With 680,000 hectares of Irrigated land, Alberta has the largest irrigated area in Canada, with 13 irrigation districts and 8,000km of canals and pipes, utilising 76% of the water licenced from the Bow River. Alberta needs agriculture and agriculture needs irrigation, but we also need to speak up and protect the resource underpinning our great province, because its not just water, it is home to our beloved trout populations which support recreation and world-class tourism opportunities. The natural world beneath the Bow’s surface is in strife. Thousands of fish become entrained in the irrigation canals when water is redirected from the river and when the diversions close for the winter, these fish are left to die if they are not rescued. This problem has adversely affected the delicate ecosystem of Alberta’s rivers since the late 1800’s. The problem of fish entrainment was first identified in 1912; over 100 years later, the problem remains. The Alberta Government issue salvage licences for a mere $5 to collect up to 20 of the same trout which are protected and subject to C&R regulations in the main rivers, with no requirement to report on the species caught and retained.

The most recent (and unintentional) data for one canal on the Bow River (Carseland) was collected in 1983, as a result of an AEP study on the effectiveness of Magnacide H on aquatic plants. 11,900 dead fish were recovered. Blocking nets were used to collect the dead fish but the juvenile fish estimated to have slipped through were estimated at 100,000.

Since 1998, Trout Unlimited Canada (TUC), under contract with the provincial government, host an annual Fish Rescue with engagement from public volunteers. This is performed when the irrigation canals are closed for the season. Due to various restrictions, TUC are only able to salvage fish from small areas close to the headgates (Carseland Canal is 66km long and less than 5km is targeted) for short periods of time with limited resources available (in 2022, a total of 10 hours on Carseland Canal returned almost 9,000 fish and 1.5 hours on Western Headworks Canal returned over 40,000 fish, notably, at a rate of 20 sportfish per minute). The rescue efforts identify fish where possible, with critical forage fish representing the largest proportion of fish recovered and a significant proportion of sportfish, the remaining losses unknown. The results of TUC’s valuable efforts from 2001 to 2022 follow, showing almost half a million fish recovered from two canals on the Bow, and counting: