DFO Fish Research Project – Community Engagement

As you may be aware, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is conducting a study in the Nipissing River and Crow River watersheds in Algonquin Provincial Park (see map below). To date, they have been mapping and sampling fish habitat throughout their study areas as well as capturing and tagging brook trout in a number of locations. These tags are read by receiver arrays installed in the river systems to study fish movement and watershed connectivity. The researchers plan to expand the tagging to other fish species and to install additional receiver arrays within these watersheds.

DFO’s project budget includes a total of $9,500 for Indigenous community engagement. The researchers have proposed the use of an online survey and one-on-one or group meetings with AOO elders/knowledge holders to gather information to support their project planning. The attached document shows the community engagement funding allocation plan as approved by the RPWG on February 8^th, 2023: $50 for completion of the online survey and $200 honoraria for meeting participants (includes travel costs). We propose that total lump sums be transferred to communities who can then disseminate the funding to individual survey/meeting participants, as appropriate.

Survey
I have copied the link to the online survey that you can pass along to your community members as you see fit: https://forms.gle/5djJMBRb5DaGant46.
We ask that participants please complete the survey by Friday March 15, 2023. Please keep in mind that the $50 compensation allocation is based on an estimate of 30 completed surveys. If more surveys are completed, we may need to reduce this allocation to ensure all participants receive compensation.

Meetings
We have planned for up to four participants per community. We kindly request that the names and contact information of any community members interested in meeting with the researchers be provided to me by Wednesday March 8, 2023. The researchers are available for up to 5 in-person meetings, so if there is interest from all communities, we will work to arrange joint community group meetings.


Lastly, I have also linked two information sharing consent forms (one for survey participants and one for meeting participants) to be filled out by participants and returned to me.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.