By Cheryl Jahn

environment

Two local ecosystem projects get funding

Jul 3, 2025 | 3:22 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Cottonwood Island is exactly what it purports to be. An island. And the side channel needs a little work.

“That’s a project that we’ve been working on for quite a few years now, explains Dustin Snyder with the Spruce City Wildlife Federation. “So, a few years ago, we did a bit of a habitat assessment just on our own and realized the habitat in the Cottonwood Island side channel is not ideal for fish. So, at that time, we reached out to the Pacific Salmon Foundation, and they gave us a few dollars to study it. We spent about three years doing minnow trapping habitat assessments. Even in the cold of winter, we’re drilling through the ice, looking for fish and that sort of thing.”

The Spruce City Wildlife Association is one of nine organizations to receive funding from the College of New Caledonia Research Forest Society’s legacy funding. As did the Prince George Airport, which will use funds to conserve a portion of marshland behind the terminal.

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“So this funding will go towards things like installing a live stream monitor here in the terminal so that the travelling public may view this monitor,” explains Sabrina Angus, who was Interim President & CEO of the Prince George Airport Authority (PGAA) at the time. “Travellers will see what’s happening out there, see the wildlife, have a look at the plants in the area, and it will just be a really great terminal enhancement trying to give people that sense of place.”

Meanwhile, speaking of waterways, the Spruce City Wildlife Association has been planning this side channel project for about three years.

“The idea is that we will dig it out, reconstruct it. Again, we couldn’t be doing that without the support of CNC. The Pacific Salmon Commission has come on board. Rio Tinto has come on board, and the Lheidli T’enneh has jumped on board to help as well. So this has really become kind of something that we started on our own and has become a collaborative effort with a whole bunch of folks coming on board.”

Snyder says Prince George residents will notice the work right away.

“It will be a very machine-intensive project. So we will have machinery down there, will be digging in the side channel and that sort of thing, and then restoring it on the sides with rip wrap and planting and that sort of thing. There will be logs placed and willows planted and that sort of thing to kind of restore it to more of a functioning side channel instead of the slough that it’s kind of become.”

The Legacy Fund is providing a total of $451,000 dollars in ecosystem restoration projects.