The more eyes on Cougar Creek, the better! Our volunteer Stream Monitors walk their portions of the creek regularly, keeping a lookout for both the positive (spawners, juvenile salmon, resident cutthroat trout, caddisflies, healthy vegetation, beaver activity) … and the negative (toxic spills, fish mortality, streambank erosion, invasive plants, litter, dogs in creek during spawning/rearing season).
If you happen to witness a spill or fish mortality, please report immediately. Take a photo and note the date and time, if you can.
Systematic collection of data such as peak flows, temperature, dissolved oxygen and bug counts has been a hit-or-miss activity over the decades, involving both Streamkeepers and the City of Delta. For more about this data, or if you’re interested in volunteering to collect it, please contact us.
From about mid-October to mid-December, when coho and chum salmon spawners return to Cougar Creek to lay their eggs in shallow redds (nests) and then die, our Stream Monitors do weekly counts to help us assess the health of fish populations. Returns of wild coho always outnumber returns of hatchery chum (despite large releases of chum fry) — yay, wild salmon! If you’d like to be involved in spotting or photographing spawners, please contact us.
