Monday June 9, 2025
Infotel —
A project to create a new rearing habitat for chinook salmon along the Okanagan River is almost finished.
To create the new wetland for salmon, Osoyoos Indian Band and the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) excavated roughly 7,300 square metres of the Vaseux floodplain — a wetland area upstream of Vaseux Lake by the river — in February and March.
Once complete, the pond will help restore the riparian wetland’s ecological functions in syilx territories.
It’s part of the ONA’s plan to help restore wild salmon back to the nation’s waterways, and to bring the riparian wetland one step closer to its original ecological functions.
“Think of it as a nursery,” explained Kasey Moran, an ecologist and ecosystems project manager with the ONA. “It’s a place where they can get to be big and strong enough to make that journey out to the ocean.”
Roughly 20 kilometres south of Penticton (snpink’tn), the project is expected to have a pipe installed under the floodplain’s dike in August, finally connecting the pond to the Okanagan River.