A handful of Christmas trees recycled in Oak Bay will live on as salmon habitat in Bowker Creek.
Each year firefighters recycle trees by donation at Firefighters Park to raise funds for the Oak Bay Firefighters Charitable Association to fund bursaries for local high school students.
This year, instead of hitting the chipper some trees were hauled from the park down to nearby Bowker Creek. There, streamkeepers with the Friends of Bowker Creek Society will fasten bundles of trees in pools near the sites where chum eggs will incubate next winter.
When the small fry emerge, the tree bundles will provide natural cover from hungry ducks, otters and other predators, society director Gerald Harris said.
READ ALSO: Low Goldstream chum return a ‘disaster’ for hatchery programs, ecosystem
There are no eggs incubated this winter because of a devastatingly low chum salmon return at Goldstream Park. With 22,000 to 23,000 expected last fall, the return was, at best, one-tenth of the anticipated numbers said Peter McCully, a technical advisor for the volunteer-run Goldstream Hatchery who also works with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
“It’s the worst return I have seen and I have been involved with the Goldstream Hatchery since 1975,” he said.
The low return meant the hatchery team didn’t have the eggs to fertilize and support community salmon return initiatives in waterways such as Bowker Creek – which runs through Saanich, Victoria and Oak Bay. Those eggs would have gone in this month as they did early in 2022 and 2021 when the Friends of Bowker Creek Society received more than 30,000 for its streamed incubator as part of its salmon recovery project.
Instead, the society plans to spend the year building on the creek restoration in preparation for potential 2025 incubation.
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