A lot of salmon died': Ahousaht Guardians look to watershed restoration amid B.C.'s dangerously dry summer
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IN-DEPTH
‘A lot of salmon died’: Ahousaht
Guardians look to watershed
restoration amid B.C.’s dangerously dry
summer
The province’s prolonged drought is exacerbating the damage done to Bedwell
River by decades of forestry around Tofino. Now, First Nations and conservation
groups are teaming up to protect salmon and bring the watershed back to life
By Stephanie Wood
Sept. 19, 2021 ! 12 min. read
This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and
the communities working to implement solutions.
On a hot July afternoon Ahousaht Guardian Byron Charlie walked along the Bedwell River on the
west coast of Vancouver Island. He was part of a restoration team there to rebuild a side channel of
the river that had almost completely dried up.
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Charlie said as they worked, the group came across small, calm pools of water — which usually act
as cool refuges for Esh — that were dangerously warm and low. They were so shallow, Charlie said,
they weren’t much beyond “puddles.”
One of these small pools — Charlie estimates it was about six feet long and two inches deep — was
teeming with tiny salmon. Knowing there was no end in sight to the summer heat and certainly no
rain in the forecast, the team scooped up about 400 juvenile coho and transferred them to another
part of the river.
Looking around, they noticed another pool Elled with Esh and agreed to return the next day to
continue the rescue operation.
“If we didn’t do it that day, all those Esh would have been gone,” Charlie told The Narwhal during an
outdoor interview at a ToEno beach, describing how some of the small pools of water had
completely dried up over night. “They would have been trapped there.”
Byron Charlie, an Ahousaht First Nation Guardian, radios the crew from Central Westcoast Forest Society after arriving in Bedwell Sound, in
Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino. “When I was younger, my grandfather always said, ‘We’re salt water people — from the water,’ ” Charlie said.
Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
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The coastal town of Tofino is layered in fog in the morning. Photo: Charlie drives out of the Tofino harbour on his way to Bedwell
Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal Sound. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
They returned to save another 600 juvenile coho from the second pool. Over the course of their
project, they saved 1,600 Esh, mostly coho. But not all the young salmon were so lucky, said Jessica
Hutchinson, executive director of the Central Westcoast Forest Society, who was working with
Charlie that day.
“We unfortunately came across a number of pools that we didn’t make it to in time,” she told The
Narwhal in an interview. “A lot of salmon died.”
Hutchinson fears this summer, marked as it was by heat, Ere and drought, is “an indicator of what’s
to come” as climate change intensiEes. At the time of Charlie and Hutchison’s baby salmon rescue
mission, Western Vancouver Island was at level three drought, according to the British Columbia
Drought Information Portal, which means adverse impacts to Esh and ecosystems are “possible.” In
August, those adverse impacts became “almost certain” as the region moved into drought level Eve.
Despite cooler weather and some showers, the island remains locked in extreme drought conditions
and, as waterways remain dry and unseasonably warm, many Esh are struggling to survive.
To Hutchinson, the prolonged drought emphasizes the urgency of the Bedwell River restoration
project, on which the Central Westcoast Forest Society is partnering with the Ahousaht First
Nation.
“It was a terrible year for Esh,” she said. “It’s good for us to see how fragile these salmon
populations are and how close they are to the brink of extinction, and the importance of doing this
work now before it’s too late.”
:
Byron Charlie carries a bucket of around 15 rescued juvenile salmon to release into the Bedwell River, within the Clayoquot Sound, near
Tofino, on July 30, 2021. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
Byron Charlie released juvenile salmon into the Bedwell River, within the Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino, on July 30, 2021. Photo: Melissa
Renwick / The Narwhal
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Recovering a river buried by destructive logging practices
The drought exacerbated dry conditions in the Bedwell River, but the tributary that the restoration
team focused their eYorts on had already been mostly buried by erosion, caused by destructive
logging practices throughout the 20th century.
