Shawanaga First Nation Research Reveals New Insights About Bats in the Biosphere

If you’ve sat around a campfire well after the sun has gone down, or looked out over the water as the moon rises and the stars reveal themselves overhead, you know that the world around you doesn’t just fall silent for the night. While we humans, and much of the wildlife we commonly see during […]

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Reptile Research Aims to Reduce Road Mortality Threat

It’s no secret that transportation corridors in the biosphere pose a significant threat to wildlife. Roads and railways cut through important habitats across eastern Georgian Bay, forcing wildlife to make dangerous crossings in order to carry out daily and seasonal movements. Furthermore, female turtles are often attracted to gravel road shoulders to lay their eggs, […]

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Stewardship Gathering Highlights Exciting Work Happening Across the Region in 2024

Have you ever been boating on the Bay and seen a team taking water samples? Been paddling along the shoreline and seen volunteers picking up litter or cutting down a stand of invasive Phragmites? How about driving to your cottage or favourite camping spot and seeing biologists stopped at the side of the road, carefully […]

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State of the Bay: Lands & Waters Gathering to Showcase Caretaking in Georgian Bay

Celebrating the most recent State of the Bay ecosystem health report, the Georgian Bay Mnidoo Gamii Biosphere (GBB) is hosting a State of the Bay: Lands and Waters Gathering to showcase research and caretaking work being done throughout the region. The gathering will be held November 29-30, 2023 at the Charles W. Stockey Centre in […]

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A One-Stop Shop for all Things Lake Huron: The 2022-2026 Lake Huron Lakewide Action and Management Plan

Are you interested in Lake Huron and its water quality? Do you want to know what is happening to protect this beautiful and unique ecosystem and what you can do to help? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may want to check out the 2022-2026 Draft Lake Huron Lakewide Action and […]

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Have Your Say on Proposed Revisions to Fishery Regulations in Ontario

Ontario’s catch-and-release regulations may be changing! A bulletin posted on February 17, 2023 on the Environmental Registry of Ontario introduces proposed changes to the Ontario Fishery Regulations, 2007, an annex of the Fisheries Act. These changes would allow anglers more leeway in photographing, measuring, and weighing their catch before releasing it. What are the current […]

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Should roads in the biosphere region be put on a low-sodium diet?

Ever since the 1950s, Canadians have been applying 5-7 million tonnes of salt every winter to make our roads, parking lots, driveways, and other public areas safer for cars and pedestrians. When the snow begins to melt and the rain falls, all that salt leaches into the soil or washes into waterways and accumulates in […]

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Amphibian Adaptations: Surviving Winter in the Biosphere

Amphibians – like other cold-blooded animals – endure the harshest winter conditions without an internal source of body heat. They have evolved some extraordinary mechanisms to survive. Amphibians brumate over the winter months. Similar to hibernation, brumating animals slow their metabolism and allow their body temperature to drop. Although the Biosphere’s amphibians all face similar […]

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Getting the Zebra and Quagga Mussel Problem Under Control  

We’ve learned about invasive zebra and quagga mussels in the biosphere before (see Zebra and Quagga Mussels: Georgian Bay’s Filter-Feeding Invaders). Now the question is, what is being done to control them? Zebra and quagga mussels belong to the genus Dreissena and are collectively referred to as Dreissenids. While they first arrived in the Great […]

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Fresh off the Press! The Latest State of the Great Lakes Report is Now Available

The State of the Great Lakes 2022 report, jointly prepared by Environment and Climate Change Canada and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, is now available! The report provides a comprehensive update on how each of the five lakes is addressing current and emerging water quality and ecosystem challenges. Readers can flip through the highlights […]

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Fireworks: After the Show

You never forget a great fireworks display. You might have been quite young, sitting on the shoulders of a loved one, looking up towards the stars, and then suddenly those stars were gone, replaced by bright lights and brilliant colours. As summer in the biosphere unfolds, plans are being made for summer celebrations. This may […]

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Homegrown Biodiversity: Helpful Hints for a Hands-off Approach

The last two articles shared the importance of biodiversity and how selecting native plants can enhance biodiversity on one’s property. We hope we have inspired individuals and families in the biosphere region to rethink their garden and landscaping choices with native plants and wildlife in mind. But let’s face it, not everyone has the time, […]

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Homegrown Biodiversity: A Quick Guide to Get Growing

Last month, in Homegrown Biodiversity: It’s Time to Get Growing!, we talked about how important native plants are for supporting biodiversity and healthy food webs. By planting or encouraging the growth of native plants to attract local insects and birds, you can help play an important role in maintaining local ecosystems. Choosing native plants that […]

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Sitting on the Dock of the Embayment

It is impossible to overstate the importance of phosphorus in the aquatic food web, as it forms the foundation of life in these waters. Everything from the tiniest phytoplankton all the way up to top predators like lake trout and loons rely on phosphorus. You may have heard the terms “nutrient-rich” and “nutrient-poor”. In the […]

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Masses of jelly-covered zooplankton are afloat in Ontario’s inland lakes

Clusters of a sticky zooplankton (Holopedium glacialis) are crowding out a previously abundant and ecologically important species (Daphnia spp.) in many Ontario inland lakes. The name for this phenomenon is “jellification,” and it’s an apt description for the masses of clear jelly spheres afloat in many provincial waters. To be clear, Holopedium is not an […]

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Learning From Fire: Studying Ecosystem Recovery Following Parry Sound 33

The Parry Sound 33 (PS33) wildfire burned over 11,000 hectares of the eastern Georgian Bay landscape between mid July and the end of October 2018. In the years since the fire, researchers from the McMaster University Ecohydrology Lab have been measuring burn severity and tracking ecosystem recovery at several sites in the Georgian Bay Biosphere, […]

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Weird and Whacky Water Wonders!

Georgian Bay and the surrounding inland lakes and rivers are full of wonderful surprises. Every summer we receive emails from residents and visitors with questions about the interesting things they see in the water. For this month’s blog post, we have compiled a list of some of the water wonders that we are most commonly […]

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The Very Hungry (LDD Moth) Caterpillar

If you have been outside recently exploring the trails in your area or just getting out in your yard, you have probably encountered numerous caterpillars and their handiwork. These are LDD caterpillars, also called gypsy moth caterpillars. The LDD moth (whose acronym arises from its Latin name Lymantria dispar dispar) originates in Asia and Europe. […]

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Spring Signals Spawning Season

With air temperatures on the rise, it won’t be long before maple sap isn’t the only thing running. Each spring, as the ice on our lakes and rivers goes out, a number of fish species begin their spawning runs. Many people in the region are familiar with the spawning runs of rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax) […]

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Stalking sturgeon, tracking trout: acoustic telemetry reveals fish on the move!

Walleye at the Seguin spawning bed

Have you ever wondered how far a lake sturgeon travels in a year? Where lake trout spend their winters? Or where lake whitefish go to spawn? If you have, you are not alone. Researchers across the Great Lakes basin have been asking similar questions for decades. More recently, they have had the help of some […]

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Miigwech! Thank You to Our Sponsors!

Thank you to our partners, sponsors, and many individual donors for your support and investment in a healthy Georgian Bay!