How is the St. Lawrence River doing after all the effort that has been devoted to improving its health and restoring its former uses to the population? Providing answers to such questions as this from citizens, environmentalists and experts seeking objective, reliable information is the reason the State of the St. Lawrence Monitoring Program was launched.

Of course, many reports have been written already on the St. Lawrence ecosystem, but never as part of a long-term environmental monitoring program. In this case, six government partners — Environment Canada, the Ministère du Développement durable, de l’Environnement et des Parcs du Québec, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Ministère des Ressources naturelles et de la Faune du Québec, the Canadian Space Agency and Parks Canada Agency  — have pooled their expertise to report regularly on the state of the St. Lawrence River and how it is changing.

Monitoring activities are based on environmental indicators selected as signs or signals of trends in the main components of the ecosystem: water, riverbed, banks, biological resources and uses. To date, 22 monitoring activities have been selected. They include such things as the state of health of a bird population, the level of contamination of water or sediment, the surface area of freshwater wetlands, the presence of invasive species or the safety of potential swimming sites. By monitoring the changes in several indicators at once, scientists are able to overview the system as a whole on an ongoing basis. Several different means are used to study these indicators, particularly airborne and satellite remote sensing.

Initial monitoring results for the St. Lawrence were released in early 2003. They show that the river is in better shape now than it was during the second half of the 20th century, but that it remains vulnerable. Contamination by toxic substances has diminished; certain animal populations have recovered or are recovering; fish are generally suitable for consumption; and water quality is fairly good. Furthermore, the system still supports vast wetlands that provide breeding and feeding habitats for abundant, diverse forms of wildlife. Nevertheless, bacterial contamination still adversely affects certain recreational uses, contaminants in sediments still pose a long-term health threat, and certain human activities continue to exert a negative impact on the ecosystem.

This monitoring program will assist stakeholders in making decisions and adopting measures aimed at protecting ecosystems and recovering former uses of the river. A communications component has been established to disseminate information through fact sheets, summary documents, forums and a Web site, among other things. A series of 16 fact sheets on indicators and a summary pamphlet entitled Overview of the State of the St. Lawrence River were published in 2003. Just as planned in the program’s schedule of dissemination of results, the Rendez-vous St. Lawrence 2006 public forum is being held this year to provide stakeholders with updated information on water quality, the state of wetlands and invasive plant species, freshwater fish communities, sediment in Lake Saint-Pierre, seabird populations, and shellfish water quality.     

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