With the exception of Clayoquot Sound, there are no proper safeguards to protect watersheds. The province relies heavily on stumpage revenue from logging and hasn’t adequately regulated the industry to protect fish habitat as a result, Dunlop said. Since industrial-scale logging began on the west coast in the 1950s, chinook populations have steadily declined. “This has caused considerable morphological changes in all our stream channels,” he explained. The idea is to protect not only stream channels and riparian habitats that border them, but also expansive areas of old-growth forest habitat surrounding salmon streams, recognizing the complex ecological interrelationships within the entire coastal forest ecosystem.ĭunlop feels the province’s existing regulations around freshwater fish habitat are ineffective with no measures to ensure sediments churned up by logging and road construction are contained. “It is separate from but complimentary to salmon parks,” Dunlop explained while sharing news of the successful research grant application.īoth the funded research and the proposed salmon parks are based on a concept that reflects the Nuu-chah-nulth principle of hishukish tsa’walk - everything is interconnected. Roger Dunlop, Uu-a-thluk northern region biologist and lead biologist on the project, said the research should bolster another, more ambitious proposal he’s been working on for several years: “salmon parks.” The money enables riparian studies to proceed this summer on chinook salmon watersheds heavily damaged by more than 60 years of logging on the north Island. ![]() Nootka Sound Watershed Society, which includes the nations of Mowachaht/Muchalaht, Ehattesaht/Chinehkint and Nuchatlaht, has received $904,000 from the federal Coastal Restoration Fund. An ambitious Nuu-chah-nulth plan to restore salmon ecosystems in watersheds surrounding Nootka Sound is closer to being realized with funding that allows research to get underway.
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