Trout return to Charlottetown creek

The recovery of a creek running through the suburbs of Charlottetown is coming along much faster than anticipated, says the coordinator of the local watershed group.

"I never would have thought when I started in Ellen's Creek, or when we first started putting a field crew out, that it would actually come the way it did," said Norman Dewar.

The Ellen's Creek Watershed Group started work on the stream a few years ago, picking up garbage, clearing blockages, and doing what they could to make sure the stream ran freely from its headwaters just north of Sherwood Road to Queen Elizabeth Park, where it joins North River.

During the first summer of the project after years of garbage and runoff from construction flowing into the water, Dewar said his group only managed to clean up a little over 300 metres of the creek. Now a team can cover the whole length in a morning.

The reward has been the return of brook trout.

"Brook trout are an indicator species of stream health, the quality of the stream. They're quite sensitive to environmental pollution," said Dewar.

"If you have brook trout in a stream you've got a healthy stream."

Ellen's Creek is never going to be a fly-fishing stream, he said. It's too small. The trout in the stream are growing to a little over 20 centimetres, but they are active from the headwaters to the estuary.

Dewar will be talking about the group's work on the stream at Confederation Centre Library Thursday at 6:30 p.m.

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