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Photo by Larry Pynn / PNG

The Little Campbell River is a hidden natural gem in a bursting metropolis of 2.5 million people.

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Every year, more than 5,000 salmon annually return to its waters, muscling their way up from the river mouth at Semiahmoo Bay near White Rock, surging beneath the bustling Highway 99 freeway, and splashing their way through a watershed spanning 72 square kilometres.

For more than six decades, volunteer club members — 800, at last count — have lovingly cared for the Little Campbell under an omnipresent cloud of human encroachment.

“It’s known as the most productive salmon and trout river for its size in the Lower Mainland,” says Bob Donnelly, president of the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club, which operates a productive hatchery built in 1984 on 11.5 hectares off 184th Street. “For the most part, it’s never been developed and that is what’s saved it.”

Yet it could also be lost in a flash with rampant development, he warns. “This whole thing is at risk. We’re trying to hold our finger in the dam right now and stop it from being destroyed.”