B.C. conservation group moves thousands of salmon

B.C. conservation group moves thousands of salmon

By Katharine Lake Berz

Source: cbc

4/20/2022

Tim Kulchyski says salmon used to be so plentiful off Vancouver Island that they would shake his Cowichan ancestors' dugout canoes as they collided in the waters of the Salish Sea.

No longer. Pacific salmon stocks are fragile now, in part because human-made barriers prevent the fish from travelling up-river to their natural spawning grounds, he says.

Members of the Mill Bay Conservation Society, a group of volunteers near Kulchyski's home, 50 kilometres north of Victoria, have taken the fish into their own hands — literally.

They have built a human-propelled salmon run, carrying thousands of spawning salmon from a fish trap in the Salish Sea, up a hillside, above several waterfalls and across the Trans-Canada Highway before releasing them into nearby Shawnigan Creek.