It’s easy to understand the threat posed by climate change to polar bears.  But how many people think about what climate change means for fish?  Fish that thrive in cold rivers and lakes, such as brook trout, walleye, whitefish, and sturgeon, are an important cultural and economic resource that is deeply threatened by climate change.  How threatened?  That is what WCS Canada set out to discover by modeling not just the impacts of climate change, but of new roads and industrial development on fish in one of the planet’s most intact wild areas – Ontario’s Far North.  What we found is that climate change impacts such as warmer waters would leave these species highly vulnerable to additional impacts, such as habitat loss and fragmentation brought about by forestry, mineral exploration and mining and roads, particularly in the remote Far North. Our new report outlines potential outcomes for some key freshwater fish species and provides an example of how we can use proactive planning in the face of a changing climate and changing landscape to improve conservation of freshwater fish.

Article in the National post here.
Blog By Dr. Cheryl Chetkiewicz in National Geographic here.