“We’re seeing a lot of creeks go dry when a watershed is logged,” Hutchinson said, which is why she
feels restoration “is key” to save salmon.
Cutting down trees and building logging roads contributes to and can accelerate erosion, increasing
the amount of gravel and debris that enters a river during rainfall. While logging companies are
now required to leave buYers of trees along rivers, that wasn’t required when Bedwell Sound was
logged.
“Without the extensive root systems that hold the integrity of the river together, the river really
unravels,” Hutchinson said. A disrupted river can widen and become more shallow, meaning it will
dry up more easily in hot and dry weather, which further compounds the impacts of erosion.
The shallower the water, the more intensely rain events can impact spawning beds, Mandala
Smulders, Central Westcoast Forest Society’s director of operations, said.
“Tiny little Esh just get washed out into the estuary and they’re not ready for all that predation, she
said. Without pools and side-channels, “there’s nowhere for them to take refuge … it’s basically just
like a highway, and they get washed out to sea when they’re born.”
“Water that used to be at the surface is now buried meters and meters below. We see these pools dry
up and these Esh die,” Hutchinson said.
That’s what brought the restoration team to Bedwell River this past August: to dig out side
channels of the river, about six feet underground, to hit groundwater to get the tributary running
again.
Charlie (left) and Kaylyn Kwasnecha, Central Westcoast Forest
Society research and monitoring coordinator, record the length and
weight of a juvenile salmon before transplanting it into the Bedwell
River. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
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“There will be water `ow all year so salmon won’t be stuck and dying in there,” Charlie said.
Throughout September, the team is planting new trees along the river to restabilize the banks.
The work on the Bedwell River is funded by a $1 million grant that the society received from the
province through the Healthy Watersheds Initiative. The province invested $27 million in
watershed restoration as part of B.C.’s economic recovery plan to create jobs for workers aYected by
COVID-19.
“We have much to learn from Indigenous nations about stewardship of the land and water and, by
applying their traditional practices and knowledge in concert with western science, together we are
creating a healthier future for communities and species across B.C.,” George Heyman, Minister of
Environment and Climate Change Strategy said in an Aug. 31 statement about the initiative.
The Central Westcoast Forest Society applied for the initiative funding in partnership with the
Hesquiaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht First Nations of Clayoquot Sound to take on restoration in
the nations’ territories. The First Nations identiEed areas of cultural and ecological importance to
restore and the program now employs 25 people, of which 12 are Indigenous people from local
nations.
Mandala Smulders, Central Westcoast Forest Society’s director of operations, told The Narwhal that
while some of the jobs are on contract, they plan to End more funding to retain the new hires.
“We are trying to build internal capacity. The more experienced people get, the more we can put
them on other projects,” she said.
The funding has so far been used to train 14 people in an environmental technician certiEcate
program. Ten of those trainees were Indigenous, including Charlie, who was also supported in First
Aid training.
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“[Restoration] is essential to the survival and sustainability of salmon in our territory,” Charlie said.
“I’m hoping it’s going to have a really big impact on the river systems here and see our [salmon]
numbers start climbing again.”
Trees are driven to Bedwell Sound for planting at the salmon restoration project. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
While the funding has been critical to the restoration work done in areas selected by the three
nations, Hutchinson said the $1 million is a drop in the bucket when you consider the work needed
to restore habitat damaged by logging all across Clayoquot Sound.
Last year, the Forest Practices Board — B.C.’s forestry watchdog — found logging practices across
the province were having negative impacts on salmon habitat. In particular the report found
forestry roads were leading to increased sediment in salmon-bearing rivers. Elevated sediment can
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decrease the abundance of plants Esh feed on, can smother salmon eggs and can prevent Esh from
travelling upstream to spawn.
The board also found that existing government legislation around sediment impacting Esh habitat
is vague, making it hard to enforce eYective sediment management.
Chinook in Bedwell Sound declined 80 per cent, estimates suggest
Charlie remembers when he was a child, the whole Ahousaht community would go out on the
water to seine Esh. In one day, they would catch enough winter stocks for every family.
