This website is devoted to the Shawnigan Creek watershed, located on southern Vancouver Island. It is an outgrowth of an Urban Salmon Habitat Program assessment of the lower part of the watershed that I helped perform as part of a group sustainability project for the Camosun College Environmental Technology program. I am posting a revised version of this report, which focuses on fisheries values in lower Shawnigan Creek, as Sections 1 and 2 of this website.

Following this original report are a series of appendices which contain expanded discussions of certain topics, data tables, graphs, and maps. There has been a great deal of information collected about the watershed over the years, but most of it is stored in paper and computer files scattered throughout a number of government agencies. This website attempts to sort out information that is relevant to this watershed, condense it and summarize it, and present it in terms the general public can understand.

I hope to add more appendices in the future. My intention is to use this website as a vehicle to present relevant information, idle speculation, and gossip about anything which might impact fisheries values within the Shawnigan watershed. In an area that is experiencing rapid urbanization, this is more complicated than it might seem. Almost anything that happens in the watershed - logging a patch of timber, paving a new driveway, pumping water out of the lake to feed a new subdivision - can have an effect on fisheries habitat downstream.

Although the USHP assessment began as a group project at Camosun College, I have revised it extensively and posted the website myself. Any opinions expressed here are my own. I would welcome any feedback from the public. If anyone wishes to contribute feedback, suggestions or corrections, please send me your comments.

Richard Best

Download Shawnigan Watershed Report