John Pomeroy had only been back in Canmore, Alta., for two weeks, returning from a research trip in Tibet, when he heard the news of a glacier collapse in Nepal. 

The director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology has been working non-stop ever since, trying to make sense of what happened. 

“It’s just horrific,” Pomeroy said. 

When he saw the magnitude of the disaster, Pomeroy immediately made contact with his Nepalese colleagues to assist with analysis. 

As of Sept. 1, when The Narwhal last spoke with Pomeroy, he said the team believes that years of warm temperatures, a particularly warm, wet summer and thawing permafrost led rock to fracture. The rock combined with glacier ice to form an avalanche of debris, on top of releasing a large volume of meltwater which had been stored in the glacier. The torrent of debris immediately formed a wave of destruction.

More than 1,000 people are dead and thousands more are missing. 

“It was very, very fast,” said Pomeroy, who is also a UNESCO chair in mountain water sustainability. 

Early warning systems weren’t capable of giving enough time, Pomery explained. It wasn’t until later when officials could see water levels rising — a precursor to the tsunami that was coming, that a flood warning could be issued downstream. 

“It looks like a lot of the warnings came from the local communities,” Pomeroy said. “They got messages out that the wave was coming to the next [communities] downstream before communications were wiped out.”

The team was monitoring three lakes that had formed since the impact, which were at risk of breaking and causing further flooding. Pomeroy said the lower lake caused high flows on Friday, leading to evacuation.

While that flow has subsided, there’s still danger from the two remaining lakes, Pomeroy explained. 

“It’s not safe yet,” he said. “And this glacier is still very unstable and more could break apart.”

While Pomeroy has research collaborations in Tibet focused on the problems associated with a warming climate, much of his research is focused in Canada, which is home to more than 30,000 glaciers. 

Pomeroy and upwards of 20 students and technicians study mountain glaciers, snow and hydrology from the University of Saskatchewan’s Coldwater Laboratory in Canmore, Alta.

He wants people to know that what’s happening with glaciers in Canada, and globally, is about so much more. It’s about the cryosphere — everything that’s frozen, from permafrost, to glaciers, to snow and ice caps. 

The Narwhal spoke with Pomeroy over the phone to learn more about what’s happening with our glaciers and what, if anything, we can do about it. 

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Glaciers seem to fly under the radar here. There are events happening related to glaciers in Canada and they don’t really get a lot of attention.

I agree, we don’t tend to have communities right under a glacier in most places, like they do in Switzerland or Nepal or the Andes. But we do have many, many glaciers. We have more glaciers than any other country.

We’ve lost hundreds, maybe thousands of them, and we have many more to lose, unfortunately. In the Canadian Rockies, we’ve lost about a quarter of the glacier volume since the turn of the century and this is one of the highest rates of loss in the world.

Most of the glaciers are more remote. And because we’ve got these U-shaped valley bottoms, we tend to put our infrastructure pretty far away from those glaciers.

But even if our infrastructure is further away, would that mean that we shouldn’t worry about it?

Well there’s a massive casualty event that almost happened in the Canadian Rockies. It was in 2012 in the summer, and a piece of the [Ghost Glacier] capped off along with a rock fall and fell into the pond beneath it. It caused a tsunami type wave that washed out the trails, the picnic areas, the parking lot and the road around Mount Edith Cavell [in Jasper National Park]. This is a very, very busy area. It happened in the middle of the night and no one was hurt.

If that had happened at three o’clock in the afternoon we could have had casualties of hundreds of people in that area. 

So we do have places at risk. We have many tourism spots where you can go in and hike in and look up and see a glacier overhead. Those glaciers are falling apart, they’re disintegrating. We do have regions like Lake Louise [in Banff National Park], others in Jasper National Park and the Columbia Icefield area that are essentially risky. The risk varies and it changes rapidly over time.

I’d never thought about Lake Louise as a place of risk, but do you mean Mount Victoria and the glacier?

Yeah, Mount Victoria at the back, simply because the number of climbers and others go in that area. In our situation it’s more alpinists that are exposed to that sort of terrain. 

Then, you know, things that have happened at the Bugaboos mountain range and others. These things are happening. And then the debris flows associated with thawing ground and heavy rains, this is also loss of the cryosphere. These things wash out the Trans-Canada Highway and some of the connecting roads almost every year somewhere and at least cause a temporary closure.

Let’s define ‘cryosphere’ — which means the frozen parts of the Earth. Can you speak more about the big picture, beyond just glaciers?

So glaciers are, of course, fed by snow.

If we don’t get the snowfall we get a melting glacier. The deeper the snow, the slower the glacier melts; the shallower the snow, the faster it melts. So that glacier snowpack tie-in is really strong. But it’s also important for permafrost because frozen ground doesn’t begin to thaw until the snow melt has occurred.

In a year with a late snowpack in the mountains, all the ground stays frozen pretty late in the year. In a year like we had in 2023, where it melts a month early or a month and a half early, then the ground thaw starts immediately after the snow disappears. 

Ultimately it’s driven by rising temperatures. And those rising temperatures — we’ve shown that 1.5 C is too much warming to hold the cryosphere together in the Rockies.

Even if climate warming stopped tomorrow and temperatures didn’t increase anymore, we’d lose almost all of them by the time we got into the early part of the 22nd century. 

So this is already too warm for the frozen part of the planet, and we’re warming up more all the time and this is human driven.

Glacial meltwater ends up in the oceans and contributes to rising ocean levels which floods coastal cities and ports. The thawing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean results in greater coastal erosion, reduced populations of seals and polar bears and other issues for that ecosystem.

The declining lake ice in our big lakes in Canada contributes to algae blooms in the summer and greater coastal erosion. The loss of winter snowpack means the winter roads that supply remote Indigenous communities have to shut early and are not as effective.

The other thing that’s shown up in just the last few years is that streams draining the Arctic tundra have acidified rapidly since 2023. 

And these were pristine streams that have now turned orange and become acidic and are full of heavy metals and sulfuric acid. And this is leaching of minerals from thawing permafrost into the streams, making them toxic. So we’re getting these rapid, rapid changes everywhere. And it manifests differently in every environment across Canada.

Why do you think it is that the connection [with ice melt] is not necessarily made?

For glaciers it’s partly because Canada doesn’t view itself as a mountain country. Not in the way that Switzerland or Norway would, or Nepal. And that’s odd because we have more glaciers than any other country on the planet, and we have some of the most spectacular mountain landscapes. These are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but we don’t see that at the heart of our country. It’s at the western or northern edge of our country.

Also, we tended to avoid the glaciated areas, the really colder areas, because of the harsh winters associated with them.

But we’re all going to be feeling the effects whether we see it or not

Yeah, we are. It’s already impoverishing us economically. It’s causing ecosystem changes, collapses in some areas, and it’s going to get far, far worse. It’s accelerating rapidly.

When you say it’s impoverishing us economically, are you referring to infrastructure?

Wildfires have a strong association with the winter snowpack and the timing of spring snow melt. And we’ve had low snowpacks and early melts in exactly the worst wildfire years in the last few years. So the trigger for those early season wildfires is the low early snowpack.

The lowest snowpack and earlier snowmelt on record in the Fort McMurray area was 2016, just before the massive fires that destroyed that city, as an example. The other is thawing permafrost.

There’s lots of talk now about expanding the use of Churchill as a port on Hudson Bay due to the shorter ice covered season there. But the problem remains the train line, which has flooded out from snowmelt events and collapsed due to the thawing permafrost, and that’s getting worse.