Today, it takes a month or two to catch enough Esh for winter stocks for everyone, he said.
He still Eshes when he can, though the nation has shut down in-river Eshing for the next Eve years
to allow as many Esh to spawn as possible. His Eve-year-old son loves Eshing.
“He loves salmon, any kind of Esh, crabs. But when we catch them and bring them home, he’s like
‘can we just keep them?’ And I’m like, ‘you can’t keep ‘em and eat ‘em, you gotta pick one,’” he said
with a laugh.
His children are his motivation for wanting to protect the land, waters and salmon.
“It’s paradise,” he said, sitting on a log and looking out at the ocean. “I want to keep it that way for
more generations to come, I want my kids to be out here to be able to enjoy everything I did as a kid.
I want them to see the abundance of salmon and other resources we have.”
:
Fog drapes the ocean’s surface in Clayoquot Sound. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
Salmon in B.C. have faced multiple challenges, including habitat loss due to industry, historic
overharvesting, climate change and Esh farms, which carry disease and sea lice. Hutchinson said
the Bedwell River is thought to have supported upwards of 1,600 to 1,900 chinook historically
(according to stream counts, traditional knowledge and estimating the stream’s spawner capacity).
But last year only 302 returned to spawn, suggesting a decline between 81 and 84 per cent.
“For a salmon leaving the Bedwell River, it’s like a gauntlet dodging Esh farms,” Charlie said. A
juvenile Esh must swim past eight Esh farms to reach the ocean.
“For a little Esh like that to go through, it’s pretty unbelievable,” he said.
Members of the Ahousaht First Nation have long been involved in protests against salmon farms in
Clayoquot Sound.
Fish farms struggle with sea lice infestations due to cramped conditions. Lice can latch on to
migrating wild salmon, damaging their Ens and scales and causing bleeding. Research conducted
by biologist Alexandra Morton and researcher Rich Routledge from Simon Fraser University found
the vast majority of juvenile pink and chum salmon, 97 per cent and 88 per cent respectively,
infected with a motile louse died. A June 2020 study by Morton, using data published by salmon
farming companies Mowi, Cermaq and Grieg, found that 37 per cent of salmon farms exceeded sea
lice limits this spring. A separate September 2020 study found that salmon farms in B.C. regularly
under-count sea lice infestations.
In March, Norwegian salmon farming company Cermaq, 14 of 20 salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound,
applied for a provincial permit to dump nearly one million litres of a sea lice pesticide into the
region’s waters to deal with ongoing infestations.
Several salmon populations have declined by over 80 per cent within Clayoquot Sound, Hutchinson
said. The Tranquil River in Tla-o-qui-aht territory historically saw 35,000 Chum returning in the
1950s, but saw only 5,391 returned this year.
When it comes to wild salmon populations, it’s a competition of “which one is doing the worst,” she
said.
“Unfortunately, it’s a race to the bottom.”
Habitat restoration is “low-hanging fruit” to assist salmon immediately while things like policy
change around forestry practices, climate change, hatcheries and aquaculture take longer,
Hutchinson said.
“Every salmon nest (which is called a redd), contains upwards of several hundred to several
thousand eggs. If we can protect that one redd and help it produce as many Esh as possible, that
alone can be key to signiEcantly changing our annual returns,” she said.
But right now, because of the state of the watershed, the rivers can represent a threat to returning
Esh, rather than a safe refuge. “These watersheds in a degraded state are actually a sink for coho
salmon,” she said.
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But the work in the Bedwell River is turning that trend around. Hutchinson said their team with the
Ahousaht saved more coho in the river than returned to during the entire previous year.
A fish farm shrouded in fog floats in Clayoquot Sound, just outside Tofino. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
‘We need to invest in restoration like we invested in resource extraction’
Smulders said keeping salmon healthy is central to the health of the whole watershed.
