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Anglers pack Balfour Hall looking for answers to Kootenay Lake fish decline

Officials announced a proposed ban on fishing for Kokanee to 300 people at a meeting this week.
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The provincial government proposes to increase the rainbow trout catch quota from 2 to 4 per day and ban fishing for Kokanee entirely starting in April to balance predator-prey ratios. The final decision will be made in the next few weeks by the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Branch.

There may be many unanswered questions about the declining fish stocks in Kootenay Lake, but one thing is certain: residents are alarmed about it. About 300 people packed the Balfour Hall on Monday night to discuss the problem with staff from the Ministry  of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resources.

The meeting followed a call for government action by a number of groups including the British Columbia Wildlife Federation and the West Arm Outdoors Club.

The ministry staff at the Balfour meeting seemed a bit taken aback by the large turnout, cautioning people at the beginning of the meeting to be respectful with their questions, apparently fearing a verbal attack. But they needn't have worried. The dozens of polite questions reflected a roomful of knowledgeable, thoughtful, experienced residents committed to the lake and the fish.

The questions were about predator-prey relationships, spawning numbers, habitat protection and restoration, research gaps, community involvement, nutrient restoration, the dollar value of the fishery, water temperatures, climate change, re-stocking, the IH1 virus, the role of the federal government, the effects of the dams, funding for restoration, and more.

There were many appeals for more information, community involvement, government transparency, and more meetings like this one.

“People do have the capacity to understand technical decisions,” said Josh Smienk, who organized the meeting for the Balfour and District Business and Historical Association. “People want to know why decisions are made. It is so personal for them. It is their own backyard.

“The people were not just from around here. There were people from Trail, Creston, the north end of the lake. The mayor of Kaslo and the directors from Areas A and D were here. The turnout shows how important this issue is to the people who live around this lake.”

The government officials, headed by biologist Jeff Burrows, responded to questions with charts, graphs, and historical details. They often admitted they didn't know the answers to some of the hard questions.

They said they do not know the reason for the fish population declines but think it is probably related to predator-prey relationships and they are going to set up an expert panel to investigate.

But one concrete change is proposed.

Starting in April the ministry expects to lower the catch quota for kokanee from 15 to zero per day, and increase the quota for rainbow trout from two to four per day, to balance predator-prey ratios.

Burrows said these changes have the assent of the Kootenay fish regulations advisory committee, a local stakeholder group.

The essence of the problem seems to be the balance between predator (Gerrard trout) and prey (kokanee). The current situation is characterized by a shortage of older kokanee, an average abundance of kokanee fry, Gerrard trout abundance declining from a recent record high, but a reduction in their size, and a high abundance of young Gerrards. The result seems to be a reduction in prey because of too many predators, and a reduction in the size, condition, and abundance of predators because they don't have enough to eat.

Into that mix, add zooplankton, the tiny aquatic animals that are the main diet of the kokanee. The abundance of zooplankton is dependent on the amount of nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) that is added to the lake each year by the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program.

Burrows said the new expert team will be meeting in March and will consist of fisheries experts from inside and outside of government. He said the group has a budget for this fiscal year, but beyond that, funding is unknown.

He said the group will not be doing research but that it will be “an office exercise” that will look at data over many decades and look for possible gaps. He said that might lead to new studies in the future.

Smienk says the community will be watching closely.

“We have asked them to come back to us with their decision and the science behind it,” he said.  We are not sitting back letting them make decisions for us. We want to understand their decisions and have input into them.”



Bill Metcalfe

About the Author: Bill Metcalfe

I have lived in Nelson since 1994 and worked as a reporter at the Nelson Star since 2015.
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