land a potato’s throw from the creek, or do we consult with the Sinixt? We don’t know where they are or where their headquarters are,” he says. “I’m sure we can track down a representative who will want to go to court over this.”
Scown says the B.C. government has done a poor job of protecting fish and wildlife habitat in recent years. He says in the last provincial election, there was talk of doing more to enhance habitat, but a perfect opportunity like Heart Creek is being wasted.
“Last election they said, we’ll get money from hunting licences, that will go back to wildlife. They were going to allocate some number and they were going to establish a group made up of people in province, the BC Wildlife Federation, politicians, etc, working on plans to put more effort into wildlife management.
“When I look at the Heart Creek project, I see this just fits in perfectly with that idea of stewardship, of looking after the resource. We’ve devastated this landscape, flooded out the winter range, so let’s see if we can do something more natural for existing species we have left.
“This fits in, and what happens?”
He’s worried more time will pass, and all that will result in is more studies being demanded.
”So the program has been shelved, I just hope we don’t have to wait another 30 years until someone says ‘oh we are going to do it now, but you do realize it has been 10 years since we did the studies and we’ll have to update them?’”, he says.
“We’re absolutely disappointed.”
