‍ZIYA TONG: It’s a drizzly evening in spring 2018, in a dense forest in western Canada. This is Katzie First Nation territory—a beautiful landscape filled with mountains, waterfalls, hot springs, and thriving wildlife. At the centre is the Pitt River, a spawning ground for all five species of Pacific salmon. This is also one of the rainiest places in North America, and today is no exception. The sun has barely come out for months. But this isn’t the usual never-ending light rainfall. This is a major storm. Normally, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. The watershed has been home to the forestry industry for decades, and they’ve prepared for big storms. Midway down the mountainside, a service road comes equipped with a culvert—a large pipe designed to channel water past the road and underground. But suddenly, the earth begins to rumble. The storm is so strong that it has sent rocks and wood crashing down the slope. It’s a landslide. The debris tumbles through the forest and down onto the road—where it blocks the culvert and continues to roll down the mountain. Straight into the pristine waters of a spawning creek—where it puts an already threatened salmon population in grave danger.

‍THEME UP 

ZIYA TONG: I’m Ziya Tong, a science broadcaster and explorer of our beautiful planet. I’ve spent my career bringing nature to people and people to nature. On this podcast, we’re meeting the incredible species that call Canada home—and the people working to protect them. From WWF-Canada, you’re listening to This Is Wild.

THEME RESOLVE

ZIYA TONG: You might not have even heard of the Upper Pitt River watershed, but it’s a special place. The river starts way up in the glaciers of the Coast Mountains and winds its way down to a small city just outside of Vancouver, BC, called Pitt Meadows. The waters of the river are bright blue, and it’s surrounded by BC’s glorious greenery. It’s a beautiful place for the salmon to call home. The salmon themselves are pretty amazing, too. From the moment they’re born, they persevere in a way that’s rarely seen anywhere else in nature.

ELISE PULLAR: They are so resilient and able to survive in so many different environments with so many different threats. They have so many tools that they can access and they are really smart creatures.

ZIYA TONG: This is Elise Pullar. She works with WWF-Canada to help create and sustain resilient habitats—including those of Pacific salmon. Elise has always been fascinated by salmon, especially their unique life cycle. It all starts in a freshwater stream, where a mother salmon buries her eggs in gravel to keep them safe.

ELISE PULLAR: And these salmon eggs, when they hatch into small little salmon in the streams, they are able to kind of start to mature in the fresh water. So they seek out food sources like insects. And they also try to find deep pools in the stream bed, in the river, to be able to protect themselves from predators.

ZIYA TONG: After spending some time in their spawning streams, the baby salmon are ready to take on a new challenge. They let the current carry them downstream towards the ocean. But first, they need to make a pit stop in an area with a mix of fresh- and saltwater, known as “brackish water.”

ELISE PULLAR: For salmon to breathe and survive in both freshwater and saltwater is almost as if humans could breathe on planet Earth and on planet Mars, and so they'll have to adapt their organs and their bodies to be able to breathe and survive in these two very different environments.

ZIYA TONG: From there, they finally make their way into the wild, wonderful world of the ocean. There are five main species of Pacific salmon in North America—chinook, coho, pink, chum, and sockeye—and all of them have different colours, shapes, and sizes. But they do all have one thing in common…they almost always come home.

ELISE PULLAR: And it's always been fascinating. Like, how on earth do they find their way back to the stream that they were born? As humans we use GPS or a map and compass to find our way back to where we once were. But salmon obviously don't have access to those things—or hands to use them—so they actually rely on Earth's magnetic field and their excellent sense of smell to be able to find their way back to their home river and then their home stream.

ZIYA TONG: It’s incredible. Salmon can tune into the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate home. They also follow the position of the sun, and their super sensitive sense of smell. But just because the salmon basically have a superpower doesn’t mean this trek is easy. They fight furiously against the current. They travel 50 kilometres a day and can jump up to six feet in the air. They swim up waterfalls, leaping out of the rushing water again and again until they reach the top. Then they have to dodge predators like bears and wolves. All to get back to the place where they were born, so they can have their own babies. But here’s the problem: these days, when salmon start that difficult journey back home, it doesn’t always go how they expect. 

ELISE PULLAR: The way that forestry can change the watershed is the extreme in the winter of flooding and erosion and sediment in the water, and then the extreme in summer, often, of quite shallow, very warm conditions, too shallow and warm, sometimes, for salmon to be able to survive, or for their eggs to be able to survive.

