Friends of the Salmon celebrate our rivers

Jun 14, 2012

Photo: Gray Merriam, vice president of the Friends of the Salmon River at Crooked Creek with John and Angharad Holmes.

Rivers are the life blood of our watersheds and it was with that in mind that the Friends of the Salmon River (FSR) organized a number of events on June 10 in celebration of the Canadian Wildlife Federation's Canadian Rivers Day. The day’s events included multiple kayak/canoe picnic trips along the river and many of the lakes it feeds, as well as two hikes - one up Bear Naked Ridge near Arden, which offered hikers a panoramic view of both the Salmon River and Clare River watersheds, and a second hike starting from where the Salmon begins as a trickle in the woods near Cloyne and proceeding on into the Mazinaw Lake watershed.

For the creative types hoping to capture the river’s beauty there were rendezvous points for painters and photographers at four separate locations on the river's shore. I spoke with Gray Merriam, vice president of the FSR, who said that one aim of the planned events was to get people in closer touch with the land.

A second aim was to instill in visitors the notion that the watershed feeds both area lakes and the Salmon River and that what occurs in it determines the quality of everything downstream from it. “It's very easy to wreck what is downstream by what you do upstream,” Merriam explained when I met up with his group at the Kennebec Lake boat launch near Arden on Sunday. “But unfortunately most of the economic and political power resides downstream on these watersheds and consequently there is far more attention paid to the downstream parts of them. In practical terms if you are going to fix a problem in a system you want to do so as far upstream as you can.”

The Salmon River watershed is roughly 80 km. long and begins on the Precambrian shield about 200 meters south of Mazinaw Lake. It drains south and empties into the Bay of Quinte in Shannonville.

Merriam led the Sunday group whose focus was on the Salmon River’s feeder creeks – the creeks that enter the Salmon upstream from Kennebec Lake at the top end of the watershed. Beginning at the Kennebec Lake boat launch, Merriam and his crew first headed out to a section of Crooked Creek located just off North Road between Arden and Mountain Grove. Crooked Creek is a main feeder of Cox and Kennebec Lakes and the Salmon.

According to Merriam, what is particularly special about this section of Crooked Creek is that five years ago the FSR set up a base station here for Quinte Conservation to carry out bottom fauna surveys.  He explained, “They (Quinte Conservation) wanted a station where there was very little or no human influence on bottom fauna so that they could have a base line comparison for other stations set up all through the rest of their watershed area. Bottom fauna is incredibly sensitive to changing water quality and water flow.” The station has been sampled twice a year for the last five years and is used as a base line for comparison to other samples.

Merriam had good news about the current state of the Salmon River Watershed. “Right now it’s in good shape or above. The watershed has no hot spots or any outstanding problems. The only possibility is that in a few places we could still do some more corrections to what has been done to the shorelines. In most cases people who tend to be excessive neatniks are doing things like mowing their grass right down to the edge of water and things of that sort, which are not good for the shoreline,” he said.

The FSR have been addressing this problem and so far has completed one shoreline improvement project in Tamworth. A second project is currently underway, in which the FSR are handing out seedling trees and shrubs and holding workshops to show people how to improve their shorelines by planting trees and shrubs along it.

One couple, John and Angharad Holmes, who accompanied Merriam on his tour of the Salmon’s feeder creeks, are avid FSR supporters and have a summer property on Hungry Lake. They thought the outing would provide them with more information about the landscape they have come to love.  Anyone who missed the special events can visit the Friends of the Salmon River website at www.friendsofsalmon.ca  to find out more about the Salmon River, its watersheds and upcoming events and workshops.