Then there’s the hydroelectricity and the algae blooms. And then drought. Snowpack primarily, and glaciers to a secondary degree, provide water supply for vast downstream areas. So the Saskatchewan River Basin across the prairie provinces, which supports irrigation districts in cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert, Medicine Hat and the Okanagan from snowmelt gas struggled in recent years with snow droughts, resulting in low water levels and restrictions in irrigation and even urban water consumption. It ties into hydroelectric droughts as well because if the stream flow’s not there hydroelectricity’s generation capacity is lower as well.

What do you think Canada can or should do about this? 

Well, the first thing is to have a strong greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. Achieving net zero at the earliest possible opportunity. By that I mean 2030, 2035. It shouldn’t be an option. It’s a necessity for survival.

And we need to do that in concert with other countries around the world. That’s gonna be incredibly difficult, but we have to push for that and make that case in our foreign policy. 

The second is a plan for adaptation. Understand that floods will be different, droughts will be different, more severe, these glacier and permafrost and snow hazards will be increasing in mountain and other cool regions and that means more monitoring. More observation stations, better satellite measurement of these things and better predictions of floods or droughts or extreme events that may ensue from them. 

And then also working with communities to ensure that those early warning systems are appropriate for those communities and that community knowledge is used to design these things. Often the most vulnerable communities are Indigenous. And so those systems need to be designed with Indigenous people, bringing in their understanding and their knowledge systems into this to make effective prediction systems.

It requires big changes, but if we don’t start now, we’re not going to get there.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Temperatures in Vancouver could climb as high as 29 C this weekend, the first heat wave of the year.
• Water restrictions are in effect, only three of the city’s five outdoor pools are open and outdoor water sampling at many popular beaches has been suspended due to strikes.
• This summer is projected to be one of the hottest on record, raising questions about the readiness of Vancouver to protect its citizens from extreme heat.

This weekend, Vancouverites will swelter under the first heat wave of the year, with a sunny forecast of up to 29 C on Saturday and Sunday. (Listen up, the rest of Canada: it’s not a dry heat!) It’s ideal weather for swimming outdoors or taking your kids to a wading pool — or it would be, if that were an option.

Only three of the city’s five outdoor pools — Second Beach, Hillcrest and New Brighton — will be open. The city’s 11 wading pools, meanwhile, are suspended all summer due to Stage 3 water restrictions across the city, which are expected to last until October. Perhaps you think this is no big deal — after all, the Pacific is right there. But those looking to cool down in the ocean will be taking their chances, as water quality tests at many of the city’s most popular beaches have been suspended due to job action, and those that have been tested lately are showing higher-than-expected E. coli counts. 

It’s a bleak start to the summer, which is expected to be one of the hottest on record, according to Environment Canada.

Complaints about Vancouver’s lack of outdoor pools aren’t new: a decade ago, the Vancouver Sun pointed out the city has fewer pools than any other major city in Canada. (On their city websites, Montreal lists 62; Toronto has 58.) We’re on par with Saskatoon — which operates far more wading pools and splash pads, despite being a much smaller city. But most people frame this as a recreation problem, not a public health issue. 

A recent study in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management found in New York City, more people visit outdoor pools on hot days. No surprise. But the association was strongest in low-income neighbourhoods where many residents have few other options for cooling down. What’s more, the authors found, public pool availability during extreme summer temperatures can reduce heat-related emergency calls by 15 to 29 per cent. 

Five years ago, a heat dome caused 619 deaths in B.C., the deadliest weather event in Canadian history. June 2021 was a wake-up call about the risks posed by climate change, and the urgent need for cities to adapt to extreme heat events. But looking for a place to get wet in Vancouver reveals an alarming reality: we’re not ready for the summer ahead — and we’re definitely not prepared for the future. 

How to cope with heat

Outdoor water recreation is not the only way to cope with heat waves, but it is an important one, especially for people who don’t live in spaces that can be easily cooled. The BC Coroners Service reported 98 per cent of deaths during the 2021 heat dome happened indoors, and most of those who died lacked air conditioning or fans. 

A 2023 report from the federal government noted that B.C. has the fewest number of households with air conditioning — just 32 per cent, compared to 61 per cent nationally. Among low-income households, that figure drops to 17 per cent. Until just a few days ago, landlords could still prohibit renters from installing portable air conditioners without penalty.

“The number of people vulnerable to an extreme heat event is expected to grow as census predictions show a steadily rising elderly population and an increasing share of one-person households,” the report noted. 

But earlier this year, the City of Vancouver discontinued its four-year-old cool kit program, which distributed water bottles, spray bottles, cooling gel packs and other useful things for those that needed them. Instead, the city has seemingly replaced this program with a list of tips for cooling down in the heat. Among the places they advise going to are the still-closed swimming and wading pools. 

As temperatures have risen in recent decades, Vancouver has lost pools: since 1993, four outdoor swimming pools have been decommissioned while adding just one, at Hillcrest Aquatic Centre. Kitsilano Pool, the city’s most popular outdoor pool, is nearing the end of its life and had its season shortened the last two summers due to repairs.

And last October, the city passed a budget cutting $120 million from various departments to spare homeowners a property tax increase. The Vancouver Park Board noted this would mean a $15 million cut to parks. It’s a cut that doesn’t bode well for the ability to improve water amenities in the summer.

Tightened budgets mean we also can’t extend pool operating hours or seasons, which also speak to an antiquated definition of summer that has yet to catch up with our new reality. Wading pools weren’t set to open for another few weeks — even before water restrictions put them on hold altogether. Three of the city’s five outdoor pools close on Labour Day. But high temperatures often persist well beyond that; last September was the hottest on record in Vancouver history. 

A representative for the city told The Narwhal that spray parks — which operate on demand — are more aligned with the city’s water conservation goals than wading pools, which must be filled and drained each day to comply with public health guidelines. A representative from the city told The Narwhal that one new spray park is being designed, while the renewal of another is scheduled to begin this fall. In addition, they wrote “funding is being sought for one or two new spray parks” in the forthcoming capital plan. Increases in spending on wading pools and spray parks since 2019, the city wrote, “reflects a shift toward more extensive repairs and renewals driven by the age and condition of existing infrastructure, as well as available funding.”

Of course, there are Vancouver’s many beaches. They’re free, numerous and open all year — but not always safe to enjoy. Last July, eight beaches were deemed unsafe due to E. coli levels. Even when they are open, they’re not accessible for everyone — like young children, those with mobility issues or anyone else who lives too far to drop by on a hot day — and a climate-resilient city should have cooling infrastructure in every neighbourhood, rather than expecting all its citizens to trek to the beach. 

Pools and outdoor water infrastructure aren’t things that are nice to have. They’re climate adaptations, even if “thermal respite,” or relief from extreme temperatures, is mentioned last among the reasons for pool use in Vancouver’s 2019 aquatic strategy. 

As in 2021, those most at risk from extreme heat this summer are the city’s most vulnerable: low-income and unhoused citizens, as well as the youngest and oldest among us. If only there were more places for them to escape the heat.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Farmers in Saskatchewan are dealing with variable weather, exacerbated by climate change. For many, this has meant hotter, drier summers, but the experience is far from universal.
• In some areas of Saskatchewan, growing conditions have improved with a changing climate.
• Farmers are also better equipped to deal with harsh weather, as new technologies and farming practices develop.

Scott Hepworth’s great-grandma used to have to shovel dirt out of the kitchen after dust storms swept across the Prairies.

More than a century later, drought is still a factor on Hepworth’s fifth-generation family farm near Assiniboia, Sask. In fact, it remains a defining feature of the land, which sits within the Palliser Triangle, one of Canada’s driest agricultural regions. 

But despite increasingly volatile weather in recent years, including long dry spells, record heat and sharp swings between extended drought punctuated by patchy rain, Hepworth says his crops aren’t suffering — instead, they’re performing better than expected in these conditions. 

