Trading Wilderness for Power at Ventego Creek
UPDATE: November 2010. We were succussful in our ask to get Selkirk Power to stop translocating trout from Cupola into Ventego Creeks. Thank you! But the battle is not over yet, these run of river projects continue to threaten wildlife and wilderness values in pristine watersheds.
For more information on what happened, please continue reading.
As of August, 2010, there are 24 creeks and rivers in the backcountry north of Golden that have proposals for micro-hydro, independent power projects (IPPs).
A Nelson-based private power development company — Selkirk Power Company Limited — is proposing to develop eight of these 24 power projects.
Two of Selkirk Power’s proposals have made it further along than any other IPP slated to occur in the Kootenay region. These two projects are set to occur on Ventego and Cupola creeks, adjacent drainages located just outside Glacier National Park.
Selkirk Power’s proposed projects on Ventego and Cupola creeks are threatening native stocks of at-risk fish species. Fish inventory work conducted by biologists hired by Selkirk Power has shown there are Brook and Bull Trout in lower Ventego, and Bull Trout in Cupola Creek. More important, there is also a population of rare, blue-listed west-slope cutthroat trout (WCT) in a section of Cupola that Selkirk Power hopes to divert.
Moving predator fish where they don’t belong: NOT a good solution
Selkirk Power needed to mitigate for the impacts that its Cupola Creek diversion would have on the rare west-slope cutthroat trout (WCT). So, in the fall of 2009, Selkirk Power’s contracted biologists removed 50 individual WCT from Cupola and put them into Ventego — in a unique wetland area that naturally does not have predatory fish.
The company has yet to determine whether the translocation was successful or not. Still, it plans to apply for another permit to translocate a further 200 trout from Cupola into the Ventego wetlands.
It is worth noting that the Ventego wetlands, indeed the entire drainage of Ventego, is classified as pristine: there are no roads and there has been no industry in this watershed.
Fish and frogs: disturbing an ancient ecological balance
The introduction of a predatory trout species into the Ventego wetlands will have a profoundly negative impact on its amphibian population. Predatory fish EAT amphibians.
There are seven species of amphibian that breed in the Columbia Forest District, including frogs, toads and a species of salamander. According to a 1-day inventory conducted for Selkirk Power by team of Kootenay biologists, four of these species have the potential to occur in the wetlands of Ventego.
Three of these amphibian species are expected to become fish food from high predation rates expected from predatory WCT. Why? Because there were NO predatory fish in Ventego before Selkirk Power put them there. An ancient ecosystem, in balance, is now compromised.
Fish bring deadly fungus that has killed at least 1/3 of amphibians worldwide
Perhaps an even greater danger than the disruption of the predator/prey dynamic is the great potential that the translocation will introduce an amphibian-killing fungus into the Ventego wetland ecosystem.
During a pre-translocation inventory, this fungus (known as chytrid), was detected in Cupola frogs (where the fish were coming from) but was NOT present in the upper Ventego frog population. This fungus is responsible for the massive die-offs in amphibian populations worldwide. It is nothing to take lightly.
There is a strong possibility that the fish from Cupola carried the deadly fungus, despite an attempted disinfection process that was undertaken.
Unfortunately, this disinfection process may not remove the risk of transmitting the fungus, even though the risk was deemed to be “acceptably low.”
Why, oh why?
The fish translocation project is viewed by the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) as an option for compensation for fish habitat impacts that may result from the hydro development project on Cupola Creek — should it be approved.
The Provincial Ministry of Environment (MOE) is also looking at this as a potentially viable option for future use in west slope cutthroat trout recovery planning and management.
Why is it that humans have such a hard time leaving wild places as they are?
Are these risks acceptable to us?
Imagine what the cumulative environmental impacts would look like if all the construction activities — blasting, road building, extensive transmission line development and water diversion of aquatic habitats — were approved?
Imagine if each project had as many, or more, dire environmental issues as Ventego and Cupola — what then, will the cumulative impacts be of developing up to 24 projects in the region north of Golden? Or hundreds of IPP projects in the province?
The impacts would be incalculable and would disturb the ecological web of life.
A true erosion of wild spaces — and for what?
Many of the creeks proposed for IPP development near Golden lie in a region that was once a massive wilderness: Hamber Provincial Park.
Originally created in 1941, Hamber was over 1 million hectares in size and served to protect the land and its animals.
At the time, it was reported by Parks that, “The mountain caribou is probably the most abundant game animal of the higher elevations…”
In 1961 however, this park was radically reduced in size and is now approximately 25,000 hectares. Reducing the park boundary happened so that pending Columbia River hydroelectric developments — such as the Mica Dam — could go forward, and so that large sections of commercial forest land could be accessed.
In the case of Ventego Creek, perhaps we should be reclaiming it as part of Hamber Provincial Park while it’s still a pristine drainage.
When pristine drainages are newly dedicated to industrialization, they are lost to wildlife and to future generations as wild areas forever.
We must protect drainages that are still pristine and that still hold high biodiversity values, drainages such as the Wood River and Ventego Creek.
Please join us in asking the provincial government to stop translocating at-risk species into areas where they do not occur naturally.
Ask them to stop experimenting with pristine ecosystems by turning at-risk species in one drainage into invaders in another.
Keep your comments polite and to the point.
Thank you… for the wild,
The Wildsight team.