ZIYA TONG: Salmon need specific conditions to thrive in their freshwater streams. They need cool water full of oxygen so they can breathe. They need the right size of gravel to bury their eggs. They need lots of deep pools and rocks and plants so they can hide from predators. All of this is put in danger by risky forestry practices—along with, of course, climate change.

ELISE PULLAR: Salmon are cold blooded species, so they don't necessarily have the ability to regulate their temperature on their own like we do. They have their temperature regulated by their environment, by the water they're in. So if the water is too warm, they are not able to survive and thrive because they are also then too warm.

ZIYA TONG: In 2010, the sockeye salmon run in B.C.’s Fraser River hit a near-record 30 million fish. In 2024, that number was just 1.5 million. According to Elise, that kind of shift can have catastrophic implications for the wider ecosystem. 

ELISE PULLAR: Over 130 different animal species rely on salmon as a food source. So things like orca whales, grizzly bears, eagles, wolves rely on these salmon for a rich source of protein. And so we're seeing impacts there on just lack of abundance of a food source for all those species. Without salmon, our rivers, streams, and oceans would look significantly different because of all those things that they provide. And because of the unique traits that they have compared to other species, there's nothing like them. So nothing really could replace them if they were gone.

ZIYA TONG: But it’s not just other animals that depend on the salmon to survive. It’s also people—especially the people who have been here the longest.

RICK BAILEY: In our Genesis story, a Katzie person and a sockeye person, in whatever form they were at that point, met, fell in love, and went away together, went to the ocean and come back every year. Well, I guess every four years. That's the cycle of the salmon. 

ZIYA TONG: This is Rick Bailey. He’s a Councillor and Elder of Katzie First Nation, which is in what is known today as the Lower Fraser River Valley in B.C. WWF-Canada has been supporting Katzie’s work since the discovery of that blocked culvert in 2018.

RICK BAILEY: So in that sense, you'll hear other nations, you know, on the ocean or up the river throughout the Fraser watershed or waters of B.C. refer to the salmon people. But here at Katzie, we refer to them as the salmon family.

ZIYA TONG: Salmon are an essential part of the Katzie way of life. Rick has been catching fish for as long as he can remember. 

RICK BAILEY: Well, I started fishing with my grandfather in a canoe on the Fraser River. We'd go down over across the river, down a little ways to a spot on Barnston Island. There was a backeddy there and we put out a net in the evening and then go back down in the morning and check that net and hopefully have a salmon to take home to eat.

ZIYA TONG: The Katzie people have always treated the salmon they catch and eat with the utmost respect. They even have a special ceremony to honour the first salmon catch of the season. In 1883, the federal anti-Potlatch law denied First Nations the right to practice their customs, including the Katzie salmon ceremony. But in 2023, Rick was part of Katzie’s first salmon ceremony in 140 years. 

RICK BAILEY: It was just such a spiritual thing. You know, we had the fish cooked up and everybody that attended got a little tiny piece of the fish to eat. And then we returned the bones. We had one of our fishers take the bones on a cedar bough, take it down to the water.

ZIYA TONG: It wasn’t just the Katzie people who were thrilled to have the ceremony back. 

RICK BAILEY: But as we were doing that, this eagle was flying above us and landed in the tree right beside where we were going with the bones. And then we looked down and there's a bear coming, too. He basically came and watched. And then the bones went back into the water and the eagle flew away and the bear walked away the other way. It was pretty cool. It was awesome.

ZIYA TONG: Even the birds and the bears seem to agree that bringing this ceremony back to life is a huge step in the right direction for Katzie. But none of it matters if the salmon aren’t there.

RICK BAILEY: I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. At one point, you know, he told me things about our history. And at one point, there was fish to catch and eat year-round. I've seen that fade away in my lifetime.

ZIYA TONG: Once upon a time, Rick and his father and grandfather would fish 72 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. These days, Katzie salmon fishing practices are limited to just a few hours a week in August and September.

RICK BAILEY: A couple of our fishermen phoned me one day and said, Rick, what's going on? Why aren't we fishing? There’s fish out there. And I said, well, we're in conservation mode. We can't. We need to let these ones go by.

ZIYA TONG: In spring of 2018, Rick received a call from a friend at a nearby fishing lodge. It was the landslide—it had blocked up Blue Creek, and that endangered chinook salmon run was at risk. For Rick, this news was alarming, to say the least.

RICK BAILEY: Can we fix this? How much time do we have? You know, when are the salmon coming? And, you know, we've got to get going. We've got to do this. Like, I was in a little bit of panic.

