Volunteers reclaim a rich trout stream in St. John's, NfId.
By Lawrence Jackson
IT IS ODDLY and unexpectedly thrilling to see a trout stream from within, from the fish-eye view. Sunlight slips below the surface and chases itself across the pool in shimmering bands, an underwater aurora. Trout hang in the water amid the sun's rays, motionless for minutes at a time, or they cruise slowly along the bottom, disappearing and reappearing in the golden murk. Occasionally they dart to the surface to snatch at some speck, or nip down to grab some morsel from the bottom. You can see how anglers can catch them with implausible flies: trout gulp things that might be food, and spit out their mistakes.
Gaggles of school children peer through the glass at brown trout, brook trout and silvery arctic char, sliding between angled columns of golden light. The fish ignore the children, but the children are entranced. This is a class visit to the fluvarium at the Newfoundland Freshwater Resources Centre in St. John's, Nfld.
The centre is built on the banks of Nagle's Hill Brook, a tributary of Rennie's River that flows through the northwestern end of the city. In fact, the brook runs against the basement wall of the new, three-storey octagonal building. Display areas, office space and a rotunda occupy the upper two floors. On the lower floor, a transparent wall -- 28 square metres of heavy glass -- separates the brook from the viewing area, the fluvarium. There, people stand and watch the fish go about their slippery business.
Usually, the fish seem languid, as if the first rule of their existence is to save energy. Occasionally they stir themselves at the appearance of food, or dash to threaten another fish encroaching on their space, but mostly they lie still, their slowly waving pectoral fins caressing the water.
The impressive building that houses the fluvarium is the most conspicuous achievement of a band of energetic and well-connected volunteers who, six years ago, took the future of one of St. John's major stream basins in hand. A more subtle achievement is the improved state of the river itself -- less obvious because its green banks and free-flowing current look so natural today. That reclamation, the stream-side trails, and the fluvarium which so enchants children, may be come one of the gems of urban planning and environmental education in Canada.
Rennie's River drains spruce forest and boglands on the city's western perimeter, and flows across town. It pauses in Long Pond beside Memorial University, then plunges through affluent neighbourhoods on its way to the sea. Just before it gets there, the river pauses again to become Quidi Vidi Lake, then drops over a short set of rapids and enters the tiny harbour of Quidi Vidi village, the hidden darling of outport photographers.
Ten years ago, the Quidi Vidi-Rennie's River Development Foundation embarked on an ambitious program of stream enhancement, trail development and public education. They were encouraged by a study showing astonishing levels of trout production in some sections of the river. That 1982 study showed that brown trout achieved densities of more than 50 grams per square metre in productive upper sections of the river -- those a growing city had not polluted. This production, roughly equivalent to a 17-centimetre trout in every square metre, was five times higher than the famous chalk streams of southern England and 25 times higher than many good trout streams in the United States.
"This was terribly exciting," recalls Dr. John Gibson, a federal fisheries scientist and the lead researcher in the study. "We thought we had the most productive trout stream in the world." Since then, he says, others have found a stream in Wisconsin and another in Scandinavia which have comparable densities of trout.
The study was a timely boost to groups of citizens concerned about the river's state: for all its potential, Rennie's River was in trouble. Marshes upstream had been filled and paved over, reducing the sponge action that regulated the river's flow. The gravelly fish-spawning habitat in its lower reaches had been stripped away by flooding. An upper stretch had been redirected into a straight, fast channel, eliminating meanders, variety and character. Unchecked dumping had fouled some sections, and the paths of hikers were eroding banks and trampling vegetation.
A variety of citizens' groups was coming forward with plans for the river system. Everyone favoured a clean-up; some wanted to enhance the trails; some had plans for stream restoration. A far-sighted city parks director, Brian Wood, pulled these groups into a coalition and persuaded them to develop a master plan reconciling their ideas. Out of this grew the foundation.
By 1986 they had prepared an ambitious program for public review. The foundation would build a fishway around the dam on Quidi Vidi Lake to allow sea-run brown trout to get upstream to spawn. It would develop boardwalks and trails around the lake, Long Pond, and along the river. It would run underground wiring to unobtrusive lights along the trail. It would install clusters of boulders in the fast, straight sections of the river to vary stream velocity. It would plant a wide variety of trees, shrubs and grasses to stop erosion, shade the trout, stabilize water temperature and offer food and shelter to birds and insects. It would turn the whole system over to the city when it was finished.
Six years after the master plan was drafted, most of the work it outlined has been done, and the foundation has turned the trail system over to the city.
Patricia Buchanan, executive director of the foundation, salutes the "experienced, multi-disciplinary people" who pulled the plan together and supervised the work. Volunteers on the board included engineers, biologists, architects, municipal planners and bureaucrats. "Between them, because the group is so diverse, they were able to resolve a lot of issues prior to anything being built," she says.
Board chairman John Perlin, by then retired as the province's senior culture official, had initially approached the city for money. He says the mayor offered a one-shot grant of $100,000. "I said, 'If that's all you've got, we should forget it. What we want is $250,000 a year for 10 years, but you won't have to put up a nickel if we don't raise a matching amount.'" It is part of foundation mythology that city council assumed the group would never raise that first $250,000. When it did, Buchanan recalls, "There was a lot of scrambling around and checking our receipts" -- but the city did agree to make the payments.
She acknowledges, however, that the city was already learning that it gets more bang for the buck when it underwrites the work of volunteers. "The city now has an unwritten policy that they won't develop trails; they'll give the money to volunteer groups. That way you get more stewardship, more caring."
Mayor Shannie Duff, a supportive councillor when the original deal was struck, agrees that government gets a good deal and citizens get a sense of ownership when volunteers take on projects like this. "We get calls all the time from people who walk those trails and see something happening they don't like," she says. "This is theirs. They don't want anything to harm it."
