Present (14) Barbara Frisken, Chair, Zo Ann Morten, Jan Lander, Richard Boase, Angela Negenman, Graham Knell, Willie Davidson, Janet Dysart, Bob Gelling, Lorne Poersch, Doug Hayman, Dolores Parker, Sharon Porter, Fred Evetts
Regrets: Sandie Hollick-Kenyon, Sharee Dubowits, Karen Munro, Glen Parker, Jordan Manley, Ron den Daas, Brian Comey
Presentation – North American Invasive Species Management Association Conference, October 20-22 (Janet Dysart and Angela Negenman)
Janet and Angela talked about a North American Invasive Species Management Association meeting they attended in Vancouver. Topics covered were: a) Climate Change and rapid adaptation by species, b) the 2011 Japanese Tsunami and items that showed up on our N. American shores with unknown and potentially invasive species on them c) teaching cows to eat Canada Thistle to reduce its spread in fields.
Dr. Len Ritten – Understanding the glyphosate controversy – International Agency for Research on Cancer declared on March 20, 2015 that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen to humans. World Health Organization (WHO) had conflicting sub-organizations – Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) publications all indicated that glyphosate non-carcinogenic. WHO established a working group that determined that glyphosate is non-carcinogenic. Further, Dr. Ritten explained that Risk = Hazard x Exposure. As long as you read and follow the instructions on the bottle, you minimize the risk.
Cynthia Sayre, VanDusen – Ants in our plants – in 2013 VanDusen confirmed fire ant infestations in their upper service yard and 2 public areas. In 2014, they established their fire ant management plan. Treatment trials included diatomaceous earth, borax bait, physical traps, torching, freezing and nematodes. They have had success with Permethrin (Ant out) for small infestations. In 2015, treatment trials continued and included a trial with taped, clear polyethylene sheeting. Polyethylene sheeting trial appeared successful; however, further studies are needed.
Clare O’Brien, Sea to Sky Invasive Council – Utilizing technology in the field – GIS and iPads are being used more and more in the field to track invasive efforts. A lot of the software is available free online (i.e. iPad with GIS-pro, dropbox and Q-GIS). You can design and create forms with points, lines and polygons so you can compare data from year to year. You can collect data in the field and export straight into dropbox. The Sea to Sky Invasive Council has offered to share their forms. (Note: As a part of the City of North Vancouver’s Invasive Plant Management Strategy, we will be looking at developing such an app in the new year)
Action Items
- Contact Fresh Air Learning School for visit to Morten Creek Hatchery
- Thank you to Kevin Bell
- Letter of congratulations to the new Minister of Fisheries
- Speaker requested by Elder College – Karen Munro will do this
- Have Hastings Creek blockage above the metal bridge at Donovan Pond removed
- Streamkeeper adopter needed for Parkside Creek in Deep Cove
- Submit expression of interest to DFO PIP
- Mosquito Creek near William Griffin parking lot – opportunity for benthic monitoring using NSSK methodology to determine if the gravel placement is helping increase productivity.
- McCartney Creek near Ellis St – observation of fry during bridge replacement suggests opportunity for new NSSK membership interest in this important creek- completed: Dolores, Glen and Jordan have started to monitor this creek; see report below.
UPCOMING EVENTS
DEC 3 – Public information session at DNV Hall between 1-4 pm, Seymour Salmonid Society
DEC 16 – Lantern Walk, Hastings Creek
NOV/DEC – Adult Coho Spawner Surveys, Mackay Creek (Lower & Upper), Hastings
NOV/JAN – Morten Creek, egg shocking, fishing, spawning coho
MUNICIPAL REPORTS
City of North Vancouver (Angela Negenman)
Rivers Day at Mosquito Creek Park – Thank you for celebrating Rivers Day with the City of North Vancouver, Evergreen and other community groups! With dedicated community groups, fantastic weather and eager volunteers removing 1450 kg (~55 m3) of English holly and ivy, the event was a huge success. We couldn’t have done it without you!
