Nicola Naturalized Flows and Pine Beetle Risk Assessment

Year 2008
Proponent BC Ministry of Environment - Thompson Region
Project type Habitat
FSWP funding source Fraser Salmon and Watersheds Program
Grant amount $30 000
Total project value $40 000
Other project funders

Pacific Salmon Commission
Habitat Conservation Trust Fund

ID number 08 HPR LR91

Location: Thompson, Nicola Watershed

Project Summary

This project is part of a larger initiative that includes the Nicola Water Use Management Plan including First Nations and funding through the Pacific Salmon Commission and Habitat Conservation Trust Fund to develop instream flow requirements (IFR’s) to sustain healthy aquatic ecosystems for salmon, trout and char throughout the Nicola Basin. Salmon in the Nicola watershed include COSEWIC listed Coho and key indicator Chinook stocks for the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Thompson steelhead are considered threatened and bull trout are blue-listed provincially. The first step for IFR’s relies on using the natural hydrograph in numerous sub-basins of the Nicola and the B.C. Instream Flow Methodology: http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/BMP/instreamflow_wkgdrft.html
Two factors have combined to create a significant obstacle to developing defensible, science based instream flows requirements. First, over one hundred years of water licensing for off-stream uses confuses years of data and analysis that must rely on multi-year, naturalized hydrograph as the “benchmark” for most major sub-basins in the Nicola watershed.

Second, the mountain pine beetle epidemic has hit the southern interior hard and has driven a watershed forest harvesting regime that is unprecedented in scope, further complicating the understanding of what was and will be “natural” for instream flow.



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