He estimates that since he began farming in 2004, his crop yields during hot, dry summers have roughly doubled compared to what they were a few decades ago. 

It’s come as a surprise to some farmers across the Prairies: they are seeing the impacts of climate change, yes. But those impacts haven’t necessarily been bad for their bottom lines.

Only a few hours away from Hepworth’s farm, in northeast Saskatchewan — a region once considered too cold and wet — warming temperatures and drier conditions have improved growing conditions. 

“We were the worst place in the province to farm when I started farming, and now we’re the best place,” Ted Cawkwell, who owns a farm in the area with a couple partners, says.

On his land, fields that were historically difficult to seed and harvest are now more reliable. And he hasn’t seen damaging early frosts, once common every few years, in decades. 

Cawkwell says yields on his farm have improved dramatically over the past decade. The area overall has seen some of the highest yields in the province in recent years.

While there are several reasons for this — including better crop genetics and farming practices — Cawkwell believes changing weather patterns have been a major factor, too. 

“Twenty years ago, I would have never guessed the climate could change like this. You think of climate change as in tens of thousands, or millions, of years — not twenty. And that’s kind of the scary part of this.”

Farming wins are a combination of changing weather and new practices

Of course, the story is nuanced. On Hepworth’s farm, it’s not just the changing climate that has improved his crops. Conserving moisture has long been a focus for the family. Hepworth’s dad adopted what’s known as minimal-till seeding in the 1980s — essentially, reducing or eliminating the need to plough the soil when planting new seeds. This has improved soil health and reduced erosion. Another practice that Hepworth believes has benefited his farm is called continuous cropping, meaning every acre has a crop on it every year; roots in the ground rather than bare fields help retain moisture and protect the soil.

Advances in crop genetics have also played a big role, Hepworth says. He also serves as a director for SaskWheat, the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission — a farmer-funded organization that invests in wheat research and crop variety development. Over the past several decades, hundreds of millions of dollars in public and farmer funding have gone into developing new wheat and durum varieties in Canada. Hepworth is now able to grow drought-tolerant wheat and durum varieties bred to be shorter and better able to withstand stress.

It’s all helped. Hepworth, now in his early 40s, has his own memories from his childhood, of dust storms so intense he couldn’t see across the yard. Largely because of improved farming practices and soil management, he hasn’t seen one since. 

For Hepworth, a combination of climate, farming methods and technology have led to increased success.

But the experience is anything but universal.

“It’s been quite variable, even within a few kilometres,” he says. 

In parts of southern Saskatchewan, particularly deeper into the Palliser Triangle, recent conditions have had a very different impact.

A few hours southwest of Hepworth’s farm is Climax, Sask. — one of the driest regions in the province. 

Here, farmer Cody Glenn says he has experienced about six consecutive years of drought on his farm. 

In 2021, the worst year for drought in Saskatchewan in two decades, Glenn says 260 acres of barley resulted in almost nothing. The crop couldn’t even be properly harvested, producing just a couple bales of low-quality feed.

In other recent years, his barley yields were around a quarter of what they should be. 

In light of all this, he says his current strategy is just to stay viable. 

Despite changing weather, crop yields overall are holding — and even rising across the province

Even though there’s no question some farmers have struggled under increasingly variable weather across the Prairies, crop production has not declined as sharply as some predicted. 

The reality is far more nuanced, Dave Sauchyn, a leading Canadian climate scientist with a focus on the Prairies, says. 

“There’s no single climate,” he says. “It varies a lot from place to place.” 

Across the Prairies, climate change is showing up most clearly through warmer winters and longer frost-free seasons, rather than consistent increases in extreme summer heat, he says. 

In many areas, peak temperatures still haven’t exceeded those seen in the 1930s, in the “Dust Bowl” era.

Water patterns, however, are shifting in more complex ways, he adds. Snow is generally melting earlier, more precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow and less water is available later in the summer. 

As a result, Sauchyn says, drought remains the main concern. That pressure is most acute in the Palliser Triangle, where dryness has long shaped farming practices. But in recent years, moisture stress has also become more common in parts of the northern and eastern grain belt — areas that historically faced fewer drought constraints.

And not all these changing patterns are bad for farming regions. 

Fewer and shorter cold periods are extending the growing season. In some regions — particularly along the northern and western margins of Saskatchewan — this is actually improving production, as Cawkwell has seen on his farm.

And despite increased variability, overall crop performance has remained relatively strong. Yields for major Saskatchewan crops such as wheat and canola have generally trended upward over the last couple decades, with many recent years coming in at, or above, long-term averages. 

Jeff Schoenau, a soil scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, says this reflects decades of improvements in farming practices.

He says comparisons of Prairie soil samples from 1996 to 2018 show significant gains in key indicators such as microbial biomass, respiration and organic matter — factors that contribute to healthier, more resilient soils. These improvements are the result of smarter farming practices, he says. That includes conservation tillage (avoiding or minimally ploughing a field every year), diverse crop rotations (not planting the same monocrop in the same field year after year) and more precise use of fertilizers.  

Combined with advances in crop genetics and other improved farming strategies, Schoenau says crops today can withstand conditions that would have caused far greater losses in the past.

And while climate scientists like Sauchyn expect continued variability — and potentially more severe drought — Schoenau believes farmers will continue to adapt. 

“Farmers are pretty resilient, and when things change, they adapt and they use all of the resources and ingenuity and expertise available.”

Some scientists and farmers are cautiously optimistic — but not all

Sauchyn is also cautiously optimistic. 

He is clear that prolonged drought would pose serious challenges, particularly in a warmer climate. It will be critical, he says, to understand the difference between what’s a short-term blip and what is a long-term trend. 

But his team’s projections, based on large geospatial datasets of climate, soils and yields, suggest that northern and western margins of the grain belt may continue to benefit. That’s because it’s getting warmer and growing seasons are getting longer.

This offers little hope to farmers like Glenn, who lost the lottery in terms of farm placement. 

He says farmers in his area are displaying their despair.

“There’s more land for sale down here than there is buyers.”

For now, he hopes crop insurance will help carry him through, but if dry conditions persist, the path forward becomes less clear — particularly in areas where irrigation options remain limited. 

“I know I’m an optimist. I always have been, but it’s really hard to see the future currently.”

Hepworth is inspired greatly by his great-grandparents, who persisted through their own tough times.

“We’re in a dry cycle now, but farmers always find ways to adapt, and we’re always looking for ways to improve our soil health and leave our land in better shape for the next generation,” he says. 

“I feel as though every generation on this farm has had it better than the last, and that’s what motivates me.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

2025 Indigenous editorial fellow Savannah Ridley is nominated for two awards this year: emerging excellence at the Digital Publishing Awards, and the Journalists for Human Rights / Canadian Association of Journalists Emerging Indigenous Journalist Award. While at The Narwhal, Savannah focused on editing and fact-checking, but she did some reporting too — including this excellent piece on the AI data centre boom in Canada, which raises massive questions about how drought-stricken regions will cope.— Michelle Cyca, bureau chief, conservation and fellowshipsIt was announced last December that a data centre more than 32 times the size of the current largest data centre in the world has its sights on a drought-stricken region in Alberta.  

Chief Sheldon Sunshine of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation first heard about the $70-billion data centre campus proposed right next door in a press release. 

Sunshine was surprised, as his nation had not been consulted on the proposal. Looking back through his inbox, he found an overlooked email from just a few days prior to the announcement, bearing a subject line with the name “O’Leary.”

