Watershed Restoration Program

Watershed Restoration Program

PROGRAM GOAL

Enhance watershed health to increase aquatic habitat resilience, and collaborating with partners to restore ecosystems to a functioning natural state that will remain viable in the face of climate change. Through partnerships and relationships with restoration experts, choose the best path forward to mitigate, remediate human-caused environmental issues to enhance and restore aquatic ecosystems.

CURRENT RESTORATION PROGRAM ACTIVITY

Fish Passage Assessments and Habitat Confirmation; Habitat Connectivity Remediation Planning

• Type of work 
  • LLC is assisting with the completion barrier assessments and habitat confirmations on high priority streams that have limited or no access for fish downstream due to a anthropogenic barrier. 
  • Involved in planning for fish habitat connectivity remediation in select watersheds.

• Why it's important
  • There are hundreds of thousands of stream crossings in BC, many of which are known or suspected barriers to fish. This reduced connectivity excludes fish from otherwise high quality habitat, negatively affecting all aspects of their life history (spawning, rearing, refuge), overall populations, and gene flow. 

• Where it's happening
  • All roads across BC, and the country. Often resource roads are targeted for remediation due to overall lower cost to repair (compared to major highways or railway). BC government has developed a strategic approach used to address these issues to allocate resources most efficiently. 
  • LLC is assisting with fish passage projects in two main areas, near Smithers, BC and Fernie, BC.

Wetland Enhancement and Restoration

• Type of work
  • Assisting the Columbia Wetland Stewardship Partners with various CWSP-led projects including:
    • Installation of monitoring stations to investigate and identify vulnerable wetlands to climate change
    • Conducting beaver presence/absence surveys, and planning on restoring select wetland site with beaver dam augmentation (beaver dam analogue)

• Why it's important
  • The Upper Columbia River and adjacent Columbia Wetlands are one of the largest wetland complexes in British Columbia. This 180 kilometre-long, biologically-rich system extends northward from Canal Flats to Donald within the Rocky Mountain Trench of the Canadian Rockies of southeastern British Columbia. Encompassing the northward-flowing Columbia River, this 26,000-hectare wetland system is also one of the few remaining pristine floodplain wetlands left in North America; and it contains the only undammed section of the entire 2,000 kilometre-long Columbia River. The Columbia Wetlands are a crucial source of freshwater, and provide immense habitat value to a diverse range of birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and invertebrates. This unique ecosystem is under pressure from anthropogenic sources and climate change. 

• Where it's happening
  • Columbia River wetlands in partnership and led by the Columbia Wetlands Stewardship Partners in the East Kootenay (North of Invermere).

PARTNERS

Currently we're partnering with the Columbia Wetlands Stewardship Partners and New Graph Environment on restoration activities.