To the untrained eye, the Grice Bay worksite of the Central Westcoast Forest Society looks wild and green, but clumps of alder tell a tale of an area of forest that was cleared off decades before.
The site, in Tla-o-qui-aht traditional territory, is located near the Long Beach Golf Course in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.
Coho Creek feeds into Grice Bay, and true to its name, the creek was once a generous salmon-bearing stream that was of great importance to the Tla-o-qui-aht, but it has been damaged.
“It was chosen for restoration work because this creek was historically important to [Tla-o-qui-aht]; salmon used to be abundant here,” said Jessica Hutchinson, an ecologist and executive director of the CWFS.
For the past 20 years, the society has quietly been working to restore salmon spawning beds in Clayoquot Sound that have been destroyed by past logging practises or human habitation. It restores, monitors and researches damaged ecosystems combining traditional First Nations knowledge with science, partnering with First Nations and local interested parties to carry out the labour intensive work.
In 1941, a Royal Canadian Air Force Base was built in the Long Beach area at the site of the present day Tofino Airport. At that time there were a few homesteads in the area.
Out at Grice Bay, wooden pipes were laid directly in Coho Creek to bring water to the base nearly a mile away. Near the mouth of the creek was a pump house and further up the creek were bridges and other structures.
To this day some of the old, wooden water pipe remains, and with logs and other large woody debris, clog the creek bed which was covered with silt, making it impossible for salmon to spawn.
Hutchinson says crews have been working in Coho Creek for the past four years, first removing large, woody debris and planting trees.
The new forest around the creek has grown enough to provide shade needed to keep the water cool for spawning salmon, but more trees were added to help it along.
Crews are now dropping specially graded gravel into the creek to make it a more hospitable spawning ground.
They started at the head of the creek and are working their way up the trail.
It’s very physical work, with small crews shovelling gravel into five gallon pails then hiking up the windy forest trail about a kilometer. Once there, they carefully spread the gravel into the creek then make their way back to the road to do it all over again.
The crew is made up of CWFS staff, workers provided by Creative Salmon and a Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks Guardian.
Hutchinson says Creative Salmon, a salmon farming company that operates in Tla-o-qui-aht traditional territory, is a great supporter of the watershed restoration work that CWFS does. They pay some of their crew members to work on restoring Coho Creek.
Jaime Pascow was one of the Creative Salmon workers there the day that Ha-Shilth-Sa visited, lugging heavy pails of gravel up the forested hill.
Cory Charlie, a TFN Tribal Parks Guardian, was also there. He said he and his coworkers come out to help CWFS whenever they can.
Not only do the partners do seasonal restoration work from July to the end of September, but they also monitor the creeks for the rest of the season.
“We will monitor the juvenile fish population,” said Hutchinson. She admits that in the past four years the numbers for Coho Creek haven’t been good, but things could drastically improve in the next year.
When the work started four years earlier the creek was so jammed with debris that the salmon couldn’t make it up. Today the creek is rehabilitated for more than a kilometer from the mouth. Hutchinson expects to be able to see the results of all their hard work in the spring.
Coho salmon spawn in the fall, laying their eggs in the gravel. The newly hatched fry don’t emerge from the gravel until spring.
If all goes well, the fry will remain in Coho Creek for a year or two before making their way to Grice Bay and the ocean. They will stay at sea for a couple of years before returning to their birthplace to start the cycle all over again.
In the meantime, Hutchinson will move on to the next restoration project, Atleo River in Ahousaht traditional territory.
“The more we make improvements in the health of the watersheds in Clayoquot Sound the better the health of the wild salmon population,” said Hutchinson.
In the early 1990s, the society began working on the Kennedy Flats, where salmon streams were so clogged with woody debris that salmon were seen attempting to swim across flooded roads to get to their spawning grounds.
At that time crews were brought in to clear stumps and large woody debris out of the clogged stream beds. Some logs were anchored strategically in the creek bed to provide shade. Gravel was introduced to the stream.
“Our work is never easy, but seeing the return of wild salmon, wolves, eagles and bears to restored areas is a reward worth working for,” reads Central Westcoast Forest Society promotional material.
The Central Westcoast Forest Society is a registered charity that relies on partners, financial contributions and volunteers to carry out its very important work.
Hutchinson said every year they write dozens of proposals to secure funding for another year of restoration work.
In the past 20 years they’ve invested more than $10 million in watershed restoration efforts on Vancouver Island.