Walkers on the trails confirm this. They are proud of the achievement, and their numbers attest to their satisfaction. On any fine day, or in fact any day that isn't downright awful, walkers and joggers stream by. Some homeowners along the river say they preferred it when it was wilder and less public, but most concede that the footpaths and stream enhancement were badly needed.
Neighbourhood resident Moyra Buchan says the foundation has done "a tremendous job of making green spaces accessible to anyone who wants to come here." She immigrated from Scotland in 1969 and found the landscape strange. "It took me a while to get my eye in, in terms of what is beautiful here," she says. "Most of Newfoundland seemed quite barren, but right from the start I found this one of the gentler, welcoming places."
Apart from trail development, the main thrust of the foundation's work has been to reclaim and improve the natural habitat. Like a facelift, this work is meant to be invisible. Rennie's River looks as if it had always looked this good. But a newer project on Kelly's Brook, still raw and ugly as a recent wound, is an in-progress example of the foundation's methodical approach.
Kelly's Brook was one of the total casualties of urban growth. The city had buried it altogether and made it a storm sewer. This hid the old trash dump on its banks, but there was no hiding the effects. By the time the water spilled from a concrete outfall under Portugal Cove Road, it was poisonous to fish. It was low in oxygen and brown with the rust of tins. It was loaded with phosphates and nitrates, generating ugly blooms of algae downstream.
A little more than a year ago, the foundation dug up the lower stretch of Kelly's Brook, exposing it once more to the air and sun. Crews reconstructed the stream bed to allow natural processes to filter out the sediment and phosphates and put oxygen back in. A series of riffles at the upper end now aerates the water. A pond at the lower end allows silt to settle, while a marsh around the edges of the pond will filter unwanted chemicals once the reeds get established.
The whole area is being planted with carefully selected vegetation. As in the earlier work on Rennie's River, "we picked a lot of brains," Buchanan says, to match plants with the habitat requirements. Where foundation work crews seed grass, for example, they use annual varieties, not perennials. The annuals stabilize the ground for a season, then die and make room for more varied plant communities that colonize naturally. At the river's edge, red osier dogwood stabilizes eroding banks and can withstand the abrasion of ice swept down in spring floods. Varieties of willow and birch attract insects and birds. Mature trees will overhang the river, offering shade and moderating water temperature. Insects falling from their leaves will help to feed the fish. In rockier areas, alder takes root easily and grows fast, shading the water. It also fixes nitrogen in the soil, encouraging other plants to move in.
Kelly's Brook responded quickly to the fresh-air treatment. A few months after work began, brown trout began spawning just downstream from the junction of Kelly's Brook with Rennie's River for the first time in years. And black ducks used the pond last winter. But the water still looks foul, and probably will until the marsh is fully established.
A similar reclamation is planned for the lower end of Queen's Brook, another buried tributary not far downstream. Open streams, given half a chance, can cleanse themselves and enhance their surroundings; buried streams are a wasted asset, quickly forgotten. Few but old-timers know Queen's Brook ever existed.
Such restoration of buried tributaries should make more of Rennie's River as productive as the sections Gibson and his colleagues studied 10 years ago. Gibson believes the trout in the river system profit from ideal habitat, a stable flow, enriched nutrients, and an absence of competing species. With no serious competitors, brown trout can exploit all niches of the river, especially the deeper pools preferred by larger fish.
The foundation's big challenge now is at the Freshwater Resources Centre, developing exhibits and educational programs worthy of a $3-million building. In their planning, the board rejected a less elaborate structure staffed by volunteers, in favour of a larger, revenue-generating facility with paid staff. Now they have to generate the revenue to pay for it. The board hopes a coffee shop and gift shop will boost earnings and that exciting, educational new exhibits will draw more visitors.
Meanwhile, another group has been restoring the stream bed and developing trails on the Waterford River, a larger stream that empties into the west end of St. John's harbour. A newer group wants to enhance the Virginia River, which flows into the north side of Quidi Vidi Lake. At least three other groups plan similar work elsewhere in Newfoundland. Organizations in Toronto, lobbying for similar enhancements of the Don River and the Rouge Valley, follow the progress at Rennie's River with interest. The power of a good example ripples outward.
In October, visitors to the fluvarium may observe a change from the normal serenity of life beyond the glass. The trout seem jittery. An air of urgency prevails. A swollen female flips on her side and thrashes her tail, flushing a hollow in the pebbles of the bottom. She settles into it, measuring its depth and resting. A large male glides up beside her, quivering. He darts off to chase intruders, then returns, swims alongside and quivers again. A dozen smaller fish wait downstream. Others lurk in nearby crevices between stones.
After hours or even days of this, the female crosses some unseen threshold in her body chemistry. She droops her abdomen into the nest, or "redd," and spurts a stream of eggs. Instantly the male squirts a cloud of milt to fertilize them, and the smaller fish watching nearby instantly dash up. Some are mature males adding their sperm to the cloud and their genes to the future. Others are juveniles expecting an easy meal. The water is alive with excited fish, most of them gobling eggs. Human onlookers, crowding the glass, applaud the spawning and then gasp at the cannibalism.
The female trout flips on her side and thrashes again, stirring up the gravel to bury and protect her eggs. She may lay more tomorrow and again the day after, working upstream and washing new gravel over the eggs laid before. Surviving fry will emerge in June; adults will eat any they see.
The cannibalism seems counterproductive, but these brown trout must be doing something right. Although Rennie's River flows right through a city, fisheries scientist Dr. John Gibson remains confident the river is by far the most productive trout stream in Canada.
