Wednesday April 13, 2022
Alaska Highway News —
For more than 100 years, a seven-kilometre-long jetty has defined the entrance of the North Arm of the Fraser River. Behind it, rafts of logs floated down from inland forests have long been protected from wind and waves.
But what sheltered shipping and the forestry industry meant annihilation for large swathes of salmon habitat — brackish waters where juvenile fish prepare themselves for the transition from fresh water to a life at sea.
“It’s one of the main structures in the Fraser Estuary that reduces connectivity for salmon,” said Dave Scott, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation and a PhD candidate in the Pacific Salmon Ecology and Conservation Lab at the University of British Columbia.
That is until February 2022, when a collection of environmental groups and the Tsawwassen First Nation punched a 30-metre wide hole in the marine wall.