Redside Dace: Canada's jumping minnow

In this episode of the Rarefied podcast, host Meredith Meeker explores the conservation efforts for the redside dace, a critically endangered fish found in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Meeker interviews Kat Lucas, outreach and communications coordinator at Ontario Streams, who explains the threats facing this unique minnow and the initiatives in place to preserve its habitat. The discussion highlights the importance of clean, clear, and cool water for the redside dace's survival, as well as the role of environmental education and community involvement in conservation. Lucas shares success stories and practical tips on how individuals can contribute to protecting this species, emphasizing the ecological and personal significance of healthy freshwater ecosystems.

https://www.ontariostreams.on.ca/

00:00 Introduction to Rarefied Podcast

00:32 Exploring the Greater Toronto Area

00:47 The Red Side Dace: An Endangered Species

01:41 Challenges and Conservation Efforts

01:51 Meet Kat Lucas from Ontario Streams

03:16 Understanding the Red Side Dace

05:33 Human Impact on Red Side Dace Habitat

08:26 Conservation Strategies and Success Stories

23:24 How You Can Help

34:08 Kat Lucas' Journey and Final Thoughts

38:02 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

Meredith 0:23

This is rarefied the podcast where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. I'm your host, Meredith Meeker. And today we are exploring the greater Toronto area. My hometown. You might not think that an endangered species would call it the GTA home, but there is a surprising amount of wildlife in Canada's biggest city. If you know where to look. So we are going to submerge ourselves into the wonderful world of the red side days. Globally. And in the United States, the red side days is considered vulnerable. Here in Canada, it is only found in an Ontario where it is considered critically imperiled. It is both listed federally and provincially as endangered. I was first introduced to this rare species. When I worked in consulting. I was helping to monitor water quality during construction of a new development. There was a river running next to the construction site that was mapped as spread side days. Habitat. Of course, because there was such a sensitive species. The monitoring requirements were pretty strict and the conditions on construction. When well, above and beyond normal measures. Which certainly didn't make this fish very popular and. It was used more of a curse word than a celebrated find. Despite how the construction industry feels about this fish. We are going to learn all about how cool. And unique. The small minnow is. We have cat Lucas here with us today to share her knowledge and her passion. Kat is the outreach and communications coordinator at Ontario streams. Kat develops and delivers environmental education programming and is excited to bring her passion for conservation education and connecting others with the environment to Ontario streams. Ontario streams is a small environmental charity based out of York region. Which is in the GTA. They lead habitat restoration initiatives across. The area, including improving local rivers. By helping riverbanks through plantings. Litter collection monitoring to see how healthy different ecosystems are across the city. And of course there's a lot of outreach as well, which brings us to today's podcast. Amazing. Thank you. And we're here to talk about red side days. So this is a smaller fish that people may or may not be familiar with. If people have been introduced to it, it might not be in the most positive way. There's a lot of talk in the news about highways and this fish. So I'm really excited to chat with you and really break down what is a red side days? Why is it important and, and what people can do to help? So. Maybe let's start off with, what is a red side daisy?

Kat Lucas 3:19

So red side dace, they are a minnow, so a small fish that is found here in Ontario. About 80 percent of their population in Ontario is within the Lake Ontario watershed and the greater Toronto area. So. been here for a very long time and their habitat that they, that they live in has been undergoing some serious significant changes. As you alluded to, a lot of human activity that can be impacting them. They are pretty small usually no more than about 12 centimeters long. And they have a bright red stripe red side, bright red on their side. And then dace is just another word for a small fish. A unique fish. feature that they have is that they have an upturned mouth. So it just means that their, their mouth is pointing upwards, which to how they eat and what they eat. They are the only minnow in Canada who actually jumps up out of the water to catch their prey. And they enjoy eating things like flies and mosquitoes, terrestrial insects. are insectivores. And they live in our, in our small cold or specifically cool water streams the greater Toronto area, generally in smaller streams, and they need clean, clear and cool water to survive. But they, unfortunately, as many of the topics of your podcast, experiencing decline, and they've been considered endangered. here in Ontario since about 2009, provincially, and then federally listed back in 2018.