That email referred to Kevin O’Leary, also known as “Mr. Wonderful” of Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den fame. It was a message detailing O’Leary Venture’s plans for a data centre campus called Wonder Valley in the Greenview Industrial Gateway, an industrial development just over 500 kilometres from Edmonton, within Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s traditional territory and adjacent to their reserve.

Data centres are what make artificial intelligence (AI) dreams and nightmares come to life. Inside are tall rectangles twinkling with coloured lights — servers piled atop each other like bookshelves. These hardware blocks are the computational machines running complex equations required for AI. The harder they work, the hotter they get. Today, the most common way to cool these centres is by evaporative systems that usher hot air through wet pads, requiring significant water consumption as evaporated moisture is not recycled. Exactly how much water these centres need varies based on climate and size, but a 2021 report estimated a medium-sized data centre uses 1.13 million litres of water daily — roughly the amount used by 5,000 Canadians in that same day.

And O’Leary’s data centre proposal is far from middling. It seems that between filming a movie with Timothee Chalamet and flying south to Mar-A-Lago with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, O’Leary has also planned to build the world’s largest data centre. He’s doing it on drought-stricken Treaty 8 territory — and has yet to consult First Nations, according to Sunshine.

Claiming there had been zero notice or consultation from either the province or the municipality, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation issued an open cease and desist letter to Smith this past January. 

Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation isn’t the only community surprised to find a data centre looming on the horizon. Across Canada, many data centres are proposed — and many, like Wonder Valley, are in regions afflicted by drought. As Canada embraces the data centre boom, many questions about the planning and impacts of these data centres linger — and answers are hard to come by.

Drought and data centres are on a collision course

The Peace River is at the centre of the largest watershed in Alberta, stretching west into British Columbia. At the time of publishing, the Alberta side of the watershed is experiencing 12 water shortage advisories across various basins, while on the B.C. side the drought levels range from abnormally dry to moderately severe.

These are not new drought conditions, either. The Peace River watershed has experienced drought at varying levels since 2022. Within it, Greenview has faced drought since spring 2024. 

This last July, the municipality declared an agricultural disaster for their livestock industry citing “worsening drought conditions, persistent moisture shortages and significant grasshopper infestations.” 

“We urge all levels of government and the public to understand the gravity of the situation and to support the agricultural community through this difficult time,” Tyler Olsen, a reeve from the municipality of Greenview, said at the time. “Our producers are the backbone of not only our local economy, but also Alberta’s and Canada’s, and they need our full support now more than ever.” 

Later, in the very same meeting where the agricultural disaster was declared, Coun. Dale Smith brought forth the motion to amend the sale to O’Leary Ventures to include an additional 1,926 acres of municipal land. 

O’Leary Ventures CEO Paul Palandjian has said Wonder Valley will need more than 8,000 acres of land.

Olsen told The Narwhal the sale has not gone through just yet, citing that deals of this size take time to complete. He said there’s no concern that a data centre of Wonder Valley’s size would worsen the state of the “two, three years ongoing” drought that caused the municipality to issue an agricultural emergency declaration. He believes the drought has more to do with a lack of rainfall. 

“It’s two completely different topics,” Olsen said. However, a data centre could massively increase the amount of water drawn from that limited supply. 

But it’s difficult to definitively say how much water a data centre of this magnitude would suck up for two reasons. 

One, because it’s never been done before — the world’s largest data centre is only roughly 245 acres — and two, AI is developing so fast that by the time you collect the information to contextualize the scale of water use, it will already be outdated, according to experts. 

Dr. Tushar Sharma is a computer science professor at Dalhousie University who’s been researching the feasibility of sustainable AI and software engineering. 

Sharma explains that eight months ago, ChatGPT was receiving around 10 million prompts per day worldwide. Recently, the amount of prompts per day hasn’t just doubled, tripled or even sextupled. Not even close. 

It has multiplied by 250 to 2.5 billion prompts. 

“This is crazy,” Sharma said. 

And that was two months ago. 

As data centres proliferate, impacts are hard to estimate

Calculations of how much water a ChatGPT prompt uses also vary by the size and complexity of the prompt. The greater and more complex the question is, the server running the model must run greater and more complex calculations to determine its answer. 

Like anyone who’s ever owned an old laptop knows, the more you ask it to do, the hotter it gets. Sharma explains that when a server heats up, the data centre housing it must cool it down to keep it functioning — water is the cheapest way to do so. 

South of the border, the Meta Newton data centre in Georgia (now renamed to Stanton Springs) that soaked up all the water in the area — leaving nothing but orange sludge to run from nearby Newton County residents’ taps — was only around 57 acres.

If Wonder Valley is completed, it will be more than 140 times the size of the Newton data centre. 

However, the effects of data centre resource drainage are not restricted to nearby faucets; their presence can be felt much farther away, in the wallets of everyday folks. 

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the increased pressure on energy grids from data centres is causing whatever hydro is left to increase in price. Due to this manufactured scarcity, electricity bills for U.S. residents are expected to rise by an average of eight per cent.

AI regulation is not a popular term in government either. 

Evan Solomon originated the role of AI and digital innovation minister last May under Prime Minister Mark Carney. 

In his first speech as the new minister, Solomon said the federal government would not “over-index” on AI regulation and would instead be setting its sights on data protection. 

Solomon likened AI innovation to a “bucking bronco” that he doesn’t intend to throw a saddle on with regulation, but rather ensure that it “doesn’t kick people in the face” by misusing their data or breaching their privacy. 

The federal branch is not the only level of government excited by the new market. 

Alberta Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish voiced the province’s intent to become an international leader in data centre infrastructure, eyeing more than 19 gigawatts worth of proposals this past summer. These centres, Glubish said, could make use of stranded oil and gas assets within the province.

Governments are enthusiastic about data centres, but their long-term costs and benefits are still uncertain

Politicians like Glubish and Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce often say that data centres are job creators. University of Waterloo computer science professor Martin Karsten isn’t convinced. 

Karsten says it does not take very many technicians to ensure a data centre is running smoothly. If anything, the construction of the data centre will be a larger job creator than a fully operational data centre, which largely relies on automation. 

A Meta report on the Stanton Springs data centre underscores this reality. The report notes that just over 200 jobs will be “supported once [construction is] completed,” whilst also boasting that 1,300 skilled trade workers will be working on the construction of the facility. 

If data centres aren’t huge long-term job creators, are they beneficial for generating tax income? 

Ian Mondrow, a partner at law firm Gowling WLG specializing in energy regulation and policy, doesn’t think this is the answer either. 

Doug Ford’s government in Ontario is currently trying to pass Bill 40, the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, which includes amendments to the Electricity Act that would give the province the power to be picky about which data centres they allow to connect to the power grid. The bill currently states that only projects that cultivate “economic growth” will be allowed access in an effort to keep energy affordable. However, the bill also introduces new provincial power to subsidize the cost of connecting data centres to the power grids.

Mondrow explained that these subsidies could be funded from electricity ratepayers — anyone with a power bill — or through taxes. 

Whether Ontarians could see an increase in their hydro bills or their taxes is largely up to a formula to be calculated by the Ontario Energy Board. 

The Ontario Energy Board declined to comment for this story.

Mondrow thinks that other than a fear of missing out on the latest tech boom, the likeliest reason why data centres are pulling focus is because of greater importance being placed on data sovereignty, especially given the current global trade climate.

Data centres are not just the synthetic synapses of AI: they can also be cloud storage facilities. 

If the location of the data centre is different from where the data was created, this is called data residency. The physical location of the data centre determines what laws and regulations the data is subjected to, but so does ownership and operations. This can be problematic because it can leave Canadian data vulnerable to being accessed by foreign governments who invest in Canadian data centres. 

