Bow Habitat Station celebrates reopening with fish-friendly event
Bow Habitat Station now has 100,000 rainbow trout back on site.Calgarians got a chance to visit and feed some friendly fins at an event hosted by the Bow Habitat Station last month. “Welcome Back the Fish,” was literally that — a fish-centered event welcoming fish back into the hatchery after they were evacuated during the flood in June.
Tamara Unruh, public outreach program representative at the Bow Habitat Station, said over 250,000 fish were evacuated and despite electrical outages and volunteers knee-deep in water, every last fish was safely transported to the Cold Lake Fish Hatchery.
The station, which is located off Blackfoot Trail and skirts the Inglewood community, has been around for 40 years. While it has been a great facility for learning about ecosystems in Alberta, it was desperately in need of renovations.
Produced by: Anna Brooks
“The flood was almost a blessing in disguise,” Unruh joked. “Before this place looked kind of like an elementary school waiting room. We’ve renovated everything, and now we have all these really great interactive displays, electronic games and other learning tools children can touch and play with.”
Aside from an eerily realistic looking wolf (to scale), a giant beaver dam and samples of water from different aquatic systems in Alberta, the Bow Habitat Station is also working on rebuilding their fish population. They had their first shipment of eggs — 156,000 to be exact — arrive last week. By January, Unruh said they hope to have over a million fish in the hatchery.