Trip report: Mamquam River and spawning channels, October 27, 2019

In the 2040 Squamish Official Community Plan, objective 10.13 is: ” Establish, maintain, and enhance natural habitat connectivity and greenway corridors for wildlife movement.”  An essential step to help reach this objective is to get data on the corridors that large wildlife are currently using within the District of Squamish.

On this beautiful sunny Sunday, we met Amber and  Joey and had a chance to talk about their new initiative on wildlife movement.  Carl had found a pine marten road kill that morning.  It was a beautiful animal and a sad situation, but relevant to this new project about connectivity along green space in various areas of the District of Squamish, such as alongside the Mamquam River.

As part of the outing we practiced using the iNaturalist app  to record our observations of the biodiversity we saw. Although people who frequent the area have seen a bear recently looking for salmon along the river, we did not see any large wildlife during our afternoon.

When:  Sunday, October 27, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Where: Park on the dike by the dog pound, off Government Road at the north side of Mamquam River. See map.
What:  Walk the trail from the Mamquam/Squamish River confluence and upstream along the Mamquam spawning channels

Photo above: Chris Dale photographed this coyote in the Estuary in May 2015. Coyotes have often been seen along the Mamquam spawning channels this walk visited, but we don’t have a good photograph taken there.