Goldstream Provincial Park is crowded these days as people gather to watch the salmon struggle their way upstream to spawn. It’s not an easy journey.
In some streams that once provided spawning beds for salmon, that journey is impossible. Dams, diversions and other human-caused disruptions keep the fish from returning to their places of birth to renew the life cycle.
But humans can mitigate disruptions to that cycle, and they are doing so. An example is the recently completed Tod Dam fishway, which is designed to help coho salmon and cutthroat trout make their way up Tod Creek to spawn.
The dam sits just inside Gowlland Tod Provincial Park. Built in the early 1900s to supply water to the cement works at Tod Inlet, it now provides irrigation water for the Butchart Gardens.
In the past, the Tod Creek system, which includes Maltby, Prospect and Durrance lakes, supported populations of seagoing fish. The aim of the new fishway is to restore the creek as a salmon-spawning waterway within five years.
Butchart Gardens provided the funding for the fishway, but gives credit to the Peninsula Streams Society for taking on the project. The Pacific Salmon Society also supported the project.
The Peninsula Streams Society is a diligent guardian of streams and habitats in the region, and in addition to taking on such projects as the Tod Dam fishway, works constantly to educate the public about the importance of protecting and restoring the health of the environment.
The human footprint has trampled hugely on the natural landscape, but the work of entities such as the Peninsula Streams Society and Butchart Gardens show us that the damage can be reversed, one waterway at a time.
