Aquatic Habitat and Riparian Restoration, Monitoring and Community Engagement in Antigonish, N.S.

The goal of this project is to address the degraded Atlantic Salmon spawning and juvenile rearing habitats in Hartshorn Brook and North Right’s River, Antigonish County. Both of the watercourses are salmon bearing tributaries to the larger West River Watershed, which has been listed as a priority river flowing into the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence by the Department of Fisheries & Oceans Canada. Restoration sites have been selected based on a watershed restoration plan for the West River that was completed in 2022 by the ARA in partnership with the Nova Scotia Salmon Association (NSSA).

Through field assessments, Hartshorn Brook has been identified by the ARA as a prime candidate for habitat restoration. Critical salmon habitats in Hartshorn Brook have been degraded due to road/bridge. There is a severe lack of spawning and juvenile rearing habitat within the watercourse and although there are pools present, they are infrequent and provide little refuge for fish in the heat of the summer months and during fall runs. The restoration plan is to install 10-15 well established in-stream restoration structures to aid in the development of higher quality pools, increase the rivers’ natural ability to properly sort sediment for spawning and to provide bank stabilization through sections with unnaturally high rates of erosion from lack of riparian vegetation.

The North Right’s River project began in 2023 and included the installation of 15 instream well-established restoration structures and a pre- and post-restoration monitoring program to restore a total of 10,750 m2. In 2024 15 instream structures were installed, livestock exclusion fencing was installed and trees were planted in that fenced off area to re-establish the riparian zone with a total of 20,000 m2 of habitat restored. ARA has plans to continue to restore the North Right’s River upstream from the 2024 site. In 2025, the ARA’s goal is to install 10-15 in-stream restoration structures, install livestock exclusion fencing and re-establish the riparian zone within the fenced off areas to restore in total, approximately 20,000 m2.

The ARA has a rigorous pre- and post-restoration monitoring program for all projects that includes summer water temperature data collection, Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) surveys, electrofishing surveys and redd count surveys. The post-restoration data is compared to the baseline data at the end of each year to track the projects success.

The ARA plans to complete 2 project monitoring reports: year 4 of monitoring in Pinevale Brook for 2025, the restoration project that was funded in contribution by the FCAS in 2022; and Year 1 (2024 project) and year 2 (2023 project) in the James River restoration site, another project partially funded by the FCAS, to address the severe lack of spawning materials present in the watercourse due to the dam blocking sediment movement. The monitoring activities include temperature surveys, habitat suitability index surveys, redd count surveys and electrofishing surveys. The information ARA collects through their monitoring program measures the success of the instream restoration projects and tracks the change in aquatic habitat and population densities of Atlantic Salmon. At the end of each year, when the monitoring data has been collected, the ARA compiles reports to include the annual data and analysis which will be made accessible for the public and the FCAS.