Atlantic parks get millions for fish-friendly culverts

Parks Canada officials have approved $2 million in funding to make dozens of culverts in five national parks in the Atlantic region passable to fish.

The financing comes after researchers at Nova Scotia's Kejimkujik National Park discovered more than half of the culverts located in fish habitats are partially or totally impassable to fish.

Jillian Barteaux conducted the survey of the 165 culverts in the park earlier this year, and said she was surprised at the results.

"I thought that within a national park, care would have been taken to install culverts in a way that would be friendly to fish and other aquatic animal movements," Barteaux told CBC News. "That hasn't been the case."

Of the 165 culverts, Barteaux said she found 39 located in streams with fish. Roughly 65 per cent of those fish-bearing culverts were too high, uneven or contained too many rocks for fish to safely pass through, she said.

"With the total number of streams and the low number being fish habitat, that kind of indicates that those few are very important," Barteaux said.

Pierre Martel, a resource manager and public safety specialist at Kejimkujik, said a four-year program is now in place to fix culverts in two parks in Newfoundland and Labrador — Terra Nova National Park and Gros Morne National Park — as well as Fundy National Park in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island National Park.

Martel said park staff are creating an inventory and assessment of all the culverts.

"Once that's going to be done, we're going to go through kind of a prioritization exercise, looking at which culverts are the worst, which ones will give us the best habitat gain," he said.

Barteaux said she believes there was no thought given to culverts when they were first installed.

"I think road construction crews kind of figured that if water could get through, so could the fish," she said. "We know now that isn't the case and it's become a real problem."

Interest groups concerned

Parks Canada scientists this week briefed representatives of about a dozen interest groups devoted to protecting and preserving Nova Scotia's rivers and streams.

The culverts in the Sackville River watershed have already been surveyed, said Larry Bell, vice-president of the Sackville Rivers Association.

He said that of more than 500 culverts in the river system, 70 per cent are not functioning for fish.

"We have migratory trout and migratory salmon, so if they can't get to areas that are conducive to breeding, as a case in point, then you're going to lose generations," Bell said.

Bell said the situation is problematic for his community, where there has been a concerted effort to revive migratory fish species.

More than 6,000 fingerlings are released into the Sackville River system through school programs each year.

"You're wasting your stocking efforts, because if they are migratory fish, they have to go to sea in between breeding," Bell said.