From Hundreds of Crossings to a Clear Path Forward
Canadian Wildlife Federation | British Columbia
Project Control Support | Fish Passage Restoration Prioritization
The Challenge
The Canadian Wildlife Federation had an ambitious objective: identify opportunities to improve fish passage at railway crossings across British Columbia.
The challenge wasn't finding potential sites. There were hundreds of them.
An initial dataset ultimately included 447 prospective railway stream crossings across major salmon-bearing watersheds in British Columbia. Assessing every location in the field wasn't practicalor necessarily useful. The first challenge was determining where limited assessment resources could create the greatest value.
CWF needed more than a list of crossings in order to proceed. They needed a defensible way to decide where to look first, what warranted further investigation, and where restoration investment could realistically make a clear impact.
Our Approach
Cornice began by turning a large dataset into a decision-making framework.
Using watershed characteristics, stream gradients, satellite imagery, existing fisheries information, potential habitat gains, and our understanding of railway infrastructure and operations, prospective sites were screened and ranked before crews were sent into the field.
That prioritization informed a targeted field program across the Skeena, Bulkley, Kitimat, North Thompson and upper Fraser watersheds.
Each potential restoration opportunity was considered through three practical lenses:
Is fish passage actually being impeded?
What meaningful habitat could be gained?
Is there a realistic way to fix it within the constraints of an operating railway?
A technically desirable solution isn't useful if it can't reasonably be constructed, accessed, permitted or integrated into railway operations. Cornice's longstanding experience working within rail environments allowed ecological opportunity to be considered alongside access, infrastructure, constructability, cost and operational constraints.
The Result
The program ultimately assessed 114 sites in 24 field days. Of those, 88 were confirmed as stream crossings with railway structures.
From hundreds of prospective locations, nine sites emerged as high priorities for restoration.
Those sites represented opportunities ranging from approximately 100 metres to 15 kilometres of potentially high-value upstream habitat, with restoration feasibility ranging from straightforward opportunities to more complex interventions.
More importantly, CWF received something it didn't initially have:
a clear, defensible basis for deciding where to invest next.
The Impact
Good project control isn't about doing everything.
It's about knowing what deserves attention, what doesn't, and what needs to happen next.
Decades of fisheries and railway experience allowed Cornice to look beyond which crossings presented a potential fish passage issue to determine which opportunities were meaningful, achievable, and worth pursuing, turning hundreds of possibilities into a focused restoration program.