The restoration of Gill Bar on the Fraser River near Chilliwack will start with an Indigenous-led assessment of the habitat destruction from heavy recreational use.
Funding of $1.5 million is coming for Gill Bar from federal and provincial governments through the B.C. Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund, according to a news release Friday (Dec. 15).
The project ‘Xá:y Syí:ts’emílep: Gill Bar Restoration and Management Plan’ is being undertaken by the Stó:lo Service Agency, to implement “an Indigenous-led approach” to researching, and conserving the rich habitat of the area known as Gill Bar.
The area on the river’s edge has been a hugely popular outdoor destination in Chilliwack to off-road, camp, hunt agates, fish, dirt bike, or to have a campfire.
But over the years the abuse by squatters and garbage-dumpers causing habitat degradation at Gill Bar became too much.
Vehicle access to the sensitive riparian zone was shut down last summer after local river stewards called foul on the constant destruction being wrought on the long-standing, multi-user recreational area.
RELATED: First a gate went up in 2019
The project team of the S’ólh Téméxw Stewardship Alliance will assess Gill Bar for habitat destruction related to the impacts of long-term, heavy recreational use and to conduct an inventory of the habitats and species use.
“These findings will then feed into an in-river island management plan and associated restoration works.”
RELATED: Videos of trucks shredding habitat of Gill Bar
The move to finally shut down access at Gill came after they installed a gate initially in 2019 after ousting squatters and trying to prevent the endless garbage dumping. The gate was repeatedly broken, and signage about habitat destruction was also destroyed.
Moves by DFO to protect valuable salmon and sturgeon habitat were on the heels of several years of attempts by local stewardship partners to try to put a halt to the degradation of Gill Bar, from endless pallet fires leaving pounds of nails in the sand, other environmental abuse like splashing through sensitive back channels in a convoy of trucks.
Officials then blocked vehicle access completely in July 2022. Federal DFO officials had been granted the authority to close Gill Bar by the province, and it was done conjunction with the City of Chilliwack, Ministry of Forests, and Ministry of Lands, Water and Resource Stewardship officials.
The new funding announcement of $1,513,649 will see the Gill Bar restoration project underway from May 2023 to March 2026.
