YVR Habitat Enhancement Assessment and Action Plan

Project Highlights

The Vancouver Airport Authority (Airport Authority) retained KWL and GL Williams & Associates (GLWA) to complete an assessment of salmon habitat restoration opportunities and identification and evaluation of high priority projects was one of the conditions of YVR’s recent Salmon-Safe certification.

Key components of the project included:

• Development of an initial long list of potential project opportunities;
• Site visits to investigate and collect field data on each opportunity;
• Developing high-level project concepts and factsheets for up to 15 projects identified;
• Assessing and evaluating habitat enhancement opportunities to prioritize projects;
• Conducting a feasibility study for 2–3 preferred projects;
• Conducting fish sampling and riparian/wetland mapping on YVR lands; and
• Support for internal and external stakeholder and First Nations engagement.

Three projects were identified for conceptual design and feasibility work and one of the projects is currently being designed for construction in 2021.