Meredith 4:58

Yeah, I'm really happy we're talking about this fish, partly because, you know, when people think of endangered animals, they're thinking, you know, jungles, they're thinking forest, they're thinking away from people, whereas this fish is. Like you said, the epicenter in or the population concentrations are like, right in the GTA where most people are. Most people, though, have probably not heard of it. Most people have definitely not seen it. Like you said, it's, it's pretty endangered and you're talking also about, you know, it needs that cool, clear water. So what is it about. You know, our land, you like how we are developing the GTA that's make that's not sustainable or not compatible with how the red side days. Yeah,

Kat Lucas 5:47

So again, bringing up that cool, clear and clean water. Those are those three really important things for the red side days. And with human activity, we are impacting all kinds of wildlife here in the Greater Toronto area. But in terms of clear water, they need water that they can see through as they are catching these insects that are flying above the surface of the water. If the water is looking like chocolate milk, they are not going to be able to see their prey through the water that are up above the surface. Making it very hard for them to catch what they need to eat. They also need clean water, so water that is free from contaminants. One thing that could be impacting them would be things like road salt and the amount of road salts that we put on our roads and our driveways and parking lots and all of these hard surfaces on when we see that snow start to melt in the spring, and it carries all of that salt that is on these hard surfaces into our local waterways where it can then evaporate. Increase the amount of salt in our water, which is not good for any of our freshwater fish. And then lastly, cool water. So they really do not like water that is more than 20 degrees Celsius. And often here in the Greater Toronto Area, we've got a bit of an urban heat sink happening. So these buildings all around, whether they're office buildings, shopping malls, schools, homes, creating this heat sink. This area where we have a lot of hot air trapped in our cities, and that can then translate into creating these warmer temperatures and water as well.

Meredith 7:26

I think for people who are familiar with GTA or really anybody who's living in an urban environment, if you're standing beside a stream and there's been either a major rain event or a snowfall, odds are that water is not looking like you want to take a swim, like, it's pretty chocolatey, it's pretty gross and who knows what is in it. So, yeah, road salt, especially this time of year where we're chatting in December road salt is. Thick out there right now. I'm in Ottawa. So it's already been applied for, you know, we're going on a month already. So it's. Really can build up and it disappears somehow, not many people think about where that's going. So those are some pretty major threats and, you know, people aren't going to take down office buildings or, you know, development isn't going to stop. So what can we do to help protect?

Kat Lucas 8:26

with with red side days, we're seeing that there are two key sectors that that could be changing a grand scale. So looking at agricultural practices, whether people are the flows of river on their property as well as seeing agricultural runoff different kinds of pesticides or fertilizers that might end up in our waterways and then also sometimes we see this loss of stream side vegetation. So with the red side dace, As they are jumping up out of the water to catch these flies and mosquitoes and other terrestrial insects. Those sorts of bugs are attracted to rivers that have a lot of overhanging plants. So often things like shrubs or wildflowers that hang up over the surface of the water become resting spots for some of these terrestrial insects. And then that's when they're brought nice and close to those red sided dace. So. are things that could be changed more considerate these different agricultural practices. But then on the flip side, too, we have urbanization and urban development that are also leading to some of these impacts that we're seeing on Redside Days habitat. Things like critical habitat loss, where Places that they used to be able to find everything they need to survive or are just not there anymore, whether we're building these new neighborhoods, new shopping malls, new schools, all along our rivers in our watersheds that can have this impact to, and with a lot of urbanization often becomes, lot more humans, which can sometimes lead to a little bit more pollution or littering, again, is having that impact on the clean water that the red side dace need.

Meredith 10:16

So those wildflowers that vegetation is really important to help bring their food source to them and making sure that they've got enough prey. But I've also heard that your trees can play a really important role and also controlling the temperature of the water. Is that correct? True, or is that a little bit overblown?

