On a cold, gray December day, Craig Orr takes the trail from the Colony Farm parking lot at the end of the road along the Coquitlam River, crosses the pedestrian bridge and aims for an indistinct green metal box in the distance.
Along the way, Orr points out the ditch that extends to the tree line at the far edge of Wilson Farm before looping back again. It doesn't look like much but it's part of a large-scale project that sought to restore juvenile salmon habitat along the Coquitlam River, one that successfully returned a dozen sockeye to the river after a century-long absence.
And it's just one of the many accomplishments Orr, a Coquitlam resident, has logged in a 40-year career that has taken him from coast to coast... to coast.
In the late 1970s, Orr earned his master's degree in wildlife ecology and spent the next three years in the eastern Canadian Arctic surveying whales and birds in preparation for offshore oil exploration.
"I spent 800 hours in a twin Otter doing aerial surveys all the way from the Arctic Circle to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland," Orr said. "But I decided after I crashed in one of the survey planes it was time to go back to grad school."
Orr headed west this time, completing a PhD at Simon Fraser University in behavioural ecology. He focused on the feeding habits of the black-capped chickadee but fish were never far from his field of study.
"I started getting involved in fish conservation issues in British Columbia back in the late '80s," Orr said, noting the conservation scene was decidedly different 30 to 40 years ago. "Certainly, there wasn't as big of a push for advocacy or conservation back in the '70s. We were still under the opinion that there was a lot to be exploited and the pressures weren't as visible on the natural world and we hadn't seen the impacts of climate change.
"A lot of those areas I was surveying in the Arctic in the late '70s and early '80s are now under threat in terms of less ice, more threats to polar bears and things like that. I probably saw that area in its last good phase, before it started to get really threatened by climate change."
Here in B.C., Orr noticed much of the focus of environmental conservation at the time was on forests, culminating with the Clayoquot Sound protesters storming the legislature in the spring of 1993.
"We then started seeing more and more people come out and start advocating for the protection of wild salmon," Orr said.
He was part of the group that formed the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, which he headed as executive director for the past 14 years. During that time, the group brought not only the protection of wild salmon but, also, the streams and rivers essential to their survival, to the forefront of B.C.'s environmental scene. The results have included greater restrictions on the salmon farming industry to reduce sea lice and a new provincial Water Sustainability Act offering stronger protections for B.C.'s groundwater and streams.
"We've dealt with the province a lot on habitat protection but, in the last 10 years, we've been dealing almost exclusively with the federal government," Orr said. "It hasn't gone so well with the present [federal] government. We've seen a real reduction in care for the environment, we've seen a weakening of environmental laws.
"Any regulations that impede development like salmon farming and mining and oil and gas have been met with the weakening of regulations to make it easier for doing those developments. It's very frustrating for a lot of folks to see this lack of recognition of how important the environment is, not only to the salmon but humans as well."
Orr spent nearly two years testifying during the Cohen Inquiry into the decline of Fraser River sockeye, covering the impacts of salmon farming and water issues, and was pleased to see the comprehensive report, issued in 2012, with its 75 recommendations.
"That inquiry cost $37 million in taxpayer dollars and it still hasn't been acted on by the federal government," Orr said. "It was an excellent inquiry which showed the Fraser sockeye were declining, and it came up with very thoughtful recommendations and we felt the taxpayers were owed some action, which we haven't seen so far, so that's been frustrating."
Back on the Coquitlam River, Orr details the extensive restoration project at Colony Farm designed to mitigate the impacts from the building of the new Port Mann Bridge. Watershed Watch has worked in partnership with the Kwikwetlem First Nation to establish new juvenile salmon habitat, the kind that is increasingly hard to find north of the Fraser because of development.
"We're monitoring it right now and training the Kwikwetlem First Nation to monitor their fish returns. It's been wildly successful and one of the neatest things that's happened in Coquitlam in a long time for fish habitat."
The return of sockeye salmon to the Coquitlam River is a fitting finale for Orr, who has "retired" from his post as Watershed Watch's executive director.
But don't expect to see Orr kicking back and brushing up on his golf game; he's merely transitioning to several new roles: staying on with Watershed Watch as a conservation advisor on aquaculture, open-net salmon farming and the Water Sustainability Act; and representing the Kwikwetlem and Watershed Watch at the Coquitlam River Watershed Roundtable.
And retired or not, he'll continue to advocate for wild salmon and the habitat that sustains them.
For more information visit www.watershed-watch.org.
@spayneTC
