Hundreds of thousands of kokanee salmon eggs released in Kootenay Lake

Hundreds of thousands of kokanee salmon eggs were released in a creek near the Kootenay town of Creston, B.C., on Friday as part of a program to restore dwindling populations in Kootenay Lake. 

Eggs were placed in cylindrical tubes with holes in them and buried under the gravel in Summit Creek in the hope that they will hatch and make their way to Kootenay Lake in the spring. 

"This is a huge moment for our valley and a moment that I hope we remember," Creston Mayor Arnold DeBoon told the crowd gathered creekside on Friday. "And in three years we will see red fish again in these creeks."

A team of biologists collected eggs from spawning kokanee in several other locations across the region, including the Columbia River near Fairmount, Hill Creek near Nakusp, and Tyee Lake.

The eggs were sent to the Kootenay Trout Hatchery, which is run by the Freshwater Fisheries Society, to incubate.

Project manager Robyn Usher said more than two million eggs were collected and about 280,000 eggs were released Friday. 

The survival rate of kokanee salmon in Kootenay Lake has been an ongoing concern for years, according to the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C., which says anywhere from 500,000 to one million spawners were once expected to return to streams to deposit their eggs each year.

Over the last eight years, the averages of spawning kokanee — a subspecies of sockeye salmon that live in freshwater — have been more like 35,000, the society says, with predation one of the main factors. 

The project is being carried out by the Creston Valley Rod & Gun Club in partnership with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, and has been possible thanks in part to a grant from the province's Destination Development Fund. 

The Lower Kootenay Band has also given its support. 

"I hope in the future that more of us can keep coming out here and be able to watch the kokanee run again, see them coming in so the water is so thick with kokanee that you can walk across them," Robin Louie, councillor with the Lower Kootenay Band, said Friday.