ZIYA TONG: The Upper Pitt river is a vital spawning area for chinook salmon. Historically, Upper Pitt chinook runs, including the salmon that spawn in Blue Creek, had as many as 2000 fish in them. More recently, there have been as few as 300 fish. There was no time to waste.

RICK BAILEY:  So I called the biologist from the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance, which Katzie is a member of. And we went up to Blue Creek and had a look there. And Ian, our biologist, said, yeah, we can fix this. It just takes some time.

IAN HAMILTON: Blue Creek is an interesting place. It's very remote. It is way up the valley. It's old. You can feel that when you walk into Blue Creek.

ZIYA TONG: Ian Hamilton is a fisheries biologist at the Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance. They’re an independent Indigenous fisheries management organization, and they represent thirty different First Nations. When he got that call from Rick, Ian had only been working there for a few months. He wasn’t sure what to expect when he went to meet Rick in Pitt Meadows, where they boarded a boat that took them across the deep, choppy waters of Pitt Lake. As soon as Ian saw it with his own eyes, he could tell this was going to be something special. 

IAN HAMILTON: Anyone that goes to Blue Creek, I don't know how to describe it in words. I think you'd have to feel it and see it. But when you stand there and you're in a system like that, you get a very weird sort of extrasensory feeling of age and maturity within the forest and also the importance to the surrounding ecosystem because there's trail cameras there and we know how many animals rely on that system during the during the salmon run as a resource.

ZIYA TONG: But on this particular day, the creek was not in ideal condition. Wood and rocks were scattered across the clear blue water. Ian looked out over the scene and imagined all of the salmon that would be fighting their way upstream to this very creek in just a few months. There was no way they could find their way through this mess. 

IAN HAMILTON: You lose Blue Creek, you could very easily lose that run. And once you lose salmon runs, it gets very difficult to restart them. Right? Like, you need continuity. And if you lose critical habitat, you could easily lose a run and lose the ability to bring it back. And it's gone. End of story.

ZIYA TONG: It was time to get to work. So, how do you fix a landslide? For Ian, the only way to figure that out was to talk to the Katzie, who know this land better than anyone. 

IAN HAMILTON: Colonials have been here for 150 plus years. There's evidence of the First Nations communities being here for thousands and thousands of years. That is your best knowledge source about what you need to do to fix the situation because they're the knowledge holders of what this what the ecosystem was like before it was impacted. So the first thing we do is talk to the community and say, what is the issue? What is your perspective on it? What do we need to understand as non-Indigenous people? And how do you want us to go about fixing this? This is your unceded land, your unceded territory, and it's your choice as to what happens to this. It's not mine.

ZIYA TONG: In this case, the Katzie community’s number one priority was speed. The endangered chinook run would be arriving in less than six months, so they needed to clear the creek out as fast as possible.

IAN HAMILTON: So first it was debris removal, get everything out of the creek so that water can flow and fish can get access.

ZIYA TONG: The next step was figuring out how to stop this from happening again. The landslide happened partially because Blue Creek is at the bottom of a slope, so protecting that side of the creek was crucial. 

IAN HAMILTON: We recycle all the materials that we use from projects back into the project. So if we take wood out, we put wood back in. So we did the same thing here. So basically what you're doing is you're building a bit of a bench at the bottom of the landslide to prevent any material that's upstream from continuing to move down. We used large rocks, we used gravel, and we use large woody debris to build that toe, to hold all of that material in place so that it wouldn't continue to slide down into the system.

ZIYA TONG: After months of carefully taking material out of the creek and rebuilding it—while also making sure not to change things so much that it would disturb the animals that live there—it was finally time for the salmon to come swimming home. And they were right on time. 

IAN HAMILTON: Those fish were back on those spawning beds by the third week of August that year. They seem to be fairly stable and they're quite happy at home within Blue Creek now without having to address a landslide as part of their migration.

ZIYA TONG: The Blue Creek chinook run was safe. But they weren’t the only salmon in Katzie territory that needed help. Rick and Ian have taken on a number of projects focused on restoring salmon habitats across the Upper Pitt River valley. In 2020, sections of an area called Corbold Creek were restored so that more glacier water could flow in, making a better environment for that fall’s spawning run. Then, with support from experts at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Ian’s team started working on building an entirely new habitat—a 700-metre channel that filled up with sockeye and coho salmon as soon as they opened it in 2022. That was so successful that they built another new channel the next year. More recently, they reintroduced freshwater flow to Red Slough, a waterway that was cut off from the rest of the river almost a century ago.

