The Streamkeepers
The Still Creek Streamkeepers are a group of neighbours and citizen scientists who help take care of Still Creek and Renfrew Ravine, with the support of Still Moon Arts Society. We monitor the health of Still Creek and run activities that help improve water quality and ecosystem health. This includes water quality testing, ravine cleaning, garbage removal, invertebrate sampling, removing invasive species, and replanting with native plants. Everyone is welcome to join us at a monthly meeting or stewardship event.
If you are interested in joining the Streamkeepers email list contact us at streamkeepers@stillmoonarts.ca
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Rehabilitating Salmon
In 2012, chum salmon began to spawn in the Vancouver portion of Still Creek for the first time in nearly eight decades. Salmon spawned behind the Canadian Tire on Grandview Highway in late October/early November 5 years in a row from 2012 to 2016. In 2017 and 2018, when the chum salmon runs were small the salmon were seen spawning in the Burnaby portion of Still Creek but did not swim through the culvert under Boundary Road into Vancouver. We are hoping the returns will again be larger and that the habitat in Still Creek will be suitable for successful spawning. This highlights the need to continue working to restore the stream and keep it healthy all year long.
The Impact of Road Salt on Salmon
The Still Creek Streamkeepers group is one of 13 community partners contributing to research that studies the Impact of Road Salt on Pacific Salmon. Spearheaded by UBC Zoology Professor Chris Wood and Alan James of the Stoney Creek Environmental Committee, the study aims to understand the effect of road salt on juvenile salmon populations across the lower mainland over the next 5 years.
The Still Creek Streamkeeper group will be completing Benthic Invertebrate Sampling, Juvenile Fish Trapping, and Salmon Spawner Surveys to contribute to the study. In addition, they will be completing data downloads from three temperature data loggers and two conductivity data loggers installed in Still Creek.
Data loggers were provided by project partner, Fisheries and Oceans Canada – Pacific Science Enterprise Centre’s Community Engagement Coordinator, Nikki Kroetsch. She is the leader of the CoSMo (Community Stream Monitoring Program) that has initiated the installation of various data loggers across streams in the lower mainland. Here is the link to the open-access data set from this project.
The news of this study has gone nationwide as has been shared by 72 local news outlets!
Project Funders & Supporters
