Making a splash: Fish are back in Toronto’s Don River

Brynn Coey, a supervisor with TRCA’s aquatic monitoring and management team talks about fish returning to the Don River.

Toronto’s Don River was once considered inhabitable and was even declared dead by an environmentalist group in 1969, but after extensive cleanup efforts, officials say that local wildlife are returning.

Toronto Conservation Authority announced last week that more than 20 fish species have been documented in the restored areas of the river, which is almost 38 km long and runs from Oak Ridges Moraine to the Keating Channel.

Efforts to restore the Don River focused on “naturalizing the river” first, with city infrastructure coming second, said Brynn Coey, a supervisor with TRCA’s aquatic monitoring and management team in an interview with CTV News Toronto on Tuesday.

Waterfront Toronto and the city led an environmental assessment focused on figuring out how to build infrastructure around the river.

Coey explained that making the river “meandering” was a focus. Local inspirations, she said, included the Rouge River and Duffins Creek. A variety of fish, frogs, birds and other animals have now been documented returning to the area, Coey said.

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“I don’t know who officially declares a river to be back alive, but if I can, I would like to say that,” Coey said, explaining that “fish are thriving.”

Various techniques were used to foster a fish friendly habitat including log tangles, shallow rocky shoals, gravel spawning beds, and refuges in the wetlands. Coey said that all of those features have worked to make the Don River more natural and easy for fish to live in.

“We are seeing so many new species in the area that we haven’t seen before, we knew they existed,” Coey said ”we’re now seeing them find this new river, this new habitat and utilize it for long periods of time.”

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Coey said that the fish are returning to the Don on their initiative, “finding the area all on their own.” She said that even during construction, “the fish didn’t seem to care.”

“The Northern Pike were coming, the Largemouth Bass were coming, we even have records of a Lake Trout in the area,” she said.

“They were so excited to make it up.”

Coey said that the Don likely won’t die again anytime soon, with diverse species being seen in a variety of life stages, indicating a healthy habitat.