The Bowmanville Creek fish ladder represents years of fundraising, planning and meeting regularity requirements to build a fish passageway providing larger fish with the opportunity to travel upstream and spawn.
For years the Bowmanville Creek fish ladder was a community dream.
An earlier passageway had been provided at the Goodyear Dam for trout but with the introduction of Chinook salmon into Ontario waterways, it was soon apparent larger fish could not manage the jump. They got stuck on the concrete dam and died. The estimate was that only one per cent of the large salmon made it up the creek to spawn.
To make the new fish bypass passageway a reality, Valleys 2000 volunteers worked through a maze of regulations from a number of different agencies charged with protecting the waterways — the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority.
It was officially opened 16 December 2013 and is located on the Bowmanville Creek approximately 1 km north of the baseline parking lot. In the spring and fall the public enjoys the breathtaking sight of migrating fish passing through the new fish passageway on their way to their spawning grounds.
