Bowmanville Creek Fish Ladder, Bowmanville, Ontario - Fish Ladders on Waymarking.com

For years the Bowmanville Creek fish ladder has been a community dream -- with municipal support, fundraisers for the new dam and hundreds of volunteers wading into the water to lift fish over the blocked dam during the past two years.

The old dam was built in 1988 for trout. When the government introduced Chinook salmon to Ontario waterways, problems began with the Bowmanville Creek fish bypass. Most larger fish missed the jump, got stuck on the concrete dam and died. The estimate was that only one per cent of the large salmon made it up the creek to spawn.

To make the new fish bypass a reality, Valleys 2000 volunteers had to work through a maze of regulations from a number of different agencies charged with protecting the waterways -- the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority.

Construction was supposed to start in 2012 but was delayed when the group of volunteers kept being sent back to the drawing board to rework the plan with the engineer. They ended up needing approximately $90,000 worth of design work.

“Every donation has helped us a lot,” said Reverend Frank Lockhart, president of Valleys 2000, at the opening ceremony.

In the spring (2014) the final landscaping, as well as signs and a donor recognition board, was completed. For the first time the public is able to enjoy the breathtaking sight of migrating fish from the new observation platform.

River/Waterway: Bowmanville Creek, Bowmanville Ontario

Visit Instructions:
Please share a self-made picture of the Fish Ladder and tell us something about it. Did you see any fishes? You do not have to be in the picture, neither does your GPSr.

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