A massive rescue effort is underway in Banff National Park to save thousands of fish displaced by flooding in the mountain parks.
Parks Canada employees are fishing with electricity to safely remove fish from Cascade Creek.
The creek is almost 14 kilometres long and runs between Lake Minnewanka and the Bow River.
A section of the creek has been dry for 60 years until last month when the floods took it from a trickle to a raging river and fish from the Bow made their way into the water system.
The flow will slow up again soon and that will leave the fish trapped so they have to be rescued and relocated.
Electro Fishing is a slow process and involves stunning the fish with an electrical current so they can be netted and put in a container for transfer.
A team of 80 has been working for the past three days to remove the fish one at a time.
“We're actually very excited about this because it's a large scale effort to make sure that we're having a minimal impact on the environment, the potential for fish mortalities is here, and we feel we can minimize that and that's why this is such an important effort,” said Glenn Isaac with TransAlta.
The water is slowing by the minute in Cascade Creek and that is accelerating the efforts to get the fish out.
(With files from Kevin Fleming)
