On July 25 of this year, the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority team was doing a routine check of the Long Sault Creek fish community near McDonalds Corners Road. This work is part of their long-term natural heritage monitoring program to assess the habitat conditions and fish populations in streams. It was explained that this site was chosen for monitoring as it is one of a handful of sensitive cold-water systems in Lanark County. Long Sault Creek is the only stream with naturally reproducing brook trout.

I happened to be in the area and spotted the Conversation Authority members hard at work beside this creek. The baby brook trout you see in the photo was one of several caught in a net, examined and then released back into the creek.

In all, during that visit, the MVCA team successfully caught a number of creek chub (a species of minnows) and eight young brook trout. One team member explained that they could tell that these trout are young because the colours on them indicate they are in transition from having juvenile “parr marks” to adult colour patterns.

This particular site is downstream from the proposed and the existing gravel pit properties off of Highland Line, west of 9^th Concession A Dalhousie.

The proposed changes to water levels requested by both extraction companies and the inevitable changes to water quality, including temperature, could undermine, if not devastate, this last natural cold-water trout spawning refuge in Lanark County.

Moreover, the sediment in the drainage and runoff from the proposed pit operations could lay down a blanket of silt in both Long Sault Creek and Barbers Lake that would kill trout eggs and reduce the benthic food available for the young trout.

In summary, our citizen science group is concerned that the proposed gravel aggregate extraction will devastate the last spawning grounds for these trout. We believe this environmental destruction is an unreasonable price to pay for the proposed aggregate extraction.