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April 1, 2015
Reprieve for Kettle River fish
Inside
KEVIN PARNELL
Ajay Weintz,
a GESS student, has taken the initiative to not only clean up the skate park at Swalwell Park, but with other local kids, make suggestions for long-term improvements. ...............................
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Sophie Schroeder has qualified to compete at the US Under-16 Alpine Skiing Championships. ...............................
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Flyers ■ Coopers ■ Home Depot ■ Jysk ■ Rona ■ Shoppers Drug Mart ■ Smart Source ■ Summit Tools
As new fishing regulations get set to go into effect on the Kettle and West Kettle Rivers east of Kelowna, making the two rivers catch-and-release only, a stream rehabilitation project is underway on the Kettle River system as groups, communities and anglers come together to try and revive the fishing in the Kettle River watershed. As of April 1, the West Kettle and Kettle River will become 100 per cent catch-and-release fisheries, meaning the age-old practice of (legally) catching and killing fish in the Kettle system will come to an end, as fisheries biologists move to protect a fishery that has been in decline for at least the past 10 years. “This is the only river-style fishery in the re-
gion and is utilized by avid fly-fishermen,” said Tara White, senior fisheries biologist in the Thompson-Okanagan Region. “The river is managed as a quality fishery. These changes will not only help conserve and protect wild stocks, they will help maintain and enhance angler opportunity on this unique river-style fishery. Hopefully it will also help address compliance concerns associated with it, which has been identified as a significant issue on the system, by simplifying the regulations.” Previously only about 44 kilometres of the 260 km river was catch-andrelease, meaning anglers had to use signs or markers to figure out where those locations were. Now both the Kettle and the West Kettle are entirely catch-and-release
CONTRIBUTED
AS OF April 1, fishing in the Kettle River watershed is under catch-and-release restrictions. The action is to save the trout and endangered speckled dace.
only, a move angling groups had been calling for over the past several years. “I applaud the ministry for changing the regulations,” said Travis Lowe of the Kelowna-based Trout Unlimited chapter. “The
truth is, killing fish in the Kettle was never an environmentally sustainable model. The fishery is on the brink of collapse and it needed these regulation changes. Hopefully they stabilize the fishery for the future and hopefully they can find a
way to police and monitor the river.” ••• Raise your hand if you’ve heard of a fish known as the speckled dace. OK, good. Now stand-up if you have ever caught one. And that my friends would be quite
the fish tale. You see, the speckled dace is a member of the minnow family and only grows to a maximum four or five inches in its short four-year lifespan. Believed to be one of the first fish to re-colonize B.C. waters after the Ice Age, there are healthy populations of the speckled dace in the Western United States but here in Canada it lives in only one river system. That system: The Kettle River and its two main tributaries of the West Kettle and the Granby River. The specked dace is abundant in the US but in Canada it is a much different story. It is an endangered species, listed as an aquatic species at risk by the federal government and protected under the government’s Species At Risk Act (SARA). “The dace are really cool because they are able to live in amongst the rocks,” said fisheries biologist Darryl Arsenault from his Kelowna office. They are an important part of the food chain. It’s all inter-connected. They feed on
KETTLE RIVER A11
Local group commits to raise $ 5million for rail trail KEVIN PARNELL The Okanagan Rail Trail Initiative has committed to raising $5 million towards construction along the CN Rail corridor should the municipalities be able to complete the purchase of the 47 kilometre long rail bed. The rail trail group based in Vernon made the announcement Tuesday morning at the
opening of the yes campaign headquarters in Lake Country and says taxpayers won’t be asked to subsidize construction or maintenance of the trail if it is purchased by the inter-jurisdictional group. Rail trail director Brad Clements says his group will have no problem raising the $5 million from individuals or businesses and added they could leverage that
amount for another $5 million in grants towards developing a transportation corridor. “We’ve always said we are willing to raise money for the construction costs of the trail but there seems to be some uncertainty about where that money is going to come from,” said Clements. “Absolutely, there will be no additionTRAIL FUNDRAISING A3
KEVINPARNELL/LAKE COUNTRY CALENDAR
YES CAMPAIGN office manager Sheila Tansey and manager Duane Thomson check a map of the CN Rail corridor at their office on Main Street.