Increasing access and mitigating erosion within the St. Mary’s River watershed

Past work by the SMRA has estimated that there are large portions of the watershed that are inaccessible to salmonids because of greater than 2/3 of all culverts in the lower reaches of St. Mary’s River tributaries are barriers to fish passage. Similar work has identified erosion due to some of these structures is significantly affecting habitat. As such this project has two main objectives, to restore access to long reaches of streams that are currently inaccessible to many fish due to culverts acting as barriers to passage and to mitigate an erosion point due to improper placement of a crossing. Passage issues will be mitigated with a low-cost passage device that has been developed and is currently in the process of being approved. Erosion will be mitigated by applying rip rap to the eroding bank.

Contact: Kris Hunter, 902-522-2099, stmarysriver@ns.sympatico.ca