Kat Lucas 10:37

It is true, however, for red side dace, specifically, the The priority specifically for red side dace, they're looking to see more shrubs and wildflowers planted, so kind of lower lower lying vegetation rather than big tall trees. And again, that's just to help bring in their food source with trees. They're great to create shade along our rivers. However, with their branches so, so far up in the air, it's not creating that that resting spot for the red side days food source. So definitely trees are important, especially in our urban heat sinks. But for red side days specifically, they'd prefer if we planted more shrubs and wild flowers.

Meredith 11:17

I love shrubs and wildflowers too, so I'm not opposed. I mean, trees are great too, but I love my wildflowers. They are so beautiful and they attract so many great pollinators. So it's nice that if you have a stream, it could be a win win. You could be helping the fish as well as, you know, the terrestrial insects as well. You also mentioned that You know, some of the strongholds are critical habitat for these species are either degrading or aren't there anymore. How do we know that? How do we monitor red side days? Like, what does that look like?

Kat Lucas 11:49

Great question. And at Ontario Streams we do a lot of different activities to try and promote the protection and rehabilitation of. A lot of different kinds of aquatic habitats, including rivers, streams, wetlands and then the riparian zone, those stream side areas as well. And for our monitor monitoring programs for our local wildlife, for our aquatic species we have two different kinds of, of monitoring that we mainly do. One being benthic invertebrate studies. So benthic invertebrates, they are, that's just a fancy way of saying bugs that live at the bottom of our local rivers. So we're able to monitor and evaluate which kind of species or types of these different insects we're finding in our rivers. And that gives us some insights about. the water quality. And as we know, red site days are pretty picky. So using these methods here, looking at the different kinds of insects we find, it's able to give us an idea of whether this water might be healthy enough or have great water quality for the red site days. On the other hand, we do electrofishing and this is actually to evaluate populations or presence or absence of different species of fishes. with electrofishing, basically we wear kind of like an almost Ghostbusters sort of outfit. We've got a backpack made of metal on us. That has a battery attached to it, and that battery then connects to some wires that we put into the water, and we then kind of shock the water, add up the electricity to the water, causes any fish that are nearby to be temporarily stunned and then we will Scoop the fish up put them in a recovery bucket and we're able to take that over to the shore and very quickly Do some assessments of what sort of fishes we're finding at taking some measurements weight and length of these fishes just gather this data to help us better understand to help us understand what sort of fishes are in this water, what's that community makeup, like you said the average person is not looking out in their local rivers, they have not seen a red side dace before, I have never seen a red side dace before I've been working doing outreach about them for quite a few years now, and never seen one in real life. But, as someone who's in this field I am having these opportunities to at least try and see them and monitor. However, for the average person who's just out for a nature walk they're not going to have that opportunity. Yeah.

Meredith 14:27

I've done electro fishing. It is a wild concept, you know, electrocute the water and get in it. I mean, yes, you have a lot of safety gear,

Kat Lucas 14:35

A

Meredith 14:35

but this is

Kat Lucas 14:36

yeah, a lot of PPE.

Meredith 14:38

yeah, this is not something that the average person is picking up and and doing on their own if they're curious about what's in their watershed, leave it to the professionals, but it is. Really cool if you do get to see it, because like you said, you know, you get to really see what different fish are living in an area, which, you know, a lot of these places are too shallow. You're not going to be snorkeling in them, or not many people have like wildlife cams. They're sinking in their rivers. So it's really cool, really important work. So it's nice that, that you get to do that. And I've, I've heard that, you know, I've also had other friends who've done some red side days work, And they're very elusive, it feels like people can be, you know, out for a whole summer. And if they're lucky, they come across one. Have people looked at all into like eDNA studies for red side days. Is that something you're exploring or partners that you work with are exploring?

