Upper Columbia Fishery Enhancement, Canadian Style

Details

Published: Tuesday, 20 June 2023 20:23

Karen Trebitz and Al Mallette
Trail Wildlife Association

The Columbia River flows unobstructed for 57 km (35 miles), from Hugh Llewellyn Keenleyside Dam near Castlegar, BC into Lake Roosevelt in the U.S., making this the longest free flowing reach of the Columbia River north of Hanford reach. In British Columbia we call this West Kootenay section the “lower” Columbia River. In Washington State, the same reach is called the “upper” Columbia River. Fish swim freely across our borders.

The West Kootenay reach of the Columbia River has limited access to spawning streams. Its two largest tributaries, the Pend d’Oreille River (Waneta Dam) and the Kootenay River (Brilliant Dam), are bounded by dams without fish structures. Furthermore, many streams in the area flow through highway culverts that make fish passage impossible. Human intervention is needed to increase spawning opportunities for fish, including trout and salmon.

The Murphy Creek spawning channel (MCSC) is a local success story. It’s an important collaborative partnership of the Trail Wildlife Association (TWA), the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program (FWCP), the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA), landowner Teck Metals Ltd. (Teck), and the adjacent Birchbank Golf Course.

Murphy Creek is known to have excellent trout spawning habitat with one big problem: an impassible highway culvert. Dating back to 1987, TWA had uneven success capturing spawning trout, transporting them over the highway and releasing them on the upstream side.  The TWA began building the first 100 meters of a spawning channel system in 1990 and expanded it to 225 meters in 1994, for a total of 27 spawning pools plus a sediment-settling pond. The MCSC system runs parallel to Murphy creek, and is fed by two crank-controlled intake pipes.

The TWA partnered with the ONA in 2016 to jointly manage the MCSC. In 2021 the Murphy Creek project was added to the FWCP’s “Core Funding” model, meaning that basic annual operational costs are now secure. Because of this funding, the team was able to upgrade the barrier walls from the pool system and around the intakes, and replace one of the intake pipes.

Monitoring with ONA installed PIT tags combined with visual spawning counts by volunteers shows an increasing number of spawning trout. Learn more at http://www.trailwildlife.com/projects/murphy-creek.

Like our American friends, this is one of many projects needed to address barriers such as culverts and habitat restoration. Reintroduction of salmon makes these efforts that much more important. By May 2022, the ONA had already confirmed three chinook catches from anglers on the mainstem Columbia River, from Arrow Lakes, just above Hugh Keenleyside Dam, to the mouth of the Pend d’Oreille River.

International border or not, it’s “one river.” Our fish visit you and vice versa. Here’s a toast to hoping cross-border fishery partnerships get stronger and stronger over time.