Mull River Restoration Project (Year 3)

Description: In 2024, the Inverness South Anglers Association (ISAA) plans to continue restoration on the Mull River Watershed. The Mull River Watershed is broken up into 4 sub-watershed planning units, the headwaters, upper section, middle section, and lower section. In 2023 ISAA completed restoration work in the Headwaters by installing 81 in-stream structures and will now be moving onto the next sub-watershed, known as the Upper Section.

The Upper Section of the watershed is 51.61 square kilometers in size and has 57,657 square meters of habitat available for restoration activities. Activities will include the installation of digger logs, deflectors, bank logging and tree planting. The Upper Section of the Mull River is broken up into 6 project reach sections. The project reach section where ISAA’s project will take place will be determined in the early spring after an assessment has been completed.

With FCAS funding, ISAA aims to restore an approximate area of 6,400 square meters of length of stream habitat. Aa habitat specialist and the ISAA team create the project design, as well as determine the types of structures and distance between each structure.

ISAA will remove any debris blockages that may be obstructing fish passage. Debris on the sides of the watercourse that is not blocking passage is usually left for fish cover.

ISAA also plans to collect baseline monitoring data by conducting a Habitat Suitability Index Assessment (HSI) at the project site prior to any restoration activities. A total of 10 sites will be surveyed and GPS coordinates will be taken at each sampling transect so that data can be collected and compared for each site again in the future. This survey will be repeated in the same sampling locations each year over a 5 period so ISAA can compare and quantify the impacts of their restoration efforts. ISAA will also be collecting HSI data for year 2/5 on the Mull River headwaters restoration site from 2023. Results will be compared to year 1/5, to determine if the quality of fish habitat has improved.