1621 Hamilton Avenue – The habitat restoration associated with the development at 1621 Hamilton Avenue is complete. The maintenance period for the instream works is 3 years and for the other landscaping associated with the development is 2 years.
Invasive Plant Management Update – In 2011, the City contracted Diamond Head Consulting to conduct an inventory and habitat prescriptions for of all City owned property.
This year, Diamond Head was contracted again to update the City’s 2011 invasive plant inventory. Positive findings include: major reduction in knotweed and giant hogweed; reductions in majority of other invasive plant species; hundreds of trees cleared of climbing English ivy (very few remain); significant amount of area restored to native plant community; few new illegal green waste dump sites found; no new provincially listed noxious weeds or EDRR species found; and drought conditions may reduce abundance of certain species. Ongoing challenges include: knotweed in riparian corridors – restriction on use of glyphosate within 1m of high water mark; and expansion in abundance and distribution of English ivy and English holly.
Staffing update – Ben Cross has left the City and is no longer a part of the ISMP team.
North Vancouver District (Richard Boase)
The DNV continues to have lots of issues to respond to as a result of increased development, in particular construction related spills mainly associated with poor sediment and erosion control practices.
DNV Project Management Office is working with MOTI (BC Govt.) on the design of the Mountain Hwy. interchange project. Design work is continuing. Whichever design elements are part of the final configuration there will be impacts to Keith Ck. The DNV continues to work with MOTI towards affecting design that results in the best long term outcome for Keith Creek.
DNV Council has approved the Grosvenor project in Edgemont Village. This project has contributed a significant deposit toward the construction of the Brookridge Brook connection to Mackay Creek in Murdo Frazer Park. This long awaited project will hopefully get constructed in 2016 or 2017.
The DNV will be implementing a new permitting software program in the new year. Part of the new system will involve a performance based ranking system for inspections that are not part critical building safety. The new system will specifically target inspection like sediment and erosion control and other environmental inspections. Contractors that have consistently good performance in these inspections may not require DNV staff to inspect them where other companies may be required to pass a full inspection. There will be more information on this in the new year.
North Vancouver District, Trail and Habitat Coordinator (Graham Knell)
Mackay Creek Restoration –Echo Ecological (Tara Mathews) and North Shore Wetland Partners, Paul & Fiona. Work continues – planting, removal of invasive plants. Had 50 TD bank employees and kids volunteering Oct 2. Funding from Burnaby Oil spill. Removed truck loads of invasives from Lower Mackay. It was a successful day. As well it opened up a beaver dam. At high tide during the rainy season the other beaver dam flooded the wetlands which could provide wintering area for coho.
At Parkside Creek in Deep Cove there was an invasive plant removal and planting. We removed yellow flags. There is a platform next to the school, and area really is a mess needing TLC and a streamkeeper adopter.
Worked with Patrick Lilley on Mosquito Creek tributary at William Griffin Park removing invasives and a ‘whole lot of planting’.
At Hunter Park on Hastings Creek in September there was a local turnout for an Invasive plant pull and planting which saw a lot of plants planted
Would be great to invite “Pleine Air” School, with children 3 to 6 years of age, to Morten Creek Hatchery to show the kids eggs, fry, and feeding juvenile salmon.
Recommend we send a letter of thanks to Kevin Bell from the North Shore Streamkeepers acknowledging him for his dedication and knowledge shared over the years with the community at Maplewood Flats. He has recently donated 700 plants and trees ($2400 worth) to the North Shore which are being planted all over the District.
FISHERIES
Seymour River (Sharee Dubowits)
- We continue with our efforts to recover fish out of the Lower Seymour; our latest efforts have mostly consisted of tangle netting around pool 88 and angling (please note that the river is closed to recreational fishing and we are angling under Provincial and Federal scientific collection permits).
- We are still far from reaching our broodstock goal, but will continue our efforts as river conditions permit.
- In the interim we have applied for funding to install a floating fence in the Lower River near Maplewood Farm. It would be operational 6 months of the year and utilize Seymour hatchery staff, community volunteers and First Nations partners.
