B.C. drought forces volunteers to rescue salmon from drying streams

Parts of British Columbia have been hit hard by drought this summer.

In Bessette Creek, severe drought conditions recently prompted orders limiting water use in an effort to protect salmon populations from record-low flows.

Temporary protection orders for the Salmon River watershed were also issued at the end of July, rescinded in early August to address increased wildfire risk in the region and then reissued at the end of August.

And those are just the watersheds struggling to the point of government intervention.

Bob Crandall is treasurer of the Cowichan Lake Salmonid Enhancement Society on Vancouver Island.

The society cares for 16 streams connected to Lake Cowichan, and Crandall says they are getting drier each year.

To help, the society does what they call fry salvage — manually rescuing fish from drying rivers and moving them into other waterways.

Ben Lorenson, left, and Aivars Liepa Spence releasing rescued fry from Robertson River into Lake Cowichan. (Submitted by Bob Crandall)

"I believe if the hand of man has caused these difficulties in the ecosystems, then the hand of man should be out there, trying to make an improvement to the problems," said Crandall, who has been doing this for over 16 years.

While B.C. communities are embracing this intervention as one of the few options available to them, scientists warn this has limits and may not be a good long-term solution.

Efforts to move fish

Together with the Ts'uubaa-asatx Nation and a variety of volunteers, Crandall works to gather fish — mainly salmon, trout and char — and carry them somewhere with more water.

But the work is becoming more difficult as the climate changes. The society has been doing fry salvage since 1984, and Crandall is used to seeing a kilometre or two of rivers and streams dry up over the course of a summer.

But that is no longer the case.

"We have noticed that streams are drying up farther upstream," he said.

"Now, it seems as though we're going five, six and seven kilometers upstream — it's just a lot more effort."

Bob Crandall, left, and Ben Lorenson containing fish to move them into pails for transport to Lake Cowichan. (Submitted by Bob Crandall)

The process involves aerators and bubblers to ensure the fish have enough oxygen, as well as nets to transport them. Crandall says carrying 23 kilograms (50 pounds) of water, fish and equipment across cobbled, dry streambeds can be challenging in hot weather.

He was born in a rainbow trout hatchery, so he has been around fish his whole life, and it is important to him that they remain part of the ecosystem rather than simply dying.

"You can rescue up to 100,000 or 150,000 fish during the course of a drought summer," he said.

Importance of fish

The Ts'uubaa-asatx Nation is also a major part of the fry salvage efforts. Its members help relocate the fish and use drones to determine where streams are drying up.

Crandall called the Nation the best partner the Society has ever had and says much of the work would not happen without it

"It takes an army of people to do it," said Aaron Hamilton, the Nation's operations manager.

Hamilton said that it's been challenging lately because there is no longer a normal pattern to follow. The weather can be extremely hot one month, followed suddenly by heavy rain.

Coho salmon fry and cutthroat trout fry gathered at Meade Creek. (Submitted by Bob Crandall)

Michelle Corfield, the lands and resource director and negotiator for Ts'uubaa-asatx, said salmon are a keystone resource for the community. The recovery projects are important to the Nation, she said, and it has also invested its own money in the work.

"Salmon are in our DNA," she said. "And it's up to us to ensure that we have salmon for today and into the future."

Corfield says the Nation takes a full life-cycle approach to salmon conservation, including river restoration and conditions in the oceans, rather than focusing only on individual fish.

Challenges to fry salvage

Similar rescue efforts are facing limits elsewhere as drought and extreme heat intensify.

This year's drought has been especially severe in France, and Jean-Pierre Faure of the Fédération de Pêche du Rhône said relocating fish is no longer working for them.

Faure says that there have been multiple weather events that would normally be expected only once every 50 to 100 years.

"The last one this summer is the worst we have ever had," he said. He added that France's management programs are not prepared for the changing conditions because they rely on the past to plan for the future — an approach he says will no longer work.

"It began very early in the end of May and since that time we have had four or five very big heat waves, reaching temperatures we have never seen before."

La Vauxonne, a small French river, in July 2026. (Fédération de Pêche du Rhône)

River flows were so low that fish were forced to gather in very small volumes of water, intensifying competition for food and shelter and causing more deaths. 

Faure said fish experience physiological stress and lose energy when water temperatures rise above 18 or 19 C. He said juvenile fish are first to be affected because they have fewer energy reserves, while temperatures above 25 C can be fatal within hours.

"This summer, due to the combined effects of climate change and warm water discharge from the nuclear power plant industry, the average temperature of the Rhône River reached 25 degrees for more than two months," said Faure.

"It's still the case, it's still going on. This has never been seen before."

He said that instead of focusing on short-term interventions such as rescue fishing, the priority should be ecosystem restoration and water-use management.

Moving fish can add stress and cause injuries or spread disease, he said. The work can also cost at least 1,000 to 2,000 euros a day for each kilometre covered.

"When you have thousands of kilometres of rivers that are drying, it's not realistic to go and do this at a large scale."

He also said that when 90 per cent of the watershed is dry, there may simply be nowhere to move the fish.