Focus on Fellows: William Twardek

What do those solutions look like?

WT: There's lots of great efforts stemming from First Nations and industry to try and identify some of the key solutions to allow more salmon to make it upstream. They've implemented some small things with the existing structure - mainly little design tweaks in the way they operate the fish ladder to help more salmon make it through.

Do you have a sense of how impactful it's been so far?

WT: There's still a lot more work to be done. The tricky thing is that the monitoring that was done during my PhD research was on the back end of the stronger years of the salmon run. It’s tanked to 10% of the levels seen in the last several decades. With so few fish around, it becomes really tricky to get a quantitative understanding of how well the changes have worked.

Where did your interest in the subject come from?

WT: I was always interested in salmon as a young fish biologist starting down the research path. Lots of the opportunities through my lab ended up being out west, where there's lots of interest in understanding the conservation of Pacific salmon.

I started working on projects relating to Steelhead in Smithers where we tried to understand the interactions between catch and release anglers and the welfare of steelhead. That was my first taste of working out West and working with salmon.

And I used a lot of the same technology that I ended up using during my PhD, so it was a first step to learning how we understand and quantify fish behaviour.

And what are you up to these days?

WT: I'm a fishery scientist with Ecofish Research, part of Trinity Consultants Water and Ecology Team. We work on a range of different projects in different sectors, providing technical advice and studies to help support decision making and assess the impact of projects on the environment.

Given your earlier point about the decline in the fish population, what major challenges are our fish populations facing today?

WT: There's ups and downs across different species in different regions, but I think generally we're seeing a decline in in salmon across Canada. There's lots of different reasons for that, I think.

There’s increasing recognition of the marine environment and concerns associated with how we're consuming fish. Then there’s changes to the climate that are also affecting marine ecosystems. All of these are having a big influence on salmon. There's lots of effort being allocated towards understanding that and trying to make improvements where we can, recognising that some of these are really wicked, challenging problems that will take a lot of collaboration across borders to try and fix.

A really positive step has been increasing recognition of Indigenous Peoples, Communities, and Governments across Canada as stewards and Rights holders to their territories. These Nations are being recognized as leaders in addressing the biodiversity crisis and are making impactful changes. It's also creating really valuable partnerships. That's really a step forward in how we can progress conservation across the country.

The other thing I think that's worthwhile to bring up is that a lot of these problems that we're facing require more strategic planning and landscape level thinking. There needs to be this link between conservation efforts and development.

There's a massive role for conservation groups like WCS Canada to try and encourage that higher level thinking and strategic planning. There needs to be cross-jurisdictional level planning and agreement to do things efficiently. I think we are doing a better job overall - we're seeing more and more of these international groups being formed, so I think that's a positive step forward for some of these problems that cross geographies.

Conservation groups can also really make a difference in rallying the public to continue to be advocates. Changing public perception is key to the political will to make change through stronger policy.

Thinking towards the future of your career, what would be your dream project to work on?

WT: I've been fortunate that when I finished school and I joined Ecofish, there was lots of interest and opportunity to continue working in the area my PhD covered. So I've been able to keep working with the individuals, groups and fish in that community. When I think forward in my career, if I could continue to work in the North on conservation problems - that would be a really rewarding career.

Meaningful change is happening. I hope we get to a point where that's the norm, and I hope to be a part of supporting that.

It’s so great that you’ve been able to stay so close to your passions! What are your words of wisdom for young people who are seeking careers in conservation?

WT: There's a ton of diversity in the types of jobs and career paths that you can take that you might not realise when you're a student. I was always thinking about research as the end point, yet I ended up going a slightly different route. Still conducting research, but in more of a consulting and applied context than a more traditional academic route.

There are all sorts of different things you can do, from the person collecting samples of water or invertebrates from a stream, to the consultant generating science supporting regulatory decision making. There’re policy makers, biologists, NGOs … and I think in each of those different contexts, there's positive change that you can make.

My main advice would be to be open to new experiences!

Given all the challenges facing our fish, what gives you hope for the future of conservation in Canada? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

WT: When I think about species and their history, they have been around for a while! Species are resilient, ecosystems can be resilient. They've withstood a lot of change over the decades, centuries and millennia. So that does give me some optimism that the system can handle change.

I'm not sure that we're doing enough now to prepare or try to avoid some of the conservation crises that we're facing and will continue to face. But we've seen it with things like the response to the pandemic. Humans can make these substantial and necessary changes when it's deemed absolutely necessary to do so.

While we need to be making change now, I think there will be a point when things start to become even more severe and acute. And I think at that point, we will, as humans adapt once our survival comes into question.

I guess I'm hoping that our ingenuity will pull through in the end and hopefully it won't be too late!