[Gloria Frank] Without salmon I would feel like there’s an empty hole in my heart.
I really think that our world as we know it would cease to exist.
[Jessica Hutchinson] Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is made up of a network of small stream systems.
Historically, these small streams were very productive.
They supported healthy populations of wild Pacific salmon.
Close to 30% of the Park was logged prior to the land being set aside for National Park purposes.
This logging severely impacted healthy stream habitats and caused the salmon to almost disappear.
Parks Canada, along with local First Nations and Central Westcoast Forest Society,
are working to restore these streams and bring salmon back to the park.
[Yuri Zharikov] Just before the Park was established about a quarter of this area was logged.
In those years often creeks were logged to the bank so there wasn’t even a buffer left around those creeks.
So, with the trees removed and the extensive rainfall that we get here
a lot of debris, sediment, and everything should not be in the creek ended up in the creek.
[Jessica Hutchinson] And this caused the stream to not flow properly.
It caused sediment to back up and fish could no longer access because they couldn’t get through these debris jams
and the sediment sort of in-filled and buried the natural spawning gravels.
[Yuri Zharikov] When salmon decline all the other things, in response, they decline as well.
For example, bears rely on salmon in order to acquire fat reserves to hibernate.
If salmon runs fail, bears suffer.
[Jennifer Yakimyshin] Pacific salmon are unique in their life history compared to other fish species
because they rely on both fresh water and marine systems to complete their life cycle.
Young salmon start out their life in the freshwater creeks
and they’ll spend a short time in these creeks until they make their migration into the ocean.
In the marine environment, in the oceans, they’re able to feed on rich marine foods and, basically,
pack it on and they get bigger faster than they could ever get in the freshwater creeks.
And after 2-4 years they’re able to come back to their natal streams
and they’re able to do this by a process of chemoreception, which basically means they smell their way back to those creeks.
And in these creeks, that’s where the adults are going to spawn and give birth to the new young of the next generation.
[Warren Wartig] Once they spawn they die, and they become a great protein source for dozens of different species.
And the bears and eagles and seagulls will pack the morts, the dead fish,
way up into the forest and actually fertilize the forest.
[Yuri Zharikov] So in essence you could say that salmon accessing and spawning in those streams they feed the trees that grow on stream banks.
So that’s why those trees grow the largest: they actually have salmon in them.
[Joe Martin] And you know as the people on the West Coast here have a saying, Hishook ish tsawalk, everything is one.
Or, everything is connected. And so it’s important that we all understand that.
[Yuri Zharikov] The Pacific Rim has been established to protect a piece of temperate rainforest,
and salmon-bearing streams are a key feature of such a forest.
Overall, the degradation of this area as a salmon producing environment has been considerable.
And so any restoration that we can afford surely helps to revert that trend and that condition.
[Gloria Frank] There was tonnes of salmon here, every kind of salmon…right from Coho to Sockeye.
There was really lots; there was more than enough to go around.
But we only took what we needed; never more, never less.
[Joe Martin] You know the people have been here for thousands of years, and we’re not newcomers to this part of the world.
So, people did have an intimate knowledge of all these areas, you know?
And those songs and those dances that our people do have, they’re basically teachings about natural law and,
you know, we all live under natural law.
And we’re not allowed to just go there and take and, you know, not be aware of the consequences.
[Jessica Hutchinson]We’re hoping to restore this area by bringing back the habitat required to support healthy salmon populations.
And we do that by repositioning and removing some of the large and small woody debris that was dumped into these creeks
and placing this large woody debris to provide certain habitat features that are required by salmon.
We also add spawning gravel to improve the spawning grounds.
We plant stream-side vegetation and trees to help restore the vegetation on the banks
so they’ll provide shade and cover for the salmon in the streams and help regulate water temperatures.
[Warren Wartig] One key thing that we look for are barriers.
Sometimes there’s a real bad culvert that was put in, and some of them we call hung culverts
because the drop out of the culvert is higher than what a fish can jump to get to the upstream.
By replacing one culvert on Sand Hill Creek we opened up 18 kilometers of habitat.
[Jessica Hutchinson]Through our monitoring efforts we have been able to measure a great number of successes
where we’re seeing individual rocks that have been place in the stream being used by salmon as cover,
or we’ve seen logs placed into the streams scour deep pools.
Then we’re seeing rearing salmon grow in these pools.
We’re seeing wild Pacific salmon return to their natal streams, habitat that was previously inaccessible.
[Jennifer Yakimyshin]It’s amazing, these animals will go through a gauntlet of different
predators and barriers just to come back to the streams,
and if we here in the Park can ensure that we have the stream that is healthy
and has the spawning gravel and has the habitat for the young fish…
it’s really, if we can give them at least that one piece we know we’re doing our part.
[Joe Martin]And the forest, for the whole world, is a very important thing.
It’s, you know, like our lungs of the world.
If we don’t restore it, you know, we’re gonna be in big trouble on this planet.
[Gloria Frank]What my hopes for the future are is that we can establish a healthy ecosystem
so that my great- grandchildren can enjoy the same things that I do.