NEW RESEARCH PAPER PUBLISHED!

Over almost a decade, our Learning from Lake Sturgeon team has been working together to discover the patterns of namew movement and behaviour in a very special river. Known as Kah-pana-yow-sîpiy (river that widens) or the Mehkipwâmeštik-sîpiy (red willow river) in Ililîmowin, or the North French River in English, this beautiful river is free-flowing and without any industrial activity or permanent roads.

The beautiful and unforgettable free-flowing North French River!

And this week, our team published a research paper describing everything that we have learned so far! After years of work, and summarizing millions of detections from tagged namew, we documented in the research paper that the North French River provides all of the habitat that namew need, year-round. We identified some particularly important areas, like overwintering areas.

Moose Cree commonly refer to six seasons to describe the natural patterns of water and temperature throughout the year, and in this paper, we also documented how namew movement and behaviour changes throughout these six seasons. This is the first comprehensive look at how lake sturgeon move and behave year-round in a free-flowing river. By studying namew in this free-flowing river, we learn about how namew move and behave when they are able to move and migrate without obstructions, and it provides a benchmark to guide recovery for namew in more impacted and disturbed areas.

We discovered that namew were usually shallower and more active at night — except during the spring, when they were very active day and night. We also discovered that namew are most active and travel the longest distances in the spring and summer.

You can read the full paper here, or read more about the paper in this blog post on the WCS Canada website!