$1.3 million restoration project to revive Vancouver Island Chinook
Nov 20, 2025|inBlog, Salmon Steward
This story originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2025 edition of Salmon Steward, the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s quarterly print magazine.
A threatened population of Chinook salmon will get a major boost from significant restoration work in the Nootka Sound region of Vancouver Island.
The new project is improving spawning habitat at the outflow area of Muchalat Lake, a remote area about 90 kilometres west of Campbell River, and is a collaborative effort spearheaded by Nootka Sound Watershed Society, Ecofish Research, a Trinity Consultants Canada team, Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation, and the Pacific Salmon Foundation.
Restoration efforts aim to recover the local Chinook population, which was assessed as Threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada in 2020.
This population has suffered from increased flows brought on by heavy logging practices and climate effects that have degraded the Muchalat and Gold River watersheds.
It’s anticipated that improved spawning habitat will significantly increase the number of fish annually spawning at the site to about 1,000 to 2,000 adult Chinook salmon.
“If you come here in the fall, you’ll see massive amounts of fish coming through here,” says Kent O’Neill, President of Nootka Sound Watershed Society. “But spawning isn’t as prolific as it should be because the fish don’t have enough quality habitat.”
To remedy this problem, construction to enhance the critical spawning site in the Muchalat River began in August 2025. The work was completed in early September before returning salmon arrive at the site in October.
Crews from Ecofish Research spent several weeks engineering high-grade spawning gravel and preparing the site to minimize impact on the ecosystem, before placing the gravel into the river with an excavator. The result: 200 metres of high-quality spawning habitat that will encourage fish to spawn and successfully lay their eggs.
A second stage of the project is slated for 2026 to build an additional feature that will help retain water at the site and protect the new spawning channel from the growing impacts of drought and periods of heavy rainfall.
Backing game-changer projects for salmon
The Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) provided $560,000 in funding to support this game-changing effort.
“This project is a big deal,” says Jason Hwang, Chief Program Officer and Vice President, PSF. “It’s a big deal in terms of the money going into it, but it’s also going to be a big deal in terms of the benefits to salmon and to this river.”
Other partners raised an additional $740,000, underscoring the collaborative nature of the project and the universal backing it’s received.
“Everybody thinks this is a great idea,” emphasizes O’Neill. “No one has said, this is too risky, or this isn’t going to do what you think it’s going to do. Everybody has felt that it’s going to have a good outcome. So that’s a really good feeling.”
Like many small communities on B.C.’s coast, Pacific salmon play an integral role in Gold River, a town of 1,300 people nearest to the project site.
“Salmon recovery would be enormous for us because we all depend on salmon,” says Chief Jerry Jack, Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation. “People from all over the world come here to fish, so restoring salmon habitat and protecting our streams is really good news.”
Special thanks to RBC, BigCoast Forest Climate Initiative, and the Pacific Salmon Endowment Fund Society for supporting PSF on this project.
