Salmon return to Still Creek
Seen breaching and spawning after nearly 80-year absence
Mark Angelo looks at a river much the way a good teacher looks at a problem student. You don’t give up. After years and years of watching a badly polluted Still Creek turn into a dead zone for salmon, Angelo on Sunday stood on the banks of the little tributary in Vancouver as about a dozen chum salmon did what they are supposed to do this time of year.
They were breaching and spawning in the creek, which runs from Burnaby into Vancouver just a short block north of Grandview Highway and within spitting distance of a major shopping mall complex.
“This is a great story,” said Angelo, Chair Emeritus of the BCIT Rivers Institute and an Order of Canada and Order of B.C. recipient for his tireless work on restoring fish habitats. “This creek is still under pressure, but it is remarkable. This is the day we long dreamt of, seeing the return of the salmon.”
Much to the surprise of most people, the chum salmon began showing up a few days ago in this section of Still Creek, beside the intersection of Cornett Road and Natal Street in Vancouver.
After many years of industrial waste, runoff and raw sewage flowing endlessly into the waterway, Still Creek had been written off as a place to see salmon.
Angelo said that with tougher environmental standards now in place for neighbouring industries, improved infrastructure so that raw sewage no longer flows into the creek and endless hours of work by volunteers, Still Creek has been on the rebound.
“It used to be the most polluted waterway in the Lower Mainland,” said Angelo.
“There has been an extensive effort on the part of a lot of groups,” he said of the creek’s transformation. “A lot of groups and many different partners have been working hard to turn this around. Slowly but surely this stream has come back to life and it is so exciting to see.”
The groups who worked on the creek’s rebirth include BCIT’s Fish and Wildlife Program and BCIT’s Rivers Institute, the cities of Burnaby and Vancouver, Metro Vancouver, and a number of streamkeepers volunteer organizations.
It is estimated the salmon run along Still Creek ended between 70 and 80 years ago. Still Creek flows into Burnaby Lake, which empties into the Brunette River, which flows into the Fraser near New Westminster.