Buckingham Creek Restoration Almost Complete At Duluth’s Enger Park

The city of Duluth has 16 trout streams and the one with the coldest water is Buckingham Creek, which runs through Duluth's Enger Park Golf Course. Construction in the 1980s altered thousands of feet of the stream, much to the detriment of native brook trout.

However, recently work needed to be done at Enger so the City of Duluth partnered with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and other resource management agencies to go the extra step.

They not only improved Enger Park Golf Course, but they worked together to use that as an opportunity to restore Buckingham Creek.

The Minnesota DNR Announces Restoration Project Is Nearing Completion

According to the DNR, native brook trout will soon benefit from improved habitat as the Buckingham Creek stream restoration project nears completion.

Recently, the city needed to make some improvements to the Enger Park Golf Course irrigation system, so it decided to work with others to restore the trout stream at the same time.

The DNR says that partners, including the city of Duluth, South St. Louis Soil & Water Conservation District, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and the Minnesota DNR worked collaboratively to restore more than 3,000 feet of stream channel through the city’s golf course.

The ongoing construction project re-meanders the stream out of a ditch and redirects it around ponds that introduced warm water to the stream. The project also replaces perched culverts that are migration barriers with bridges to restore fish passage while enhancing the playability of the golf course and greatly improving the ecological function and aesthetic beauty of Buckingham Creek.

Before the start of construction, Minnesota DNR fisheries crews relocated more than 150 trout from the construction area to an upstream cold-water refuge.

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Leslie George, DNR Northeast Region fisheries manager, points out that the City of Duluth was not obligated to restore the creek, but they understood the value of the project. “By working collaboratively, we have been able to apply local expertise to multiple city, state, and federal funding sources, and work together to improve outdoor recreation and critical natural resources in Duluth”, she said.

Funding for the project came from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the Minnesota Legacy Amendment – Clean Water Legacy Partners Grant Program, and the city of Duluth.

The video above gives terrific oversight of the project and the reasons it was such an important thing to do for the community and the environment.

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