No one else was around but we weren’t the only ones watching: ospreys and eagles wheeled in the crisp morning air awaiting their chance for a meal, and later bears, marten, and other animals would appear to reap the harvest.
First Person Breath of the Salmon
The Adams River sockeye run appears healthy again, but with ever-increasing pressures on it, how long will that last? JORDAN MANLEY PHOTO.
The previous evening, Barb Callihoe,
And while sockeye have faced plenty of the usual
shared with us waypoints of that group’s history with the salmon. Beneath soaring ponderosa pines on the
of the salmon’s story of struggle, survival, perseverance
After visiting the main viewing sites early on a weekday to avoid the crowds that grow later in the day and on -
What we saw on Little River the highlight came next morning as we hiked rocky from the festival site. From numerous overlooks we
the Fraser River that almost put an end to the Adams hopped in the canoe with Frank, skirting the mouth
freight canoe casts a shadowy window onto otherwise
sub-dominant, shadow one, and shadow two
Shuswap and Little Shuswap Lakes, there is only silence
All of this edging the lake whose steely waters greet
wheeled in the crisp morning air awaiting their chance
River’s long-running Salute to the Sockeye festival.
opposite direction.
away and the resultant feces and urine of their
First Nations, and the Adams River Salmon Society. presents
harvest, or there weren’t many animals around, you
million people make pilgrimage to view anything over the course of only a few weeks. Luckily, the concessions
delivers interpretive science on everything from
of trees up to 500 metres from the river. witnessing a dominant Adams River run, a chance important phenomenon at peril?
of-age opportunities for young men and a chance to a year such as this, the Adams River sockeye run is the largest return of that species to a single river on the planet—a de facto wonder of the natural world.
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MLA 2015/2016
rotting salmon carcasses to offer kids an impromptu platform, or under towering cottonwoods from one of several water’s edge vistas, you’re instantly delivered an
leave for the terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems we —Leslie Anthony
MLA 2015/2016
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