By Steve Hubrecht
Precious little can be done to get rid of whirling disease now that it’s arrived in the East Kootenay, but residents and visitors must remain extra vigilant to keep it from spreading any further and to keep out other invasive species.
That message came from Jeannette Goulet, Parks Canada aquatic invasive species regional coordinator for the mountain national park.
The Pioneer spoke with Goulet last week following the announcement that Parks Canada would keep all waterbodies in Kootenay National Park (and nearby Yoho National Park) closed for public access for another year. Parks Canada issued a statement saying the extended closures are meant to help prevent the spread of the parasite that causes whirling disease (reported in the March 28 Pioneer).
Goulet shed more light and gave more details on what exactly the federal agency plans to do during the closures, explaining “we are going to do a lot more monitoring in the coming year.”
A lot of that monitoring will be in Kootenay National Park, which thus far has not been tested as extensively as Yoho National Park. That makes sense, since it was in Yoho that the first cases of whirling disease ever found in B.C. were confirmed last year. Parks Canada did do some testing in Kootenay National Park as well, but unlike in Yoho, that testing did not find whirling disease. Now, with a bit more time on its hands, Parks Canada wants to give Kootenay National Park a more thorough check too.
“We’ve not had a chance to test Kootenay as much as we’d like, so that will be a focus this season,” said Goulet, adding there will also be more testing in Yoho.
“We want to get a better sense of the distribution of this parasite,” she said.
Map depicting test results for the parasite causing whirling disease in Yoho National Park.
Yoho WhirlingDiseaseSamplingResults_20240111
To that end Parks Canada will deploy several techniques — including using a sentinel cage, testing wild fish, and conducting environmental DNA sampling.
A sentinel cage is a cage with stocked fish, which will be placed in a waterbody in Kootenay National Park. The fish are fed and raised for a set time period without being let out of the cage. At the end of the time period, the fish are tested to see if they have contracted whirling disease as a result of being in that particular water body. Wild fishing testing is more straightforward: catch the fish, take a sample and test for whirling disease. Environmental DNA sampling involves Parks Canada staff taking water samples to see if the DNA of the parasite causing whirling disease is present in the water itself.
The samples are sent to a lab for testing. Goulet couldn’t say precisely when the results will come back, but did explain that last year, while operating under a roughly similar timeframe, results came back in September.
“So likely we’ll know sometime in the fall or early winter,” she said, adding “we will use that information to inform further decision about what measures we need to put in place.”
Goulet outlined that although the sampling techniques have been chosen, the exact location for testing has not been finalized.
Does this mean that the waterbody closures in Kootenay National Park (and Yoho) are likely to be extended again in March 2025?
Goulet couldn’t say for sure, but did tell the Pioneer that “we will continue monitoring for years to come” and that any action, such as further extending the closures, will depend on the results of testing this summer as well as on additional information from the B.C. provincial government about the bigger picture of whirling disease in the province.
Mountain whitefish are also susceptible to the disease.
PHOTO PITER1977/GETTY IMAGES
Parks Canada only has jurisdiction over waterbodies within the national parks. But rivers don’t just stop at park boundaries — they are connected to (and indeed part of) much larger water systems that spread throughout B.C. The B.C. government has jurisdiction over those, and with whirling disease having spread further than previously thought through the Kicking Horse River system in Yoho, the two agencies may need to work together.
When whirling disease was first detected by Parks Canada last year it initially appeared as though it was just within Emerald Lake. That raised the possibility of eradicating all the fish in Emerald Lake to curb the disease. Parks Canada had already done just that in Alberta (where whirling disease has been present for several years) in Little Herbert Lake in Banff National Park, using a chemical called rotenone.
“It was something we thought about for a few months,” said Goulet.
But that plan was tossed aside when further testing in Yoho revealed that whirling disease is in fact present at other spots along the Kicking Horse River, including below Wapta Falls. Eradication using rotenone is only effective in relatively small geographic areas.
In Yoho, whirling disease “is already too widespread” for eradication to work, explained Goulet.
What else can Parks Canada do to combat the disease?
“Unfortunately the options are limited once it’s in the system,” said Goulet.
There are some places south of the border where authorities have simply let the disease run its course through the ecosystem “but that takes decades,” she explained. And, letting that happen decimates local fish population; the disease has extremely high mortality rates (upwards of 90 per cent for young fish) in iconic fish species such as Kokanee salmon, west slope cutthroat trout and mountain whitefish.
Residents and visitors alike now play the biggest role in containing whirling disease as much as it can be contained.
“The main way it is spread is through recreation activities and human movement,” emphasized Goulet. Typically this is done inadvertently by people using their watercraft (boats, standup paddle boards, canoes or kayaks) in different waterbodies without properly cleaning, draining and drying the crafts between uses. It can also be spread in mud on fishing gear or other outdoor gear.
You need to clean, drain and then dry your watercraft for a minimum of 48 hours in B.C., Alberta, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. If you are coming from other provinces, then it’s clean, drain and then dry for 30 days.
That’s to help prevent the spread of other undesired invasive species, such as zebra and quagga mussels, which are already present in the Prairies and eastern Canada.
“Prevention is the best bet. Even though whirling disease is here, there are a whole bunch of other invasive species knocking at the door,” said Goulet.
