Streamkeepers brace for funding cuts

They have plans to do more but they might have to do it with less.

The Hoy Scott Watershed Society is expecting a 15 percent overall budget reduction as Fisheries and Oceans Canada looks to cut spending.

The society’s president and vice-president were in Coquitlam council chambers Monday to talk about the work they do and their ambitions going forward.

“Not a lot of people realize that we have salmon bearing streams within our city,” president Kyle Uno told council. “So we do a lot of public education and awareness.”

To meet that need, the non-profit society has plans for an expanded education centre and bigger facilities for chum.

Built in the late-1990s, the current hatchery building is “nearing the end of its life cycle,” Uno explained.

There are currently no plan to replace the city-owned property, explained Coquitlam’s general manager of facilities Lanny Englund.

“It’s in the system like all of our buildings,” he said. “Full building replacement is something that there isn’t a plan for at the moment.”

While it’s early in the process, Coun. Dennis Marsden said staff should “start to envision” how council could support a replacement building.

To that end, the hatchery recently garnered charitable status, which should open up a new range of grants, Uno said.

Besides a possible funding shortfall, the society has also grappled with pollution. Seven spills, including oil and chlorine discharges, showed up in the waterway in 2025.

However, the group’s restoration work has been successful.

In 2024, the society went about removing a collapsing concrete structure that led from a pond to the creek and made it difficult for adult salmon to traverse.

One year after grading and sloping a creek bed in the area, chum returned to spawn in the channel, reported hatchery manager Tyler Storgaard.

“It shows the resilience of the salmon that we have in our watershed,” he said.

The society recently released 42,500 chum fry into Hoy Creek and has plans to release around 14,500 coho fry in June, Uno said.

To help foster the next generation of streamkeepers, the society also frequently hosts schools and daycares and recently gave salmon eggs to different classrooms who returned in the spring to release the salmon fry into the creek.