Monday March 3, 2025
North Shore News —
2024 was a banner year for salmon returning to West Vancouver’s creeks, according to the West Vancouver Streamkeepers Society.
Streamkeeper volunteers and West Vancouver Secondary students spent seven weeks in the fall walking the banks of the Capilano River’s tributaries, counting 2,187 returning chum, coho and chinook salmon. Only on a couple occasions in the organization’s history have they seen more than 2,000, and many years are a lot lower – just 107 in 2019.
The group presented the impressive results to District of West Vancouver council on Feb. 24.
“It is the year with the most amount of coho we’ve ever seen in the last 17 years, the second most chinook and the fifth biggest chum year,” Grade 12 student volunteer Oliver Huang told council. “We are seeing more and more salmon coming in throughout the years and this year was very successful.”