Kat Lucas 15:37

So last year, we did work with some partners at the University of wealth to to work on electrofishing and then also collecting eDNA, environmental DNA, to study and see what sort of DNA and what sort of evidence they were able to pick up about red site dace. I'm not sure if I've seen the results of that just yet but as you said, they're, they're very elusive. Many different partners and organizations across Ontario are doing their very best to protect it and hopefully even bring back some of these red site dace. into our local waterways. know at the University of Windsor, they are trying to work towards some reintroduction studies of red side dace. But it's very challenging. They're very picky when it comes to breeding and captivity. They are the wild, they're also pretty picky, and they will require another fish called a creek chub to actually build a nest. And when they see a creek chub that has built their own little nest in the rocks at the bottom of a river, and they see something that looks pretty cozy and pretty protected, then red side dace can actually come in and lay their eggs within that nest. And the creek chub kind of act like a free babysitter, and they're taking care of their own eggs as well as these red side dace eggs. So. And it's quite a challenge to get them to breed in the lab and just it's a very complicated process to then even work towards reintroduction of these species.

Meredith 17:11

I was actually going to ask if there was any captive breeding because I'm not really familiar with many captive breeding fish programs, but obviously long history in Ontario and Canada and especially the great lakes of fish stocking. So obviously there is some knowledge and I was just curious if it had been applied to it. Endangered species, but that makes a lot of sense. You know, if these were likely readily breeding species that, you know, weren't as complicated or didn't have all these complex relationships, maybe they wouldn't be as threatened as they are. And I could only imagine to there'd be some. Complications with reintroductions, because you'd want to make sure whatever habitat you're releasing them into is, is secure and stable and going to be healthy so that you're not taking red side days from somewhere else and not having them, you know, you want to give them the best chances

Kat Lucas 18:07

Yeah,

Meredith 18:08

of success.

Kat Lucas 18:09

And at Ontario Streams, we have a program where we help bring back Atlantic salmon and Atlantic salmon have been considered locally extinct in Lake Ontario for over 100 years. So we have quite a few different partners, including the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. And of course, the province. we are here at the Ministry of Natural Resources trying to help restock and reintroduce the Atlantic salmon and as a good news story out of another local endangered or at risk that we have here in Ontario is it's looking like this was one of the best years yet for returning adults that would have likely been from this program. So we are finding these adults who are coming back to spawn as a hopefully as a result of this program. And so It does take time. This Atlantic Salmon program has been running for probably close to 20 years now, so even if we started a Redside Dace reintroduction program tomorrow, still not going to be a fast turnaround. And like you said as well, like, we need to ensure that the habitat is also Proper and to to stock these fish. And again, that's something we do consider with the Atlantic salmon is it's kind of a two pillared program. We need to work on habitat restoration and then have the reintroduction and stocking within these hopefully improved habitat.

Meredith 19:32

Yeah, and I mean, even your existing program seems like a lot of work. So to expand it, you know, that's going to be a lot of resources, which always translates into a lot of dollars. But not to sound, you know, crass or anything, but why should people be investing in red side? Ace? Like, why should we be protecting the species?

Kat Lucas 19:52

It's a great question. And it's always a hard one, right? We talk about those charismatic megafauna, our polar bears, our panda bears. Just so cute. So ready for us to care about them. Why should we care about this little minnow and red eyed dace because they are so sensitive to water quality. They are a very good indicator species. So. When we have a species that is going to start declining, the second things get a little bit rough that's something that we need to be aware of and considering, kind of like a canary in the coal mine, is one of the first ones who's not very tolerant to big changes in that water quality, and we start to see them decline, then We, a good indicator that as humans we need to care more about this environment to protect it as it is, and then as much as we can try to make these improvements to get this habitat to a high quality where it can continue to, to keep these sensitive critters as well as all other wildlife that rely on them happy and healthy.

Meredith 21:00

Yeah. And I think it's, It's also an important term, a reminder that humans are a species that rely on fresh water. And you know, this is a GTA, this is our largest population in Canada. We need to make sure that the rivers and fresh water around that population are healthy because who knows with a unstable or unsure climate future You know, that's a very selfish, self centered way of looking at it, but I think it's really important to, like you said, take this as a, as a warning and a serious threat to, you know, not just local wildlife, but take it as a personal threat to, to our way of life, especially like Canadians. We have such a beautiful, I think, relationship with water, but sometimes we take it. For granted, so really protecting our freshwater habitats, I think should be part of like the Canadian identity.

