Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Restoration Project
A dream of BC naturalist and author Roderick Haig-Brown to restore a creek that runs through his property is coming true almost 25 years after his death.
The Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Restoration Project in Campbell River reflects a growing sense in the Georgia Basin that the response to the pressures of increasing population can only be found by protecting the region's ecosystems. This approach is the key to new partnership-based strategies such as Georgia Basin Ecosystem Initiative, recently launched by Environment Canada and BC Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks.
Haig-Brown's home on the banks of the Campbell River on Vancouver Island is an idyllic rural farmstead. In a book-lined study that still looks over fields and gardens, the prolific author wrote many of his books arguing for the protection of BC's natural streams and forests. At one time, Kingfisher Creek ran through the property, bearing coho salmon to their spawning areas just above Haig-Brown's farm.
Kingfisher Creek Buried
But since logging operations began in the area in 1908, the stream had been diverted into culverts. By 1970, most of the lower creek was underground. Stormwater draining from upland developments created an annual flooding problem as the water exceeded the capacity of the culverts. Yet, in spite of the obstacles, coho still swam up the creek each year, past hundreds of metres of culverts, to find the gravelly forest streams where they could spawn.
As urban development from the city of Campbell River spread toward Haig-Brown's property in the early 1970s, he told his friend and neighbour Van Egan that he would like to reverse the years of development and restore the creek to its original path. Haig-Brown was unable to act on the idea before his death in 1976, but Egan remembered the notion.
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In 1984, Haig-Brown's family and friends succeeded in creating a new channel through land dedicated as the Haig-Brown Heritage Properties and in diverting the smaller, west branch of Kingfisher Creek out of the culvert and into the new creek bed. Alder trees seeded the creek banks, and today tall trees shade the coho that have adopted the creek, although its water flow is uncertain, and it sometimes dries up in summer months. Fifty-five pairs of spawning coho were counted in Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek this year.
The latest phase of the restoration project, to restore the east branch of the creek, moved into action when Ken Enns, who lives nearby, found that plans to widen and upgrade the Vancouver Island Highway would cut across the creek above the restoration project and further damage its drainage. The highway project also ended plans for local businessman Barrie Brown to expand a golf course on 250 acres he owned in the watershed. Looking for alternative developments, he was considering a 750-unit housing project that would occupy approximately 60 per cent of the watershed.
Working Together In The Georgia Basin
Enns invited all the groups with an interest in the future of the watershed to meet to discuss alternatives. In June 1996, they formed a committee that included members of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, BC's Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, the municipal District of Campbell River, the Vancouver Island Highways Project, the Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Society and the developer.
Together the committee developed a plan that would see the completion of Roderick Haig-Brown's dream as well as creating benefits for everyone involved. The watershed restoration will re-create a salmon channel where coho can spawn and grow through their early life stages. In addition, it will restore wetland environment that acts as wildlife habitat and provides storm water drainage and management for municipal and highway departments. The plan could become a model for housing development that creates a beautiful natural amenity for residents of a new community.
Sharing the benefits also allowed the cost to be shared among government, business and private donors. Each allocated funds that they would have had to spend to control drainage or support fishery and wildlife habitat. The complex project involves rebuilding almost a kilometre of creek that has been buried in culverts for 40 or more years, diverting some of the stream flow through the existing wetland, and creating streamside habitats that will encourage fish to repopulate the creek. It will be one of the first projects in the Georgia Basin to "daylight" a buried creek, and it can provide a model for other communities that want to restore natural habitat that has been overtaken by development. (See Map: Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek: Planned Restoration)
It also meets important practical needs: upland development already exceeds the capacity of the areas' stormwater system, resulting in floods when rain washes down from developed areas. The planned housing development could increase the runoff even more if the water is not diverted into the creek and holding ponds where it can drain to the groundwater.
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The housing development in the upper watershed will also reflect the protection of the creek. It will lace through the property in green spaces that residents can enjoy along walkways and biking paths. Up to 30 per cent of the land will ultimately be donated to a land trust to preserve the wildlife corridors and natural creek habitat.
Although the project was a complex engineering and construction task, Kevin Brown, Project Co-ordinator for the Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Society, says that it represents much more than that: "It was a co-operative plan that brought everyone together - the District of Campbell River engineering department, the Ministry of Highways, wetland and riparian interests, as well as the developer." (Credit: Maps and photos in this article by Kevin Brown.)
The result was a net gain for everyone, and much more fish habitat. The process can provide a model for other large land developments. It is already being used in another Campbell River project, and other developers have enquired to find out how it might work in their areas.
Developer Barrie Brown says that it is much less costly than developing plans, then redrawing them several times when review agencies send in their comments. City Engineer Ron Neufeld says that although it takes more meeting time, the collaborative process has been beneficial, and will likely be quicker in the future.
Kevin Brown points out that the project received wide public support as well. Not only did the project receive donations from government departments such as Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the BC Ministry of Highways and the District of Campbell River, but local businesses and individuals supported it with donations, discounts and free office space.
Although construction of the housing project has been delayed by BC's economic conditions, Barrie Brown is confident that the project will be a success. "The project benefits everyone," he says. "We are adding green space that contributes to the value of the development, the improved drainage helps the community, there is more space for recreation and there is an increase in coho."
Kevin Brown says the revitalized stream could support as many as 200 pairs of coho in the future. "Restoring and preserving natural fish habitat, rather than relying on fish hatcheries to make up for lost habitat, is a solution that that Roderick Haig-Brown would have championed," he says.
For more information on the Georgia Basin Ecosystem Initiative (GBEI) action plans and how people are working together for the Georgia Basin, call the Communications Coordinator at (604) 713-9524.
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After over a year of planning, work began in the summer of 1998 on about 950 metres of the original east branch channel. A large excavator worked its way up the stream's original channel, cutting the route to a precise level. A smaller mini-excavator followed, grading the banks and building the stream channel to specifications set by hydraulic engineers and fisheries habitat experts. Four labourers followed with shovels, picks and wheelbarrows, working with the machine operators to form the gravel and clay and place the habitat features that salmon require.
Since the creek runs through relatively flat wetland areas, it had to be built precisely so it would flow past the wetlands and down to its mouth in Campbell River. Workers also had to take care to avoid damaging trees and undergrowth along the sides of the stream, to ensure the stream would remain shaded and cool when the water starts to run.
Naturalists showed the workers how to create the kind of aquatic habitat salmon fry need, with pools and riffles, rocks, logs and other woody debris placed into the creek bed. At the end of the first summer of construction, the bed was seeded and left to vegetate and settle so that when it is reconnected, the flow of water will not erode all the work that went into it. Native vegetation will soon take over the grass mixture that will hold the soil in place over the winter.
With financial support from Environment Canada and other funders, the second phase of the project will begin in June 1999, when streambed work will not threaten the fish in the existing creek. This year, work will include several key developments: connecting the new west branch with the restored east branch; expanding a culvert under a road below the creek junction; diverting the water flow into the new creek bed; and deepening the lowest stretch of the creek where it joins Campbell River to create a new back channel that will attract spawning salmon.
Future work will include diverting more of the stream flow through the wetland area and creating ponds. Not only will the ponds protect wetlands from drying out in summer months, but they will retain storm water that flows from developed areas, allowing it to recharge the groundwater.
