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Habitat repair lures salmon back to Clayoquot

Photos by Rick Telford Rick Telford was a little surprised when he stumbled on naked revellers in Virgin Falls, last Jan. 1. It may have been mild, but the glacier fed waters are still frigid on Canada Day.

Photos by Rick Telford

Rick Telford was a little surprised when he stumbled on naked revellers in Virgin Falls, last Jan. 1. It may have been mild, but the glacier fed waters are still frigid on Canada Day.

Virgin Falls are about an hour's drive up Tofino Inlet on logging roads that challenge the hardiest of four wheel drive trucks. Nowadays, loggers in these parts are almost as rare as nudists. The nearby town of Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, lost 400 forestry jobs in the last decade.

Telford is a veteran mechanic of numerous B.C. logging camps. He returns almost daily to the backcountry above Clayoquot and Barkley sounds, where he shows visitors the wildlife, wild flowers, old growth and new growth before serving them lunch high above the falls.

He is not the only ex-forestry employee plying the rugged roads. Funded by public and private sponsors, former loggers have joined unemployed fishermen, government biologists and local Native and non-native people to restore the area's once rich salmon habitat.

Their work centers on the Kennedy watershed, home to the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples and the traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation.

During the 1980s and '90s, the Kennedy Watershed and Clayoquot Sound were the focus of debate and confrontation over logging practices in some of the last intact old growth forest and freshwater ecosystems of coastal North America.

Sixty years of logging and road building had left the area's salmon streams choked with debris. Creeks like the Kootowis and Staghorn had been highly productive fish streams, whose cutthroat trout, chum and coho salmon supported First Nations, commercial and sports fisheries.

The fish were integral to a thriving wildlife population, including black bears, bald eagles, cougars and wolves.

But as Telford explained, logging was not the only cause of the salmon's demise.

"During the Second World War, the Kootowis Creek salmon migration was blocked by a water supply dam till the 1950s. Even when it was cleared, the government in the 1960s didn't care about the damage to salmon streams because they planned to build salmon hatcheries - they were going to build a better fish."

By the early 1990s, salmon that once returned in thousands had dwindled to hundreds or less.

The fact that Telford's tour now covers the Kootowis-Staghorn Creek Fisheries Restoration trail illustrates how much has changed in a decade.

In 1994, International Forest Products (Interfor) launched a project to restore the creeks' salmon habitat. The project spawned a coalition of sponsors including MacMillan Bloedel (now Weyerhaeuser), government agencies Forest Renewal B.C. and Fisheries Renewal B.C., the non-profit Central Westcoast Forest Society and local First Nations.

Biologists surveyed streams to decide how debris should be removed, which logs should remain and how they should be anchored in order to mimic the condition of a healthy stream. With the help of helicopters, a crew removed the remnants of decades of logging before adding wood obstacles to slow the water flow and recreate fish habitat.

In some areas, gravel and plant cover were added for spawning salmon. Given the statistics for the salmon's survival rate, the fish need all the help they can get.

Adult salmon spawn in the late fall and lay up to 4,000 eggs per pair. About 800 survive to hatch, 200 smolts go to sea and of these 10 reach adulthood.

Despite those odds and thanks to restoration work on both streams and their riparian habitat, salmon returns have increased 10 fold.

"On the Kootowis, 4,000 to 5,000 salmon returned last year," said Len Dziama of the Central Westcoast Forest Society (CWFS).

"We are seeing returns on some stretches of river where salmon hadn't been seen for 20 years. And not just coho, which are good swimmers and good jumpers; chum, which are good swimmers but can't jump for beans, are making it up."

Dziama logged in this area from 1979 to 1995 and today considers himself a logger in a new type of forestry.

"We're not going to fix things but we are trying to help the land heal itself," said Dziama. "It's not as though we can walk away one day - once you've mucked with an ecosystem you're in for good. But we are seeing fish returning, along with bears and otters - it's a package deal."

After six years of mobilizing ex-loggers, fishermen and others to restore habitat, the CWFS staged the First Annual Return of the Salmon Festival last fall. More than just a celebration, festival organizers aimed to educate people about salmon, the salmon life cycle, salmon habitat and the importance of salmon to Canadian West Coast culture and lifestyle.

Dziama could not have wished for a more dramatic scene when he took to the podium that November day.

"So I'm talking to the crowd and no one is paying any attention to me because everyone's pointing at something," recalled Dziama. "I look around and there's a heron going by and a bear on the bank."

Visitors can now hike a five kilometre trail along a deactivated logging road, or drive a 16 kilometre interpretive loop through the watershed project. Signs and brochures explain the restoration work.

Dziama describes this area as the glory - the results made possible by work elsewhere to stabilize hillsides, decommission roads and re-establish natural drainage patterns.

"If there's too much sediment getting into the streams higher up, none of our work is worth anything."

Farther up Tofino Inlet, Telford's trip to Virgin Falls passes examples of other restoration work, places where gullies and slopes have been shored up to reduce runoff from roads, and deactivated roads featuring cross ditches and water bars to help handle winter rains. It can make for a bumpy ride, even in a six-person Ford four wheel drive.

None of these repair efforts detract from the beauty of Tofino Inlet and Clayoquot Sound. The serrated peaks above the tree line exhibit a permanence and grandeur no amount of human intervention could diminish.

With salmon returning in greater numbers, the wildlife that inhabits Ucluelet's backcountry will likely endure - naked revellers and all.

To find out more about Rick Telford's backcountry tours, visit http://www.raincoastadventures.com/ or call (250) 726-7625.

For more on the geography, history and biology of Clayoquot Sound, visit: http://www.clayoquot.org/

For more on watershed restoration funded by Forest Renewal B.C., visit: http://www.forestrenewal.bc.ca/download/Watershed_Resotration_Pamphlet.pdf

Ucluelet is three hours' drive from Nanaimo or five hours from Victoria, both destinations accessible from Vancouver by B.C. Ferries. Visit http://www.bcferries.com/ or call 1-888-BCFERRY