Kat Lucas 21:58

And it's so interesting when we are out in the field working on improving a local river, and we're often working in public parks. A lot of our work is on public property working with many municipalities across the greater Toronto area. people will walk by and they'll be like, what are you doing? Like, is there anything even alive in there? and so that really does open that door where we're, we're not many of us, you know, we're, we're out in nature, within our cities, the nature in our cities. And we think that nothing alive. Do need that reminder that even though perhaps This little stretch is not the most beautiful scenic river you've ever seen. There's still a lot of life that, that is here and that different animals and wildlife and plants that really do rely on these tiny little chunks of nature that we have within our urban areas. They're still just so vital to all kinds of life that live in our cities Redside Dace, they're they're here in Brampton and And Brampton is a very quickly growing municipality. And again, people don't expect to have these little endangered species so nearby. And it really does require a lot of awareness and education and outreach about species at risk, including doing podcasts like this to, to keep raising them up and letting more people know that we have animals that need our help right here.

Meredith 23:24

And if people want to help, maybe not just red side days, but people who live in an urban area, or perhaps, you know, landowners who have streams through their properties, like, what can they do to to help.

Kat Lucas 23:37

So We talked about planting those native shrubs and wildflowers along a river. If you have a river on your property to help create some habitat for those food sources that red site days rely on. And these plants are also good at filtering water. And again, creating shade too, like we talked about. But for those of us who, like me, do not own property might want some other ways to get involved and help protect our, our local species at risk, including red side dace, we can all do is reduce our water consumption. So the average person in the GTA uses about 300 litres of water every single day. So it's a lot of water and that does create some pressure on the infrastructure when we think about how many people are in the GTA. Something that is very easy we all can do is take a shorter shower. Something like seven minutes is more than enough time to get what we need done. And if we all do that and do what we can, that is going to help reduce some of that Pressure that we have on our local public infrastructure and like you did say to people are just not thinking about how important water is for us when we're living in these urban areas where water availability is not necessarily an issue. Sometimes we take that for granted. So it's a good reminder to think about ways that we can use less water. We also want to reduce litter and pollution. So. Don't litter, please. And something that we we can all start doing and try to do when it's safe to collect litter. If we're out for a walk in our neighborhood or out for a hike, just bring a bag and collect some litter as we go. And just try and improve that habitat and water quality almost instantly, right? As soon as we collect that bag of litter it's out of there. And it's now leading to, to cleaner cleaner habitats. Something, again, most of us should be able to do is to volunteer. And Ontario Streams, we lead all kinds of volunteer programs throughout the state. It's the spring, summer and fall, not so much at this time of year. But we lead tree planting events, we lead litter cleanups, we do invasive species removal, so there's lots of different ways that you can get involved in your local community, whether it's with Ontario Streams or another like minded organization. organization. And then, of course, as we said to something that's so important is raising awareness. So perhaps you've learned something new here in this podcast today that you can take and share and just keep spreading how important it is that we have this tiny little minnow who is eating lots of flies and insects right here in our, in our greater Toronto area, and it needs our help,

Meredith 26:14

Yeah, I think 1 other thing I'd, I'd like to jump. On an ad, even if you don't have, like, property with a stream in it, if you know, somebody with a driveway as well, I've heard, you know, what you put on your driveway, like, you're saying, maybe salt alternatives so that you're not putting that into the stormwater sewer system. And then I think a lot of people don't realize. That those stormwater grates and sewers you see on the road, don't usually, especially in the GTA, go to a sewage treatment plant. Those are actually going out into our rivers. And I think that would actually blow. A lot of people's minds to know so careful what you're washing your car with because that's going to go down your driveway into your river. Don't be shoving or kicking litter down those sewers either. Cause I think people just think that, Oh yeah, this will get cleaned up. It's a sewer. It's not the same as what you flush down your toilet.

