Horsefly’s salmon festival, Aug 25 to Sept. 14, celebrated the annual return of an estimated one million to two million spawning sockeye salmon to the Horsefly River watershed. The salmon return annually but 2001 was special because it was one of the peak times, in numbers of salmon, that come every four years.

This year’s festival included a collection of displays from several agencies, including the Horsefly Forest District, the Horsefly Community Development Centre, and the Cariboo Tribal Council who opened the festival with a "Save-the-Salmon Pow Wow."

Others involved included Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Cariboo-Chilcotin Fish Enhancement Society and Riverside Forest Products.

District Forest Service staff created a watershed display – a functioning miniature model of a forested valley, complete with a major stream and two tributaries.

Jamie Moe, a Watershed Restoration Technician, built a model of a Bailey Bridge with a metal girder and concrete bridge deck, complete with safety rails.

The display included a logging cut block at the top of the valley, complete with riparian areas. Downstream, a farm illustrated the importance of safe watering of cattle to prevent pollution of river systems. Vegetation planted along the stream showed how river and stream banks can be stabilized. A model picnic table represented recreational use of forests and toy bighorn sheep up on the mountain, the importance of wildlife and wildlife habitat within the watershed.

The watershed display provided an opportunity to illustrate hydrological and geomorphological processes such as stream evolution and landslides. And the display took on a life of its own: After pumping water through the watercourse for six days, sandbars developed and organic debris caused sediment to accumulate and pools to form.

Festival visitors included about 1,000 schoolchildren from nearby and as far away as Vanderhoof. Sharon MacDonald, a Compliance and Enforcement Supervisor at the Forest District, came up with the idea of creating an obstacle course for children to traverse while waiting for their turn at the watershed display.

On the course, the children pretended to be salmon. Staff taped them together in pairs and strapped a box of pink rocks to each child who chose to be the "female." Obstacles along the course represented rapids, pollution, predators and people fishing. When the children reached the end of the course, they had to empty their boxes of rocks without using their hands.

You can find further information at:
www.horsefly.bc.ca