- An information session for the public is being held at DNV Hall on December 3rd between 1-4 pm.
- We have also applied for funding to create a fish passageway through the slide debris that would involve rock-drilling and non-explosives to break down rock pieces in strategic locations and then use high-water events to hydrologically move the debris downstream. The project is estimated to take between 2-5 years.
- An event previously planned for Saturday Nov 28 is now postponed until the spring. In the spring of 2016 this event at the Seymour Estuary in recognition of the restoration work that was conducted there and the project partners and contributors. Event details will be posted on our website seymoursalm.com once finalized with the DNV.
DFO Community Advisor (Sandie Hollick-Kenyon)
Pinks collected from Capilano and Tenderfoot Hatcheries for Burrard Inlet streams. Began collecting chum eggs for Burrard Inlet streams late October.
Adult coho and steelhead collection ongoing on the Seymour River, have a look at their website for all the latest info and media links:
Check out the latest Streamtalk issue:
http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/sep-pmvs/sci-icp/streamtalk/15-02/15-02-en.html
For information relating to the DFO Community Involvement Program funding opportunity, check out the link below. This process has changed from three years ago when paper applications were submitted; now the application is downloaded from the website, completed, signed, scanned and submitted to the website address provided.
Those of you who receive PIP grants from me or wish to in the future, must fill out this form so you are eligible. The applications are reviewed and if the criteria are met, you are placed on a list eligible suppliers.
Please note the deadline for this to be complete is January 7, 2016. I encourage you to look at the website and begin the process to get your application in right away. If you have questions, concerns or problems, this gives us plenty of time to problem solve long before the deadline.
You can access the application form and instruction documents through this link:
https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/tender-notice/PW-15-00702255
Correct email address for submission: DFOtenders-soumissionsMPO@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
MEMBER’S REPORTS
Friends of Hunter Park (Janet Dysart)
A weed pull and planting done using plants raised by Kevin Bell at Maplewood Nursery. We owe him a great big THANK YOU for the many shrubs and plants. Some of the plantings are water logged due to heavy rains.
Hastings Creek has a blockage above the metal bridge above Donovan Pond where the pond inlet is. Could DNV reduce blockage above by culvert and below it to allow more water flow into the pond?
Hastings Creek (Doug Hayman)
I think the big thing is the coho fry and the cutthroat trout survived the long dry summer. Of course the other big news is that the DNV made the ladder at Hoskins safe to check by putting in a new fence. Many thanks to Richard and the staff that did all the work. As of Nov 7 we have not been able to do a spawner survey due to high water. We did do one on the 14th of November with very good results. We saw 8 coho in segment 5—what a great way to start! A few days later Bob Parrott and his assistant Jaimie found a male coho carcass looking like it had partially spawned. Looking like we will do okay with trying to replace this year’s cycle run—all good news—
Mackay Creek (Brian Comey, president N.S.F.& G Club)
On Oct.30th. we got the hatchery up and running and received 39,800 Chum eggs and milt which we mixed up and put in Heath trays. We are expecting to receive eyed Pink Salmon eggs soon to put in our older hatchery. We have done surveys on the creek but had to cancel our last one because the creek has been too muddy and in flood, hopefully we can do one this Tues. Nov 24th.
Upper Mackay Creek (Ron den Daas)
There was an early run of returning coho adults surveyed and filmed in Upper Mckay Creek in early October. Additionally, four Coho workshops are booked and being offered to local elementary school classrooms this December. The Mackay Creek Hatchery will be featured in these workshops hosted by biologist Swanston, Sandie Hollick-Kenyon and myself. I’m also very excited to announce the release of The Mackay Creek Series book – press release attached.
_Mackay Creek Series book press release – Copy
Morten Creek (Doug Hayman)
We have had a busy fall. We now have new ground water for our hatchery. Many thanks to DFO including Sandie, Al Jonsan and Scott along with the DNV and Zo Ann Morten. And many others including Glen, Dolores, Mike who has wanted this for 10 years, Jan, Dan, Arnie, myself, Graham who also helped with supplies and my grandson Matt who carried the sandbags and gravel to the top. Special thanks to Wally who worked hard to put this together. Our water problems, winter and summer should be solved.