RICK BAILEY: And apparently the salmon were right at the mouth of Red Slough, at the head of the lake, you know, waiting to go in already. That was quite a joyous feeling.

ZIYA TONG: As the Upper Pitt restoration project has continued, more and more salmon have found their way to the area. 

IAN HAMILTON: We're seeing fish in the Upper Pitt that we haven't seen in decades. And if that's any sign that they're coming back, that means that the system must be more functional now than it was even a few years ago for them to come back to, because otherwise they wouldn't arrive.

ZIYA TONG: And it doesn’t stop there. 

IAN HAMILTON: That ecosystem also needs to function for the birds. That needs to function for the elk, that needs to function for the predators. What do we need to do to build that ecosystem so it's functional for everything, even though it's designed in its inception as a fish project, nothing is solely a fish project because everything's connected.

ZIYA TONG: The crucial thing Ian has learned working with Katzie First Nation is we must approach these problems holistically, because nothing happens in isolation. And no one can tackle these problems alone.

IAN HAMILTON: This is Indigenous-led reconciliation in action. Take note of it, recognize how it works, because this is a functional example. We can fix this. There is hope, but we do need to collaboratively work together and stop making decisions, silos that affect one another and instead determine what kind of outcomes we want collaboratively and avoid those pitfalls.

ZIYA TONG: Elise Pullar, the habitat specialist we talked to earlier, believes that the most important thing is helping people understand that you and I are part of the same world as the salmon, regardless of whether you’ve ever been fishing, or eaten salmon, or even seen a wild salmon in real life.

ELISE PULLAR: If you ever spend time in a forest, that has been impacted by salmon. If you spend time by the river, that has been changed and shaped by salmon, and if you appreciate other species in the ecosystem, like bears or orca whales or wolves, then those have also been impacted by salmon. So even if you don't have a connection to fish specifically, there's a huge need to care about these species because they impact so much broader than just fish populations alone. I think if we have an understanding of the impact that salmon have, then we're maybe able to create a closer connection to it.

ZIYA TONG: So, if you ever get a chance, go see the salmon! Or, if that’s not in the cards for you, Elise says you can always spend time by your local bodies of water. 

ELISE PULLAR: We all live near a river or a stream or a creek, and if we can find ways to learn about that place, steward that place, and learn about the different animals and species and needs of that watershed, and through that, you're able to protect salmon on a bit of a broader scale, because a lot of our watersheds are interconnected.

ZIYA TONG: For Katzie Elder Rick Bailey, conservation isn’t just about the salmon of today. It’s about preserving Katzie territory, and their salmon family, for the future of his people. 

RICK BAILEY: Someone asked me one time not long ago, do you know what it is to be a better ancestor? And I didn't have a clue what that meant. But I have learned that that's what we're doing here. We're helping our salmon family and we're hoping we're doing it right so that generations to come will look back and say, yeah, back in the 2020s, Katzie people helped the salmon, helped them survive, got them through this peak. I talk about our salmon. When I say our salmon, I mean yours and mine. It's our salmon. My greatest hope and dream is that generations to come will still be able to go down to the creek and see the salmon swim by.

ZIYA TONG: After Pacific salmon are finished spawning, they reach the end of their life cycle. They die in the same place they lay their eggs, letting their bodies become nutrients to help the next generation grow as strong as they were. And they also feed the bears and wolves, who carry them out into the forest, where those nutrients help the trees grow strong, as well. In fact, when you look in a tree near a spawning creek, the rings inside are wider. The salmons’ lives are literally written into the forest. Salmon remind us that life is cyclical. They follow their instincts and do what they need to do to create a better, safer future for their offspring. But without our help restoring the watershed to what it once was, the paths they’ve been swimming for generations might disappear. The salmon know the way. Now, we need to make sure the path is still open—for them and for us.

THEME UP

ZIYA TONG: Thanks for joining us today on This Is Wild! I’m your host, Ziya Tong. To learn more about Pacific salmon and WWF-Canada’s other habitat restoration projects, you can check out wwf.ca/thisiswild. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on your favourite podcast app, and don’t forget to share this show with your friends! And if you have any questions or suggestions for the show, you can send us an email at thisiswild@wwfcanada.org. This Is Wild is created by WWF-Canada and Antica Productions. Our executive producers are Geoff Siskind and Stuart Coxe. This episode was written and produced by Emily Morantz. Our production team at WWF-Canada is Joshua Ostroff, Erin Saunders, and Tina Knezevic. Nicole MacAdam is WWF's VP of Comms. Mixing and sound design by Philip Wilson. 

THEME RESOLVE