HHL Celebrates World Wildlife Day!

Written By Julia Willsie

Today we celebrate World Wildlife Day!  World Wildlife Day is a UN holiday that celebrates the world’s plants and animals!  This year’s theme is “Partnerships for Wildlife Conservation” and this theme could not be more relevant to the work of our team and lab values. Our work – and the work of conservation and restoration - is simply not possible without help of partners! This year we want to highlight and give a special thanks to Walpole Island First Nation’s Bkejwanong Eco-Keepers (BEK), St Clair Region Conservation Authority (SCRCA), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA), Natural Resource Solutions Inc. (NRSI), FishCAST, and funding sources such as Mitacs (Mitacs) for their early and ongoing support of our mussel team both in and out of the field.  These organizations provide training, advice, field assistance, funding, equipment, and more to our team and have supported 4 different master’s students in our lab and multiple undergraduate student researchers with summer jobs.

Our work is showing that freshwater mussels are the cornerstone of successful habitat restoration and species conservation. HHL Alumni Roland Eveleens published a synthesis on the effectiveness of mussel restoration efforts, showing that the lack of coordinated actions across a watershed may be one key factor limiting their recovery. His overall thesis confirmed significant complementarity between mussels and other benthic macroinvertebrates, using datasets from partner organizations and our own to test these relationships. Two of our current graduate students, @Julia and @Lauren, completed their field seasons last summer.  Julia’s project focuses on harmonizing both mussel and host fish data within the Sydenham River watershed; her field work was supported by both DFO and SCRCA last summer!  Lauren’s work focuses on freshwater mussel species at risk translocations as a form of mitigation, with a focus in the Grand and Thames Rivers in southwestern Ontario.  She was supported in the field by DFO and GRCA last summer.  Without the assistance or support of these groups, much of our field work would not be possible.

This World Wildlife Day, we want to not only thank our partners but also bring awareness to endangered and threatened fauna as well.  Freshwater mussels are some of the most extirpated species on the planet with 65% being considered endangered, threatened, or at-risk.  They continue to see declines in populations due to factors such as habitat modification, pollution, climate change, and invasive species.  These creatures are sessile, meaning that they are unable to move themselves very far or very easily and they rely on host fish for reproduction, making them even more vulnerable to extirpation.  Freshwater mussels are extremely important to aquatic systems in that they provide many different ecosystem services to the habitats that they live in.  This includes filtering water, providing substrate for other organisms, being a food source within the habitat, and having cultural importance to us as humans.  Because of their importance, they are deemed fish under federal regulations and many consider them keystone species.   

Reference

Eveleens, R.A. & Febria, C.M. (2022). A systematic review of the global freshwater mussel restoration toolbox. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 32( 1), 186– 198.

*Artwork by Julia Willsie