How this fish 'slide' helps keep invasive species out of critical habitats

Ties Can you catch this? Oh, we found one. What is that? So it’s an invasive species. Experts at the Royal Botanical Gardens are sorting out fish. I can run any combination of five inbound baskets. So fish trying to get into the March to spawn and two outbound baskets. So fish trying to leave the marsh. We’re doing this because Coots Paradise Marsh is one of the last remaining big wetlands along the shore of Lake Ontario at the western end. How often do you check the baskets? So right now we’re doing twice a day every day. It’s critical habitat for fish spawning for birds. And yet the carp that we’re trying to keep out over the last hundred years or so has really knocked back the aquatic vegetation, the ones that are invasive. What do you do with them afterwards? You’re going to just go down the water slide into the Hamilton Harbor. One of RBG’s biggest job is to restore Coots Paradise Marsh. Keeping the carp out of the wetland is key to that. We send them back to where they came from, and so they’re cut off from their spawning grounds. Wow, We found some. How many did you find? If the carp were not here, what would this area look like? Right. Well, if you look at Coos Paradise Marsh right now, it looks like a shallow lake. But 200 years ago, it would have been completely covered by cattails and wild rice. You couldn’t see the water. It would have been plants. And that those plants are food for everybody in the ecosystem, from the people here to the animals, the birds, the fish. This Fish Way has been running for over 20 years. With the help of these ecologists, Coots Paradise Marsh is transforming back to its historical cell. But the fishery rebirth has been slow, limited by setbacks as urban population and pollution continue to grow.