A new analysis by the Investigative Journalism Foundation found that 84 of Canada’s 283 total data centres are owned by American companies. Under U.S. laws, American companies can be compelled to hand over data stored in Canada. 

What we do know is that despite the murky benefits of data centres, they are surely on their way, and not just Kevin O’Leary’s.

Bell Canada has plans to build six new AI data centres in British Columbia in the next couple years. 

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The B.C. government greenlit a watershed security strategy it co-developed with First Nations more than a year ago, according to an internal government document obtained by The Narwhal. But the province has failed to release the strategy despite repeated calls from First Nations partners to do so.

“I can’t tell you how deeply frustrating it is for me,” Xtli’li’ye Lydia Hwitsum, co-chair of the First Nations Water Caucus which co-developed the strategy, said in an interview. “We had done such good work.”

The BC NDP promised to develop a watershed security strategy during the 2020 election campaign. In early 2023, the province announced a $100-million endowment for a watershed security fund and launched public consultations through an intentions paper for the strategy. The paper outlined goals to strengthen local and Indigenous governance of watersheds, to build watershed knowledge and take a holistic approach to watershed management and ecosystem protection.

Cabinet approved the final strategy in early 2024, according to a December 2024 briefing document prepared for Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Minister Randene Neill, which The Narwhal obtained through a freedom of information request. 

A ministry spokesperson said its release was paused as the province built an implementation plan and worked to secure additional funding, but offered no timeline for when the strategy would be public. 

Aaron Hill, executive director of the conservation charity Watershed Watch Salmon Society, said “it’s very disappointing” the strategy hasn’t been released. 

“My impression of what happened is that the government got cold feet leading up to the last election and decided to put it on ice,” he said. “And that’s where it remains.”

Both Hwitsum and Hill said plans to release the watershed strategy seemed to stall amid public backlash to the government’s proposed changes to the Land Act, which would have brought the legislation in line with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. 

“When it came to our strategy, they just couldn’t get the courage together to do it,” said Hwitsum, a former chief of the Cowichan Tribes.

The ministry did not directly address these concerns in its response to The Narwhal’s questions.

Logging, urban development, climate change threaten watersheds across B.C.

In the meantime, watersheds across B.C. are under threat. Decades of clear-cut logging dramatically changed watersheds stretching from the coast through the Interior, Younes Alila, a hydrologist with the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry, told The Narwhal.

“We continue to lose our forest cover in B.C. at a very alarming rate,” he said. The result is a heightened risk of floods, drought and landslides, which threaten fish and other aquatic life, alongside the communities, farms and businesses that rely on access to clean water. 

Climate change compounds those threats, particularly in watersheds transformed by extensive urban and industrial development in ways that make them less resilient to extreme weather events. 

Just two years ago, pink salmon were left stranded and struggling for oxygen as water levels in xʔəl̓ilwətaʔɬ, the Indian River, dropped to dangerous lows amid an unrelenting drought. Two years before that, extreme rainstorms battered the province leading to widespread flooding and deadly landslides. 

“The situation is really scary,” Alila said, adding there’s “no doubt” a watershed security strategy is needed. Alongside investment in watershed restoration, he said the province needs to overhaul its forestry and water management policies to address the root causes that leave watersheds across the province in such a vulnerable state.

A more holistic approach is needed now, Hwitsum said, one that is co-developed with First Nations and places Indigenous Knowledge at the forefront. 

That the strategy the First Nations Water Caucus co-developed with the B.C. government has been set aside is “hugely deflating,” she said.

“We worked really hard for that and we were ready to hold that strategy up and say look, here’s a framework,” she said. 

The water ministry spokesperson said “the province agrees that more needs to be done to support watershed security and face the scale of the water challenges in B.C.” 

Alongside exploring options to bolster the water security fund, the spokesperson noted the government is working across ministries to reform water permitting, support farmers affected by drought and invest in community water conservation projects and critical infrastructure, including flood defences.

“The province is focused on supporting watershed security alongside First Nations, local governments, stakeholders, industry and the public,” the spokesperson said.

B.C. urged to raise industry water rates to bolster watershed security fund

As the First Nations Water Caucus continues to push for the strategy to be released, Hwitsum said the group is also looking at options to grow the watershed security fund.

The fund, which is currently co-managed by the Real Estate Foundation of BC and the First Nations Water Caucus, supports a range of projects focused on ecosystem health, reconciliation, climate resilience and sustainable economies. 

Earnings from the $100-million endowment are meant to provide annual funding for grants to support projects across B.C. But applications already exceed what it can afford to support while protecting the initial investment. In its first intake round in the spring of 2024, for instance, the fund received 131 applications requesting a total of $33.8 million in funding, but was only able to fund 26 projects totalling $5 million.  

In the December briefing document prepared for Minister Neill, government officials warned the fund “must grow to meet the scale of water challenges facing B.C.”

The water ministry spokesperson said the province has asked the federal government to contribute funds and is exploring other options including increasing government revenue to fund water priorities.

Hill sees a clear path forward: the province could increase the payments industrial users are required to pay for water.

“Quebec is a great model for this,” he said. It recently raised rates for companies that use water, but don’t store it, from $2.50 to $35 per million litres.

Currently, the B.C. government charges commercial water users — including mining, oil and gas and bottled water companies — $2.25 in rent for every million litres of fresh water they take. “We’re practically giving it away to large industrial users,” Hill said. 

“This is a huge province with these massive watersheds and all kinds of threats and issues that this fund is positioned to address,” he said. “It just needs more money.”

Editor’s note: The Real Estate Foundation of BC has financially supported work by The Narwhal. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

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I used to hate cold weather. I spent years dreading the full stretch between September and May. I despised itchy layers, foggy glasses and early sunsets, and had blizzard nightmares year-round, even in August. But this August, as months of extreme heat in southern Ontario finally ease off, it’s the sun I once longed for that has me depressed. 

This summer has been a bummer. All of my family’s regular camping and cottage trips were marked by the warming world. On one, oppressive heat made sleeping impossible. On another, a friend found a tick — an increasingly common pest that can carry disease — on his kid. A fire ban has taken roasted marshmallows off the menu of a third trip, but at least it’s going ahead now that a wildfire in the Kawartha Lakes is under control. As the smoke travelled over to my home in Toronto, I wondered whether a good parent would send their child to the couch instead of an outdoor camp, a question I’ve asked myself before. 

There’s no escaping the fact that my once-favourite season has become a health hazard. I tried to stay grateful navigating it all, given what others are facing. From Vancouver Island, B.C., to Annapolis County, N.S., one community after another faced wildfire evacuations this summer — at least 12,000 households in Manitoba alone. Meanwhile, I still got to swim in three Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario and Erie, the last full of waves that had my kid shrieking with delight. 

Summers in Canada are on track to be even less fun — hotter, smokier, more dangerous — unless we do something about it. I’m grateful that every day, people across Canada and globally are working to turn this nightmare around. Many are dreaming of a world where our great-grandchildren can have summers that feel carefree again, even if today’s kids have to check the lake for toxic blue-green algae before diving in. The sadness that brings is inescapable, but lately I’ve been thinking it’s time to push it aside and tap into anger instead. 

In Juice, novelist Tim Winton focuses his rage on the architects of climate change 

In May, it was already 30 C in Calgary, where Narwhal reporter Drew Anderson lives. As we discussed the inaccuracy of calling any temperature “unseasonable” anymore, Drew mentioned his obsession with the novel Juice, by the Australian author Tim Winton. It’s a futuristic climate dystopia, which I wouldn’t usually read given how much time I already spend staring into that particular abyss. Drew insisted that’s exactly why Juice would be cathartic. 

