Conservation

Photo: flickr\wstryder

Bringing back the fish

When the Arctic grayling disappeared from the Beaverlodge River, it was a sign to rehabilitate its waters

After the Arctic grayling disappeared from northwestern Alberta’s Beaverlodge River in the mid-1990s, Doug Macaulay looked to the degraded riverbanks for answers. “Trees are among the best tools to clean water and restore habitat along waterways,” says Macaulay, an agroforestry specialist with the province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. “They also clean the soil and the air, and they do it for free.”

In 2008, after several years of smallscale tree plantings on the banks of the Beaverlodge — a tributary of the Peace River flowing southeast from its British Columbia headwaters — the not-forprofit Agroforestry and Woodlot Extension Society received funding from the Alberta Conservation Association to launch a bigger project. The result, a collaboration between seven partner organizations over the past three years, has seen 100,000 trees planted along about 30 kilometres of the Beaverlodge and its tributary streams, the largest such undertaking in Alberta history.

In the space of about 50 years, the Beaverlodge had dwindled from one of the province’s best grayling fisheries to a river with no remaining sport fish, and human impacts are mostly to blame. Factors include oil and gas development and forestry toward the headwaters; ranching and crop agriculture dominate closer to Grande Prairie, including cattle grazing on the banks and in-stream herd watering.

Once the new trees are established, Macaulay expects them to stabilize the banks and remove more than 90 percent of the sediments and excess nutrients that flow into the river. In a region recently plagued by drought, the shade will also slow the spring snowmelt and cool the river during the summer. It will take years before these trees have an impact on water quality, but when they do, not only the fish and wildlife will benefit: two towns, Beaverlodge and Hythe, draw their drinking water from the river.

What makes the project unique, beyond its size, is that the planting has occurred primarily on private land. The County of Grande Prairie, which has been a key partner, attracts interested landowners through public-awareness campaigns and follows up with site visits. The landowner then dictates where trees will be planted and, in conjunction with another landowner program, plans where riparian fencing and off-stream herd watering will be established.

With project funding running out last year, the non-profit West County Watershed Society (WCWS) was formed to secure the resources needed to continue, with plans to rehabilitate 70 percent of the Beaverlodge’s degraded riparian zone over the next 10 years. “Our goal is to have the families and kids fishing again,” says WCWS president Cathy Newhook, whose property touches one of the Beaverlodge’s tributaries. “People remember the grayling was here once, and they want to see them back.”