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Lost Lagoon has been a freshwater lake for 100 years, a long time in human memory, but just the single beat of a hummingbird’s wings in terms of natural history.

Today, otter Susie and otter Sam frolic to the amusement of tourists, carp splash the surface as they slurp food from the bottom, turtles sun themselves on rocks and logs, the beavers are busy. Yet none are native to the lake, which was an intertidal salt marsh until the Stanley Park causeway was completed in 1917.

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The Vancouver Park Board is taking the first wee steps to examine whether it would be feasible to one day reconnect Lost Lagoon with Coal Harbour.

“The question is, on a technical level, could we do it?” Nick Page, park board biologist, said. “It’s not, should we?”

Since the park board is restoring the 1936 50th-jubilee fountain in Lost Lagoon, it felt it’s a good time to call for tenders for a survey of the lake bottom and surrounding shoreline, with an eye toward perhaps someday reconnecting the lagoon to the saltwater ecosystem to recreate a salt marsh.