Subject: Tsleil-Waututh Nation completes four-year Burrard Inlet restoration project

[Derby]

Subject: Tsleil-Waututh Nation completes four-year Burrard Inlet restoration project







https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/othe...et-restoration-project/ar-AA19YEiE?li=AAggFp5

 

[agentaqua]

Good news - but I hope they hired someone who knows what they are doing with the eelgrass transplants. Years back a number of the Regional Districts put in helo pads in remote communities for emergency evac. A number of those pads were put where land(ish) was readily available and easy - which often ended-up being in the upper intertidal areas - including iffy sparse low saline eelgrass areas.

Back then - before Harper - s. 35 HADD was in the Fisheries Act and they had to compensate by replanting eelgrass. Almost every planting was a failure because there are different phenotypes of eelgrass - some are good in low saline estuaries - others not. It is denser and easier to get high saline eelgrass - so that's what they used - and the transplants died because checking up years later on restoration projects was not part of the short-term permits. I hope any consultants they hired know this stuff.

 

[Dave]

agent, I hope you pass on this knowledge to the Tsleil-Waututh so they can ensure correct procedures will be followed. A simple email, much like above, would get the ball rolling.

 

[agentaqua]

I had a look around and found this pdf on a similar project in Howe Sound:

Publications - Ocean Wise

Explore the Ocean Wise research archive, published in journals around the world

oceanwatch.ca

They took a cautious long-term approach that started with slowly narrowing-down potential sites after looking at the environmental variables and initiating some test sites. That is the way to do it.

Previous restoration/transplant attempts in the Pacific Northwest from 1990-2008 ended-up with only 13% of the projects in the Pacific Northwest achieved or exceeded success in all metrics:

https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/research/reports/fullreports/706.1.pdf

The helo pad transplants would have been even less successful that that for the reasons listed in post #2.

Another problem in the larger ports under the Marine Act and Ports Authorities (e.g. Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Alberni, Rupert, etc) and their letters of patent is - again - the ongoing legacy of Harper. His omibus bill took the authority for environmental aspects of port operations away from the normal federal departments and left that to the discretion of the Port Authorities and took proponents housed within the letters of patent areas out of any normal and expected environmental assessments as listed in the federal acts. And as ports get more developed and habitat disappears or is impacted - the remaining fish habitat including eelgrass beds become more important verses less important - which unfortunately seems to be the rationalization that the port operators have as they have no background in these matters. Juvie Chinook in particular use eelgrass beds.

But maybe that ongoing reality is for another thread.