Kat Lucas 27:15

And we, at Ontario Streams, we do a lot of litter pickup throughout the year. This year, we collected about 200 bags of litter in Red Site Days habitat across the Greater Toronto Area. That was over about 300 metres squared of habitat. there's a lot of litter out there, and we can all be doing so much more to try and prevent litter from entering. Our natural areas, as well as trying to reduce the amount of waste we're creating to start. One

Meredith 27:46

hmm. And for people who are somehow still on the fence about whether they want to protect red side days, what's your favorite thing about them? What's a favorite fun fact that people can either use to fall in love with them or use in future conversations to make someone else fall in love with them?

Kat Lucas 28:06

my co workers Mark Heaton, who is probably pretty well known in the Redside Day Circles he's been working to, to help them for pretty much his entire career. And, and at the start of his career, they were doing okay. Throughout his career, he's now seen a significant decline and a lot more pressure to try and make a difference here. And one thing he likes to pull out is there's this book from the 1800s some sort of fish identification book. And it says that the red side dace is the handsomest of fish that we have here. So it is a very beautiful fish. And when we think about a lot of other kinds of fishes that we have here in Ontario. We're seeing a lot of browns and greens and grays. And the red side dace does look like fairly tropical. It has that bright red stripe, a little bit of yellow on it as well. So it is just a very nice looking fish to add some variety to the species that we have here. But again, it's just really nice. So unique to the way that it only eats terrestrial insects even though it lives in the water, it has to jump up straight out of the water like a flying fish to catch its food. it is very unique and it is something kind of like the Gar as we heard in a more recent episode that if more people knew about it, perhaps more people might think it's their favorite animal as long as long as they knew about it to begin with.

Meredith 29:28

Yeah, I think there's probably a lot of aspects of the red side days. Like you said, it's colorful. It like jumps out of the water. It is actually, it might be a little small, but it's a very charismatic species. And I feel like if more people did know about it, more people would, would care and they would love these fish. Do you have any like fun stories from doing field work? Just, it doesn't have to be with red side days, but any fun stories from, from when you've been either like electrofishing or communicating with the public?

Kat Lucas 29:56

So I did want to share one success story. We've been working at a tributary of the East Humber River since 1996, where we know red site days have been and have slowly been declining. And. We do a lot of work at this site whether it's in stream work to try and help the river flow a little bit more naturally as well as installing cattle exclusion fencing to try and help cows cross the river in more strategic spots so that they're not just stomping in the river and stirring up all of that sediment, that sand and soil at the bottom of the river, which, again, is So we've been doing that. And then even this past year, we've had planting lots of shrubs along the stretch of river about 500 when in this year, and we've over 1500 in the past 5 years of planting these native shrubs and site here, it's been a lot of work and just this past year we did observe a red site dace during our monitoring. I was not there but it is a good news story that the site here in Vaughan, it's, again, we've been working very hard to, to really restore and rehabilitate this little stretch of river and now as an exciting success we are able to find red site dace here again.

Meredith 31:20

That's a huge success story. I mean, that, that must feel really good. That's what, you know, we're putting or what you guys are putting in the effort for to, to see that these fish come back or stabilize. So that's awesome to know that, you know, if you work hard enough at it, they will come back. They, they can survive, you know, but we're not past the point of no return. And I think that's a really important message.

Kat Lucas 31:44

And we do a lot of video monitoring, too. So one, I guess one highlight of my time last year, we were, we had our underwater cameras going while we were working building an in stream habitat enhancement structure at a site in the Rouge River and I was just filming and filming and then a few days later, when we're actually going through the footage, We did catch red side days just upstream of where we were building and where we've been working for for several years on the main Rouge River, trying to improve this habitat. So it is, it does feel really good to know that the work that we're doing is having an impact in that even though we're seeing so much urbanization and human activity happening around the GTA, we're still finding red side days. We're still working really hard to protect their habitat and enhance their habitat. And it does feel good. And we do also work with a lot of partners, on this kind of conglomerate, of the Red Site DASE Recovery Strategy and the implementation team who is working to bring this to fruition. This recovery strategy to life s O. We work with many different provincial partners, conservation authorities, federal partners academic partners as well. And this is just something that that's been going on for many, many years, and Ontario streams has has been contributing to this strategy and bringing it to life. And I guess. And hopefully by the time that this maybe by the time that this is published we will have had another one of our big team meetings in January 2025 to go roundtable and talk about these successes to so as much pressure as there is on the situation and feeling like we need to be acting fast and hard. We are hearing some successes along the way to that not not all hope is lost. And especially being able to communicate. that these little guys are right here is so important and bringing more awareness to them.

