Flathead: Fish odyssey may help sink energy development plan

The impact of the potential mine on downstream could be devastating

Randy Boswell
CanWest News Service
Thursday, June 21, 2007

The cross-border sexual odyssey of six fish from northern Montana to southern B.C. could help sink a planned multi-billion-dollar Canadian energy development that has spawned years of conflict between the U.S. and Canada.

A half-dozen cutthroat trout captured on the Flathead River south of the B.C.-Montana border and fitted with radio transmitters were tracked by researchers as they swam to spawning beds in Canada, giving hope to both American and Canadian critics of a proposed B.C. coal mine that efforts to protect the trout's trans-boundary travels will help scuttle the controversial project.

"The potential downstream impacts of mining development in the Canadian Flathead can be difficult to comprehend in terms of long-term water quality degradation," one Montana newspaper has editorialized.

"But the impact of mining on fish is a more tangible matter. And that's why it's so gripping to look at recent findings about the relationship between Montana fisheries and Canadian waters . . . Make no mistake: Montana fish will bear the brunt of mining development in the Canadian Flathead."

WILDLIFE STUDY

As part of a Montana Wildlife Department study aimed at gathering evidence of possible downstream damage from the proposed mine, state scientists surgically implanted transmitters in 14 fish captured near Kalispell, about 100 kilometres south of the border.

The monitoring revealed that six of the adult cutthroats moved up the Flathead's north branch and into Canadian territory to reproduce at sites not far from Cline Mining Corp.'s proposed open-pit coal mine.

"The fish don't know these political boundaries," Clint Muhlfeld, a fisheries biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, told CanWest News Service Wednesday.

"They've evolved here since the last glaciers melted 13,000 years ago. This research shows they need the entire watershed to complete their life history."

The Flathead River -- which has its headwaters in southeast B.C. near the Alberta border but flows south through northwest Montana before spilling into Flathead Lake -- has for decades been a source of conflict between environmentalists determined to preserve its "pristine" upper valley and energy companies hoping to exploit the drainage basin's rich supply of coal and methane.

A coal mine proposal in the 1980s was rejected after a panel under the International Joint Commission responsible for shared U.S.-Canadian waterways ruled the development could adversely affect fish populations.

Cline's proposed Lodgepole mine, located about 50 kilometres south of Fernie in the Flathead Valley, would produce an estimated two million tonnes of coal per year over the mine's 20-year lifespan, generate hundreds of jobs and some $3 billion.

Although the company has tried to reassure critics that its economic objectives would be carefully balanced by measures to protect the Flathead ecosystem, the proposal has sparked opposition on both sides of the border.

Currently under environmental review in B.C., the planned mine has been denounced by Canadian and American nature groups as ecologically ruinous and has drawn fire from Montana officials who say there's a risk to water quality along the U.S. stretch of the river.

A separate proposal from the energy conglomerate British Petroleum to extract coal-bed methane from the area has added to concerns in Montana about the Flathead's future.

Meanwhile, B.C. and Montana water resource management officials have been struggling to work out a contentious trans-boundary agreement that would eventually govern development and conservation plans within the river's drainage area.

"This most recent study pretty much confirms the movement of fish across the border," Mark Angelo, rivers chairman of the B.C. Outdoor Recreation Council, said Wednesday.

"It's one more piece of evidence to support the position that so many people have. You can go all along the Canada-U.S. border and there is no other region that sustains such a diversity of wildlife."

Angelo added: "The public response to the proposed mine has been overwhelmingly negative.

We don't need to industrialize another landscape."

ENDANGERED RIVER

In March, the council ranked the Flathead No. 1 on its annual list of B.C.'s most endangered rivers because of the proposed Cline development.

At the time, Cline vice-president Gordon Gormley insisted that no one should prejudge the mine application at such an early stage of its environmental assessment.

"The B.C. standards for mine development . . . are more than adequate and strenuous in terms of the objectives we must meet," he said. "We have a system that works in B.C."

Muhlfeld said he and other Montana wildlife officials -- in co-operation with first nations representatives on the Canadian side of the border -- will continue studying the Flathead watershed to gather more information about both the cutthroat and bull trout, a vulnerable species in the U.S. that is also thought to spawn regularly in B.C. waters.

Muhlfeld said he believes the cutthroat trout "are moving across the border because they're from there; they were born in Canada" and the Flathead's north branch offers "the best intact habitat areas for spawning."

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Flathead River trout spawn north of the border

Associated Press
The Missoulian
18-Jun-2007

KALISPELL - Some westslope cutthroat trout that live in the Flathead River spawn in Canada, state wildlife officials say, meaning protecting fisheries will be a central issue in an effort to prevent Canadian companies from mining coal or drilling for coal-bed methane north of Glacier National Park.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks researchers captured 14 westslope cutthroat trout on the Flathead River between Kalispell and Columbia Falls and fitted them with radio transmitters.

Two weeks ago, there were six adult cutthroats spawning north of the border in British Columbia. Last week, two remained.

“Four have moved out and are back in the river” near Polebridge, said research specialist Durae Belcer, who has been flying the North Fork Flathead drainage, tracking the cutthroats.

There have been similar results in three previous years of tracking tagged cutthroat, said Clint Muhlfeld, a state fisheries biologist who is leading the research.

“Every year that we’ve tagged cutthroat in four years we’ve had cutthroat spawning in B.C.,” Muhlfeld said.

The tracking results are part of an increased effort to gather biological information in the Canadian Flathead because of a looming potential for energy development.

Concerns about mining impacts have been heightened recently by news that the energy conglomerate British Petroleum is seeking a permit to pursue coal-bed methane exploration in the Canadian Flathead.

The fisheries research also shows bull trout use the Canadian Flathead extensively, Muhlfeld said.

FWP research also has involved bull trout spawning-bed counts in the upper tributaries of the Canadian Flathead.

Last fall’s count came up with 75 bull trout “redds” in a two-mile stretch just below the Flathead River’s convergence with Foisey Creek, the drainage where the Cline Mining Corp. is proposing an open-pit coal mine.

“That tells us that a lot of fish that are spawning in British Columbia are spawning right below Foisey Creek,” Muhlfeld said.

Muhlfeld’s crew also undertook electrofishing surveys in Foisey Creek and two converging tributaries. The survey found 74 cutthroat, 18 bull trout and 93 sculpin in Foisey Creek.

“We did these intensive surveys to document what was there,” Muhlfeld said.

That is the main goal behind a broader ongoing baseline data study aimed at determining existing ecological conditions in the transboundary Flathead. The work, focusing on water chemistry, sediment measurements, fisheries and wildlife, will enable Montana to demonstrate impacts should energy development proceed in the Canadian Flathead.

See also:
Flathead Wild
Citizens Concerned about Coalbed Methane
The Flathead Coalition