On the 2nd of November Sandie brought us about 16,100 chum eggs and on the 4th of November we went to South Alouette to get another 15,000. They are all now ‘put to bed’. With our water temperature pretty well 10 C they should be eyed in about 3 weeks, give or take a few days. The fishermen brought back 1 large male for coho broodstock on Monday. Next fishing day will be Friday. Our quota for Coho this year at Morten is 7000 eggs or 3 females and 6 males.
Mcartney Creek (Glen & Dolores Parker & Jordan Manley)
McCartney Creek Walk October 18, 2015 – Glen Parker, Jordan Manley, Keith Mountjoy (1300 to 1600 hrs)
The October walk counted 117 small salmonids at 18 locations as compared to over 1000 fish at 50 locations in June. As we walked up the river we put GPS way points at pools where we saw fish. We marked 18 pools and counted 111 Coho which were 2 to 3 inches in size (about twice the size of the June Coho) and 7 cutthroat which were from 2 to 6 inches in size. The total fish count was 118 with 4 pools containing 10 or more fish. The total count for these 4 pools was 78 fish or about 75 % of the fish counted. The 3 pools within 100 meters of the mouth had 68 fish and the pool below the Mount Seymour Parkway culvert had 10 fish counted. We saw one dead sculpin (not counted) and smelled rotting fish in the lower river but saw no carcasses. We stopped at the Mt. Seymour Parkway as we were running out of time. The flags on the map are mostly the pools where fish were seen but one flag marks what we thought may have been an obstruction (a waterfall about 6 ft high over 30 ft of river) and another flag marks the spot we found a cell phone and drivers licence. Below are the statistics and elevation plot for the walk. We saw many caddis fly larva in the water and mayflies in the air.
Lynn Creek – 2015 Pink Salmon Survey (Jan Lander)
We started our pink surveys Sep 4 and ended Oct 5. Sep 4 was the earliest date we could do the first survey after a very dry summer with the creeks extremely low and followed a storm with good rain for 5 days.
Results: Sep 4 – 97 live, 1 dead; Sep 8 – 37 live, 2 dead; Sep 15 212 live, 76 dead; Sep 21 46 live, 4 dead (poor fish visibility this day and only 50% of habitat seen); Sep 28 – 26 live, 23 dead and Oct 5 – 2 live spawning, dead. Our total live count this year was 420 compared to other years; 2011 in which we had 15 in total, and 2013 we had 60 live, 31 dead (we started Sep 17 & ended Oct 22) in 2013 about 2 weeks earlier.
Notes about the surveys:
- All the females were 100 % spawned
- There were two main congregations of new fish under Cotton Road Bridge on the East Side—97 on Sep 4 & 212 on Sep 15
- On Sep 15, we found about 50 carcasses up on the hillside beside where the construction of Keith Bridge is going on. Some had claw marks, looked very fresh, some being bloody, brain eaten only and the males were full of milt
- Wildlife seen, seemed like a resident kingfisher with us each week, 3 herons on Sep 15 and a marten scampering amongst the rocks on the west bank.
Graham commented at the meeting that it was nice to see a marten around which usually frequents old growth forests. Nice to see things coming back.
DISCUSSION OF OTHER CREEKS AND CONCERNS
Climate Change Forum 2016 (Janet Dysart)
Janet described plans to develop a community event focused on the affect of climate change on creeks and salmon. An outline of her proposal is attached. She was seeking NSSK support for the project. Funding will need to be obtained to cover costs. Janet made a motion for NSSK support for a Climate Change Forum, 2nd by Zo Ann Morten. Passed.
Mission/Thain Creeks – Delbrook Lands (Fred Evetts)
GEOweb delbrook Markup2
Attached to these minutes is a sketch from the DNV GEOweb of the subject corridor and the potential development adjacent to it. The current property lines of the corridor were established with the original property subdivision in 1907 and I am concerned that they are not appropriate for the creek corridor. Note where the creek crosses the property lines of 675 Windsor.
As discussed the DNV has initiated a community engagement process to decide the future of the Delbrook Community Recreation Centre site, currently referred to as the Delbrook Lands. Although there is opposition, the sale and development of the site seems to be the preferred solution. The owners of the four private properties north west of the corridor (I own one of the properties) have discussed combining our properties with District’s for a coordinated Fcould be relocated based on a top of bank criteria similar to that on the sketch. This would be possible assuming the site developer would purchase the Delbrook Lands/private properties and complete a land exchange with the District. This could be a condition of sale.
I am wondering if this is an opportunity that should be pursued and would appreciate your comments on the above. Also please advise if the North Shore Stream Keepers Society would support this option.
Suggestion – present to Council – works if benefit to riparian area.
Fish Barrier
There is a man-made waterfall in upper MacKay that blocks fish passage further up MacKay. Ron den Daas asked whether it was possible to remove this to extend fish range. Discussion revealed that this would be an expensive project, but it has been listed and noted in the Watershed Plan. ISMP for fish and fish access will be public information soon.
Other Accomplishments
Hastings Creek Walk Video – Zo Ann and her husband have made a video of photos taken during a walk up Hastings Creek. The video can be found on the NSSK Facebook page:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3WkQ7cvYas
BUSINESS
Finance (Karen Munro)
Bank balance as of Nov. 1 is $4573.91. This represents input of $5000 from Coho Festival Society for work on Mosquito Creek plus withdrawal of $4074 for the same project plus $50 for DNV room booking. There are still some outstanding expenses for Mosquito Creek project. There is a cheque to deposit ($150) from a very generous honorarium I received for talking with the Capilano Garden Club in November – about links between gardening and ISMP.
Meeting Room Bookings for 2016
Meetings for 2016 have been confirmed with the DNV for District Hall at 355 West Queens
for – MONDAY, January 18 (this is the only Monday) the rest are the 3rd WEDNESDAY of our meeting months being March 16, May 18, Sep 21, and Nov 16. Should a problem arise for any of these meeting dates with the District, Angela has offered the City of North Vancouver as an option.
NEXT MEETING – MONDAY, January 18 – 7:30 to 9:30 pm, District Hall, 355 West Queens Road, North Vancouver
DFO VIOLATION REPORTING: OBSERVE, RECORD, RECORD (ORR) 604-607-4186
A SPILL OF ANY TYPE Environment Canada – use EMBC number below
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT B.C. – 1-800-663-3456 www.embc.gov.bc.ca/index.htm
CITY OF NV – Operations Division 604-987-7155 (8 am – 4:30 pm Monday to Friday) or After-Hours Emergency Line 604-988-2212 (after 4:30pm, weekends & Holidays).
- President: Barbara Frisken, 604-985-9497, frisken@gmail.com
- Secretary: Jan Lander, #109 – 1155 Ross Road, 778-838-1103, lander@shaw.ca
- Pacific Streamkeepers Federation: Zo Ann Morten 604-986-5059, pskf.ca
- North Shore Streamkeepers Web Site: nssk.ca
- Message board http://disc.yourwebapps.com/Indices/232171.html
- District Web Site: dnv.org/Services/Environment/District Information
- City of North Van:: Angela Negenman 982.3932 anegenman@cnv.org, www.cnv.org
- Community Advisor: Sandie Hollick-Kenyon- 604-666-0743,
- Email: Sandra-Hollick-Keynon@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
- Hastings Creek: Doug Hayman 604-987-0434, pastoys@yahoo.com
- Lower Mackay Creek and North Shore Fish and Game Club incubation facility: Brian Comey, bmcomey@hotmail.com
- Upper Mackay Creek: Ron den Daas, ecosystem@shaw.ca
- Morten Creek: ZoAnn Morten 604-986-5059, zmorten@shaw.ca
- Seymour River: Sharee Dubowits, 604-288-0511; volunteering@seymoursalmon.com or seymoursalmon.com