The book’s narrator has always lived on a sweltering planet, where the only way to survive summer is to stay underground in the dark. Yet Winton’s anti-hero isn’t initially despairing. Like any child, he experiences his life as normal, because it’s all he knows. Then, as a young adult, his worldview shatters. He learns that the world used to be different — greener, bluer, cooler, friendlier — and that fossil fuel barons knowingly destroyed it. 

He also learns their descendants live in hidden luxury, scattered across secret, air-conditioned bunkers in the farthest reaches of the burning planet. As his disbelief turns to fury, he’s offered a chance at revenge. The invite is to join a secretive force that roots out the progeny of those who ruined life for everyone else — and kills them. 

Drew was right. Winton’s fictional assassinations were a satisfying emotional release. The author called the novel an outlet for his “grief and rage” and the nightmare he paints is one I share. In Juice, there are barely any plants or wildlife. There’s barely any society, just individuals and small families eking out survival, their skin scarred from third-degree sunburns. As they march through deserts to find their targets, the vigilantes keep their energy up by chanting the names of the corporations that built fortunes big enough to allow generations to hide from accountability: “Aramco, Gazprom, Exxon!” 

All stifling summer, I’ve been thinking about that laser-sharp focus. Oil and gas executives are not now, and have never been, unaware they are actively victimizing billions of people. The bunkers Winton imagines are not imaginary: those that profit off of human suffering are well aware it pisses people off, so much that alleged CEO assassin Luigi Mangione became a heartthrob outlaw last year. Celebrating death is ugly, but so is purposefully ignoring it. British Columbia saw at least 600 deaths linked to extreme heat in 2021 alone. If we know the cause yet don’t prevent it, that sounds a bit like murder, too. 

Climate action for everyone: start talking about it

As billionaires prepare for a boiling planet, the rest of us have to as well. That starts with acknowledging that global warming is here, now, already stealing our chances to enjoy the natural beauty Canada says it’s so proud of. We have to adapt quickly and fairly. We have to work hard to make it stop.

Time and again, polls show the majority of people in this country want climate action. Yes, there are real differences of opinion about what those actions should be. That means there’s a way for everyone to join in — step one, as atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe says, is to actually start talking to each other about the reality of what we’re all experiencing.

If we spoke our fears out loud, we’d overcome how isolated they make us. We’d also realize there’s a lot of agreement about what to do. For example: most people agree that companies should shell out to clean up their own mess, whether abandoned oil and gas wells on farmlands or all the carbon in the sky. Climate change is expensive enough, so it’s confusing why governments make taxpayers subsidize that cleanup while businesses prioritize multimillion-dollar salaries ahead of desperately needed changes their customers are actively asking for. I have heard enough about fiduciary duties to shareholders — those are pretend, while our moral duty to other human beings is real.How silly it was of me to resent winter. How ignorant, to dismiss nature’s need to quietly regenerate, to incubate seeds for the plants that clean the air and build up the snowpack that used to stave off drought. By the time I became determined to appreciate snowy days, they began to disappear. Now, the root of my winter sadness is that it isn’t cold or wet enough. 

But I’m also trying to take a cue from the fires burning across the whole wide world: they’re raging and maybe we should be, too. If anger doesn’t drive you, then try love — for all the living beings on our wounded, beautiful home.

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We got rain — so our drought concerns are over, right?

It’s something we hear from readers, family and friends all the time. It’s a fair question. Drought warnings are becoming more common across Canada, and when we get a wet day, week or even month, we may think — or hope — that it’s solved the drought issue. But drought can be a compounding problem, even after the cool relief of rain.

It’s an issue affecting forests, grasslands and coasts. According to the Canadian drought monitor, 71 per cent of the country was in drought as of July 31 and most of Canada had below-average precipitation in July. The government of British Columbia reported snowpack in May was 71 per cent of normal, but by June, that plummeted to 13 per cent of normal, with some areas at zero per cent of normal.

While some areas of Canada have received more rain than normal lately, others are receiving starkly less — like southwestern Saskatchewan, which received less than 25 per cent of typical rainfall in June. Several areas in the province have declared agricultural states of emergency.

Water scarcity is already an increasing risk, and even more pressures are growing. Donald Trump has called Canada a “very large faucet” that could be used to mitigate water shortages in the United States. And companies like Bell Canada are looking to open artificial intelligence (AI) data centres, which guzzle an incredible amount of drinking water, sometimes millions of litres in a single day for large centres.

Many Canadians may be surprised to hear they have no enshrined right to clean water. Residents of Glade, a small B.C. community, mounted a legal challenge against private logging near their water supply, and in 2019 a B.C. Supreme Court judge concluded they did not have any inherent right to this natural resource.

“Do you have a right to clean water?” Justice Mark McEwan said in court. “I’d suggest you don’t. There just is nowhere in the law where you can look and say, ‘There it is — there’s my right, I have a right to clean water.’ ” Canada recognized the UN declaration on the human right to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in 2012, but that is not a legally binding protection.

Many interests want to pull from Canada’s water — while drought already has caused major ecosystem and economic losses.

Crop insurance payouts in Canada ballooned in the past few years, ranging from $3.5 billion to $4.9 billion between 2021 and 2024. For the decade before that, between 2010 to 2020, payouts ranged from $77 million to $1.7 billion. Farmers in the Atlantic provinces have said this year’s drought is the worst in recent memory, decimating both their crops and their livelihoods. 

Drought can also interfere with hydroelectricity generation, making electricity more expensive — B.C. and Manitoba had to import power in 2024 due to low reservoir levels.

Drought isn’t only lack of rain — it’s about water in soil and waterways, and impacts of industrial activity

Drought can’t only be understood in terms of lack of rain — it’s how water is functioning in the whole system, Younes Alila, professor in the University of British Columbia’s department of forest resources management, previously told The Narwhal. In a recent short documentary, Trouble in the Headwaters, he explains how logging has contributed to increased risk of flood and drought by removing tree cover that keeps the ground moist and cool, moderating the speed of melting snow.

“When the snowmelt’s slower, it has a chance to infiltrate into the soil, recharging the groundwater,” he explains in the film.

Without trees, water can rush down slopes, causing flooding and landslides, he says. “This is why we are going to be living under a heightened risk of flooding and droughts for decades to come — because by nature, the recovery is very slow.”

Many wetlands that retain water and mitigate floods have also been cleared for human development. That means soil is more likely to dry out, so it also doesn’t absorb water as well.

Hotter weather exacerbates drought risk by causing more erratic precipitation and earlier, faster snowmelts than normal — and the sudden flows can all wash away over the dry soil rather than getting soaked in.

It’s similar to pouring water on a dried-out potted plant; the parched soil doesn’t absorb the water, and it runs out the bottom of the pot instead.

Hotter weather is causing drought nationwide, posing health risks to humans and lethal risk to animals

As the climate changes, bringing higher temperatures and drier conditions, drought conditions spread and worsen. The impacts are widespread, even if they’re felt at different times to different degrees. 

It may be tempting to not worry about lower levels of drought, but the effects can still branch outwards. B.C. classifies drought severity by levels 0 through 5, going from normal to severe and rare. In the B.C. Interior, much of the area is at Level 2 drought, midway through the scale. But some rivers are low and warm enough already to risk aquatic life like salmon, which rely on cool temperatures.

When plants dry out in drought, it can mean less shade and shelter for animals like ground-nesting birds, as well as less productive growth of nuts and berries for deer and bears, or less lichen for caribou. That can force animals to move in search of food and water, sometimes to urban areas. 

Drought comes with human health risks, too. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, drought can degrade water quality and promote algal blooms — which are increasingly common in Ontario’s Great Lakes — and waterborne diseases. Meanwhile, dusty conditions can worsen respiratory problems.

