| Summary: | In 2011 Port Metro Vancouver (PMV) initiated the Habitat Enhancement Program which focuses on creating, restoring and enhancing fish and wildlife habitat within its jurisdiction in the Fraser River estuary and Burrard Inlet. Building on innovative habitat banking projects constructed during the early 1990’s in the North and South Arms of the Fraser River, PMV and Fisheries and Oceans Canada signed a Working Agreement in 2012 to establish the PMV habitat bank. Implementation of the habitat banking program is based on a landscape ecology approach using physical, biological and anthropogenic ecosystem services and functions criteria to identify and construct productive fish and wildlife habitat. The initial Phase of the program involved identifying potential sites within the Fraser River estuary, Burrard Inlet and East Coast of Vancouver Island that provide benefits to fisheries species that support commercial, recreational and Aboriginal fisheries. The identified projects were screened and rated according to multi-disciplinary parameters including size, location, type of marine/estuarine habitat, potential intervention, ownership, First Nations support, community support, probability of success, and, resulting habitat productivity. For several of the highest rating projects, conceptual designs were prepared using site specific fluvial and coastal processes, engineering, and biological criteria. Following internal review, detailed designs were prepared and applications were submitted for permitting to provincial and federal regulatory agencies. Permitting included preparing an Ecological Characterization study to identify project constraints and opportunities. The first habitat banking projects involved removal of heavy log accumulations to restore salt marsh functioning in Boundary Bay and Roberts Bank, brackish marsh construction using dredged material as part of a shoreline erosion project to protect First Nations archaeological sites in the South Arm of the Fraser River, and proposed large scale brackish marsh ...
|
|---|