Salmon feed invertebrates in the streams and whales in the ocean, and many other species. They
bring back marine nutrients from the ocean, so that when they spawn and die, they act as fertilizer
in the watershed. When bears, eagles and wolves drag salmon carcasses into the forest, they
fertilize trees, giving back to the very trees that stabilized the stream they grew up in.
“A cedar tree now has these amazing marine-derived nutrients that help to make it grow into a
huge, beautiful tree,” Smulders said.
Hutchinson explained restoration is not just building some pools, but restoring processes that
should be naturally occurring, and the work should be led by local First Nations. She said more
money needs to be put into restoration.
“We need to invest in restoration like we invested in resource extraction so many years ago,” she
said.
:“I want to keep what we have — just the love of the land, knowing where you come from,” Charlie told The Narwhal. Melissa Renwick / The
Narwhal
A July study called Working for Watersheds, published by the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, the
POLIS Water Sustainability Project and the BC Water Funders Collaborative, found there is a huge
social and economic beneEt in supporting the ‘watershed sector,’ which is deEned as “jobs that
directly support better outcomes for healthy watersheds.” The report’s analysis found the
watershed sector supported more than 45,000 jobs in British Columbia in 2019 through restoration
eYorts, urban and industrial water management and educational programs.
The report writers advocate the province establish a $100 million per year Watershed Security Fund
to help grow the sector.
“From agriculture, to tourism, to mining, to clean energy, the province’s economy and wealth
directly depend on clean fresh water and functioning watersheds,” the report reads.
The report estimated that if the status quo continues, the watershed sector is set up to add 7,400
new jobs and contribute $767 million to B.C.’s gross domestic product by 2030. But if the province
launched a Watershed Security Fund for ten years, it predicts that would create an additional
13,000 jobs and contribute an additional $1.3 billion to B.C.’s gross domestic product by 2030.
“As British Columbians suYer from the impacts of wildEres, heat waves and droughts, communities
will continue to see threats to water security. We cannot aYord to wait and must protect water and
watersheds in communities throughout B.C.,” provincial Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau said in
a statement responding to the report.
:In an Aug. 31 press release, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy promised
that the 60 Healthy Watershed Initiative projects undertaken this year with the province’s $27
million stimulus will “contribute to B.C.’s commitment to develop a Watershed Security Strategy
and Fund,” and that nature-based climate solutions are part of its draft climate preparedness and
adaptation strategy it will release in 2022.
To keep salmon and the watershed healthy, Charlie would like to see a transition from Esh farms to
more sustainable aquaculture like oyster, mussels and kelp farms, with First Nations getting the
chance to be leaders in these industries. He also wants to see more funding for Indigenous
stewardship and more Guardians hired.
“I want to keep what we have — just the love of the land, knowing where you come from,” he said.
Charlie said restoring Bedwell Sound is signiEcant for him because it was once home to the
Ahousaht village Huuʔinmitis, where his great-great-grandfather was born and raised. Ahousaht
people later gathered to live on Flores Island northeast of ToEno.
“It’s always a little surreal going up and doing what we’re doing and trying to keep the ecosystem
running, knowing that that’s what they were doing thousands of years ago, and my grandfather …
and knowing I’m walking on the same land he did, doing essentially the same things they did,”
Charlie said.
And Charlie has high hopes for the Bedwell River, because he has seen the positive impacts of
restoration elsewhere. After restoring Anderson Creek in Ahousaht territory with the Central
Westcoast Forest Society, he said the creek was “like night and day.” They built pools, spawning
beds and rioes. He said they stood in silence and just took the scene in.
“I think it’s the perfect place for salmon to go now,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of waiting.”
The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers
the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay
Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization
has editorial input into our stories.
Banner Photo:
BANNER: Danny O'Farrell (left) and Byron Charlie load trees onto an Ahousaht Guardian boat. The trees are bound for Bedwell Sound to support
a Central Westcoast Forest Society salmon restoration project, on July 30, 2021.
Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal
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