Explosion of AI data centres will mean more industrial water use — including in the Great Lakes and drought-stricken B.C.

The push to build data centres across the world will put significant pressure on water supply — a Bloomberg investigation found that two-thirds of AI data centres globally are built or planned in places with high water stress. Much of that stress is due to other industries: AI currently uses much less water than, say, mining, but the race by Alberta and other provinces to attract new centres means the water they use is increasingly significant. 

In B.C., Bell plans to build six AI data centres, while Telus plans to launch an AI “factory” in Kamloops, touting the project as something that can bolster Canada’s sovereignty in the face of U.S. tariffs and threats of annexation. Bell’s first data centre is also planned for Kamloops, and the next in Merritt, both in B.C.’s dry Interior.

Merritt is in the Nicola watershed, which is in Level 3 drought. The nearby Coldwater River is having such low flows it is not meeting the needs of salmon, a 2025 study from the Raincoast Conservation Society and Scw’exmx Tribal Council found.

“The Nicola watershed is one of B.C.’s most vulnerable regions to the effects of climate change, particularly as it relates to drought,” Raincoast said in a release.

Meanwhile, in Ontario’s Great Lakes region — which provides water to 70 per cent of the province’s 14 million people — there are at least 108 data centres in the Greater Toronto Area alone.

Data centres use cold water to cool their computers — and they use immense amounts. One study projected global AI demand will withdraw between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water in 2027. That’s more than Canada’s entire manufacturing industry used in 2021. And demand is only growing.

In Newtown Country, Ga., where tech giant Meta built a data centre, the cost of water has soared, with rates set to increase 33 per cent over the next two years, and the county is on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, the New York Times reported. Meta makes up about 10 per cent of the county’s total water use every day.

In Spain’s Aragon region (home to about 1.3 million people and a bit bigger than Vancouver Island), Amazon’s new data centres are predicted to double the entire region’s current electricity use, and the company is asking to increase its water consumption by 48 per cent. 

AI has the ability to increase our efficiency and better monitor our use of natural resources — but its water consumption is on track to outweigh its environmental contributions, three professors from the University of Amsterdam recently argued in The Conversation.

These centres are draining groundwater while “the minimum needs of the world’s poorest to access water and sanitation services have not been met,” they argued, adding that Google’s data centres used over 21 billion litres of drinkable water in 2022, up 20 per cent from 2021. Each year, the computing power used for AI increases.

“We believe there is sufficient evidence for concern that the rapid uptake of AI risks exacerbating the water crises. … As yet, there are no systematic studies on the AI industry and its water consumption,” they concluded.

Unlike the European Union, Canada doesn’t have water use disclosure rules for data centres — in part because water is managed provincially, not federally. 

Communities, experts are already calling for industries to pay more for water

The B.C. non-profit organization Watershed Watch reported this summer that industrial water users in the province pay a maximum of $2.25 per million litres, a rate that hasn’t increased in a decade. In Ontario, the rate is just $3.71 for the first million litres, with commercial water bottlers paying an additional $500 per million litres. 

But industries use billions of litres of water — mining company Rio Tinto used 72.5 billion litres of water in Quebec in 2022 alone. According to the Montreal Gazette, businesses used 800 billion litres of water in the province in 2021 and paid just $3 million, a number the provincial government cited when it increased commercial water rates 900 per cent last year.

Watershed Watch suggests raising industrial water rates and using that revenue to support watershed security. It suggests that revenue could also go to developing regional watershed boards made up of “First Nations, governments, farmers, non-profits and other stakeholders to manage water locally.” 

The non-profit says B.C. sounds “like a broken record” telling residents to “take shorter showers and water their lawn less,” and that while these steps are important, it’s an “unserious solution to a very serious problem.”

“We’re not asking for a radical solution, just a responsible one. The status quo is failing our salmon, our watersheds and everyone who calls B.C. home.”

Prairie droughts add to wildfire and drinking water issues for Indigenous communities

First Nations disproportionately lack access to clean drinking water, and drought exacerbates the issue. Some First Nations have been left waiting years to get access to clean water. Tallcree First Nation in northern Alberta relies on spring runoff to pull water from a nearby creek, and it told the CBC it’s concerned when flows are low, it won’t be able to pull anything.

In 2015, former prime minister Justin Trudeau promised to end long-term boil water advisories in First Nations by 2021. As of July 11, 38 advisories remain in place. But the feds specifically define “long-term” as a single advisory lasting more than one year — so communities that experience many “temporary” boil water advisories for weeks or months at a time are not included. The federal government also does not track advisories in B.C. First Nations. 

First Nations access to clean water is a painfully long-standing issue, which has been condemned by multiple United Nations representatives over the years — and yet, some Canadian politicians are still opposing a First Nations clean water bill.

Meanwhile, drought conditions can also exacerbate wildfires, which have hit the Prairies hard this year. Almost 69,000 square kilometres in Canada have burned — making this Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record so far. More than half of all areas burned in 2025 are in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

If that surface area was instead one of the Great Lakes, it would be the second biggest one behind Lake Superior and ahead of Lake Huron. If it was an island, it would be twice as big as Vancouver Island.

Manitoba had a dry spring followed by an unusual spring heatwave, contributing to the devastating fires that caused thousands to be evacuated.

Again, Indigenous people are being disproportionately affected by evacuations.

“This will be the largest evacuation Manitoba will have seen in most people’s living memory,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said in May. 

Government and industry have the tools to combat persistent drought

Last year, when Alberta was dealing with low water supply, Tricia Stadnyk, a professor of engineering and geography at the University of Calgary who studies hydrology, told The Narwhal Canada as a whole has ignored what’s coming.

“Oh, it’s Canada, we have so much water we don’t know what to do with it, we’re never going to have drought that’s so severe people have to move or can’t survive or we can’t grow crops,” she says, summarizing the common belief that massive, widespread water shortages can’t happen here. 

“It’s just unthinkable for Canadians to think about drought at that scale, but the reality is this is the future of the Canadian Prairies.”

“Unless properly managed, even Canada’s water supplies will eventually run out,” Stadnyk wrote in The Conversation earlier this year.

She calls for more data collection so we can forecast water flows better, and for improved cooperation across municipalities, provinces, Indigenous governments and the feds, along with the United States at transboundary areas. She says the current system has “fragmented oversight” and “privileged licences” for industrial users that shows “little care” for watershed health. She advocates for improved water efficiency by industrial users, along with people curbing their individual use.

“It’s time to challenge our wasteful ways and accept that even in Canada, water must be managed effectively,” she says. 

“The choices we make today will impact our children and their children and will literally mean the difference between them thriving or surviving as a society.”

A diary of drought

B.C. has been dealing with persistent drought since 2022. In April 2024, the province recorded the lowest snowpack since 1970. After a dry, hot summer, much of B.C. remained in drought even through the winter into 2025.

Going through the province’s 2025 drought updates reads as a diary of land struggling to grasp onto water:

• May 15: Significant 30-day precipitation deficits… rapid decline in streamflows… lowest on record streamflow for Kiskatinaw River in the northeast.
• May 22: [Snowmelt] is still tracking earlier than normal.
• June 5: Long-term drought risk persists in the northeast and southeast… Lake storage in the South Peace has not recovered from last summer.
• June 19: Recent rainfall has improved drought conditions in the northeast… but streamflow response was muted in some areas due to long-term dryness. … Chemainus River (Vancouver Island) approaching record low flows.
• July 3: Flows in the Similkameen are at a record low…
• July 10: Declining flows and rising stream temperatures continue to pose a risk to aquatic ecosystems in tributaries across the Okanagan and Vancouver Island.
• July 29: Despite near-normal rainfall in some areas providing short-term drought relief, long-term drought effects persist… reports of fish stranding on Vancouver Island.
• August 5: Flows in the Coquihalla River are at a record low for this time of year.