Meredith 33:41

Yeah, well, thank you so much. And, you know, if there are any big updates or success stories, like after your meeting that you can share, you know, slide them my way. I'm always happy to provide updates on episodes. And also if you have any volunteer events, cause I'm sure people listening to this are hopefully getting really excited and they're like, yeah, I want to go pick up trash or plant some shrubs. So we would love to, To, you know, help spread the word about those as well. And before I let you go we've talked a lot about Redside Days and I really appreciate your time, but just curious about how you got into this line of work and how you started working with Redside Days.

Kat Lucas 34:20

So did my undergrad in zoology at the University of Guelph. I always knew that I wanted to do something with animals and nature. And growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors right here in the Greater Toronto area. And after my undergrad, I went and followed that up with a Bachelor's of Environmental Science. Where I focused my my major research on how pharmaceuticals like different kinds of medicines are entering bodies of water and how those, those different components are affecting fish populations. So I was specifically looking at Ibuprofen and looking at, you know, when humans take different kinds of medicines, our body uses it and then whatever our body doesn't use, we excrete that goes down the toilet, and then often it is filtered and goes through wastewater treatment, but then it does enter our bodies of water. And in some cases, these little particles of medicine, they're just too small that they don't get filtered out in the, in these treatments. So now it's in our, our local. rivers and and how does that impact these fish. So even at very, very high concentrations of ibuprofen we are finding that the fish weren't affected in this in this study. So I think that's good news. If you need to take ibuprofen, continue to take it. But from there, I realized that I did want to do more work with fish. I think Dominique from the Spotted Gar episode was saying that she originally did want to work maybe with more fuzzy mammals. And I, I can appreciate that because I did think that I would like to work with mammals as well. And then somehow ended up down this fish road. And, and in the end guess along the way, really I realized that it's not so much about, you know, Fish or mammals, and it's more about these habitats and how important these habitats are. And like you said, many of us have these relationships with our local bodies of water, whether we fully understand the impact that these waterways have on our lives, as well as the wildlife around us, but I then. So I've spent some time working at Royal Botanical Gardens, as well as the Toronto Zoo, continuing to do a lot of community engagement and education about these species at risk. And then I've been here at Ontario Streams for almost four years now, leading all kinds of volunteer programs and lots of communications and outreach for all ages, whether it's school groups or adults and everyone in between.

Meredith 36:53

That's awesome. It sounds like quite a journey and yeah, I don't know if it's just because like when we're growing up, we're more exposed to like cats and dogs or the fact that we are mammals. I feel like we get really enraptured by mammals and people want to work with fuzzy things. I was definitely in that route. And then I discovered birds, which are not fuzzy. And because some of them can be a little fluffy swans are very soft, but I was in, you know, really enraptured by how much biodiversity there was, especially in these other groups and I mean, I can only imagine, you know, there's so many fish. Out there that it would be really cool. And, you know, you might learn a lot about 1 fish, but there's still always so much to learn.

Kat Lucas 37:37

And it's so wonderful to know that we're having that positive impact on the world around us too, and these very important topics, and hoping to get some more people to think a little bit harder about how we can all be better to the world around us.

Meredith 37:55

Amazing. Well, I think that is the perfect note to end it on. So, Kat, thank you so much for your time.

Kat Lucas 38:01

Thank you, Meredith.

Meredith 38:02

And that's a wrap on this episode with the red side days and cat Lucas. A massive thank you to cat for taking the time to chat with us. And if you loved this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. It helps rarefied reach for people who care about our planets. Rare creatures. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at rarefied dot pod and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates and behind the scenes contents. For our next episode, we will be exploring the night with a small and perhaps misunderstood mammal. You don't want to miss it. So get out there and explore the wild because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. Thanks for listening. And until next time happy trails.