Fall Creek Bull Trout Recovery
A coalition of government, industry, NGOs, and academia work to conserve Fall Creek’s bull trout.
Southwest of Rocky Mountain House in Fall Creek, a small population of native bull trout is at risk from cumulative effects in the area. With Freshwater Conservation Canada leading efforts to inspect and reclaim unofficial stream crossings in the area, Fall Creek was chosen by a coalition of fish scientists for a first-of-its-kind in Alberta: bull trout range expansion stocking. The group is composed of ourselves, the Alberta Conservation Association, departments of the federal and provincial governments, Freshwater Conservation Canada, and West Fraser, which provided funding for the project through the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta.
Range expansion stocking reduces the risk of local extirpation for small fish populations by establishing a new sub-population in a previously unoccupied part of their range. At Fall Creek, bull trout have been limited to the lower reaches by a large waterfall, leaving upper section of this watershed naturally fishless. The Fall Creek project team is working to establish a new sub-population of bull trout above the waterfall.
In 2025, we installed temperature dataloggers to confirm that it is suitable bull trout habitat and help select good sites for the stocking. This sets the team up to move fertilized eggs, lab-reared fry, and juvenile bull trout to upper Fall Creek in 2026. The Water and Fish Program’s Sam Chevalier will be doing a Master’s project tracking the effectiveness of each method. Successful methods could be replicated at other appropriate locations.
The Alberta Conservation Association, Alberta Environment and Protected areas, Alberta Forestry and Parks, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Freshwater Conservation Canada, FRIAA, fRI Research, West Fraser, and the University of Calgary begin working together on the project.
Watershed-scale preliminary fish habitat remediation plan created to document impacts and guide habitat rehabilitation in upper Fall Creek.
ACA leads a resurvey confirming a low bull trout population below the falls and none above.
FCC leads work to collect temperature data to inform future conservation stocking.
First temperature data processed, analyzed, and reported. Monitoring will continue throughout the project.
This University of Calgary project will track the effectiveness of different conservation stocking methods in Fall Creek.