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This story has been co-published with the Winnipeg Free Press.

Manitoba is the last stop for a tangle of waterways that pour from the Rocky Mountains and out across the North American plains and Prairies, a catchment for water that passes through numerous provinces and U.S. states.

The province receives 70 per cent of its water from other jurisdictions, leaving Manitoba vulnerable to upheavals, whether climate-related or political in nature.

During a drought, this tangle of factors can lead to significant ramifications that can negatively impact the generating capacity — and profitability — of Manitoba Hydro.

Last year, the utility lost $157 million due to the effects of extremely arid conditions hampering its ability to generate and sell electricity. This summer, flows across much of the province are significantly lower as the Prairies once again struggle with widespread drought.

And while Alberta and Saskatchewan have always met or exceeded the amount of water they’re required to share under existing agreements, the current impacts could be a taste of what’s to come. Climate models predict increased instability across the Prairies, with more frequent and longer droughts mixed with periods of flooding. That’s coupled with a growing population and ever more demand for water, energy and electricity.

With all of this uncertainty, it doesn’t take much to tip the scales in a province where almost all — more than 96 per cent — of its electricity comes from hydro.

“In our very preliminary analysis, even a five per cent decrease in inflow to the Manitoba Hydro system … will have a significant impact on power generation,” Masoud Asadzadeh, a professor in the department of civil engineering at the University of Manitoba, said in an interview.

With his research focusing on simulation, design and analysis of water-engineering systems, Asadzadeh said more groundwork needs to be done to facilitate the tough, but necessary, conversations around water sharing in an era of climate change.

In severe drought year, Manitoba Hydro lost nearly half a billion dollars

Along the rivers tracked by Manitoba Hydro, flow levels are significantly lower than at the same time last year, while the utility maintains levels at dammed lakes to meet winter demand.

Hydro is watching the situation.

“While we’ve seen below-normal spring and summer precipitation so far, we aren’t making predictions right now,” spokesperson Riley McDonald said in an emailed response to questions. 

McDonald said the utility has been able to meet provincial electrical demand and export contracts in previous low-water years, but the reduced generation hampers its ability to sell excess power on the open market, impacting revenues.

McDonald didn’t say whether a threshold exists at which Manitoba Hydro would be unable to meet provincial demand, and the province directed the question back to the utility. McDonald said the system is designed to ensure necessary generation based on the worst drought conditions recorded since 1912; in 2003-04, Manitoba Hydro lost a record $436 million due to drought conditions. 

Asadzadeh said the real “nightmare scenario” for Hydro is severe, multi-year droughts across the Prairies, events that are now not uncommon all across the region. 

Manitoba’s own drought management strategy highlights a study of tree rings that shows a multi-decade drought plagued the Red River Basin in the 1500s. 

“It is difficult to comprehend the catastrophe that would occur if Manitoba and the rest of the Canadian Prairies were to experience such a severe, multi-decade drought today,” the strategic action plan notes.

At the same time, the increasing electrification of heating and transportation is expected to increase demand on the Manitoba Hydro grid, according to the utility’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan. 

“Manitoba Hydro’s energy and capacity resources are limited. We already anticipate not renewing some of our current contracts for exports of electricity as that surplus energy will be increasingly required to meet your needs here in Manitoba,” then president and CEO Jay Grewal wrote in the introduction to the report.

Drought and demand, however, aren’t the only factors impacting the province.

Alberta and Saskatchewan each must pass along 50 per cent of river flow

Alberta and Saskatchewan are obligated to pass on roughly half of the estimated water that flows through their territories. Alberta moves along 50 per cent to Saskatchewan, which then shifts 50 per cent to Manitoba.

So far, the system has worked, with both provinces meeting or exceeding obligations. But variability is the norm. In wet years, Alberta can pass along far more water than is required, but in drier years, it skirts the minimum threshold. It delivered 56 per cent of its natural flow to Saskatchewan during the drought in 2001, for example.

Each province has its own system for regulating water use, and faces its own internal stresses, demands and interests.

It’s a system Tricia Stadnyk, the Canada Research Chair in hydrological modelling at the University of Calgary has called “fragmented.”

The “dual threat of climate change and increasing demand pressures,” she wrote in The Conversation, could stretch the Prairies’ water-sharing agreement to the breaking point.

But the agreement offers some stability, at least when compared to similar accords with the United States, from where some of Manitoba’s rivers flow. North Dakota, for example, can petition a joint commission to reduce flow to Manitoba from the Souris River. And along the Red River, there is no formal agreement between the two nations to share water.

“Apportionment on the Red River is challenging due to the fact that there may be very limited or no flow to apportion during severe drought,” according to the province’s drought management strategy.

A Manitoba government spokesperson said the province works with Alberta, Saskatchewan and the federal government through the Prairie Provinces Water Board to manage transboundary water.

“Western provincial officials remain in regular contact during dry periods, to share water management information and updates,” the spokesperson said by email. 

The water board, however, has no regulatory authority.

In the case of a dispute between provinces, it will be referred to the Federal Court of Canada.

There is also increased demand on the system as Alberta and Saskatchewan look to expand irrigation, which consumes vast quantities of water. In Alberta, irrigation accounts for approximately 43 per cent of all water allocations. Fossil fuel production has access to 13 per cent.

All of this occurs amid the backdrop of climate change, which Manitoba’s water management strategy warns is “expected to make extreme heat and drought-driven water shortages more frequent and severe.”

Each and every factor could impact hydroelectric generation and the utility’s bottom line.

Prairies drought can lead to competition for scarce water resources

Asadzadeh said there has to be more adaptability built into water management on the Prairies, particularly with the increased uncertainty brought by climate change.

“These agreements will protect people, because the more water is used by different sectors, the more competition happens,” he said. “And if [extreme] drought happened, that competition might change its shape from competition to disagreement at some point.”

Asadzadeh said when conflict arises, it’s often the more vulnerable communities that are most impacted, and consequently, he said there should be more focus placed on Indigenous water rights in times of drought.

Planning ahead for extreme drought is something the water board is at least considering.

A spokesperson said the board has taken part in an extreme drought scenario exercise in 2022, including “how discussions between jurisdictions and other stakeholders can inform actions that might need to be taken should water use need to be prioritized.”

It’s not at all clear where Manitoba Hydro would slot in on that list of priorities.

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Trouble in the Headwaters, a powerful 25-minute documentary by filmmaker Daniel J. Pierce, explores the root causes behind the devastating 2018 floods in Grand Forks, B.C. More than 100 families were displaced and millions of dollars were spent on flood infrastructure — yet floods continue to threaten the region. So what’s going on?

The film — which you can watch in full below! — follows Dr. Younes Alila, a professor of forest hydrology at the University of British Columbia, as he investigates the upstream impacts of clear-cut logging in the Kettle River watershed. With compelling field footage and scientific insight, The Narwhal presents a documentary that reveals how loss of forest cover has triggered a cycle of flooding, landslides and drought — transforming the landscape and endangering communities downstream.

“What is happening in the Kettle River basin is typical of what has been happening and will continue to happen for decades in other drainages across all of B.C.,” Alila told a crowd at the film’s global premiere in Victoria on June 12. Clear-cut logging in the Kettle basin, like elsewhere in the province, is extensive: two-thirds of the watershed has been harvested in the last 30 years.

“I think of the 2021 atmospheric river: the flooding of Merritt, the flooding of Princeton, the landslide on the Duffey highway,” Pierce added. “If you sort of pull on the thread and you look upstream, it’s the same picture in all of these places. The big Chilcotin landslide from last summer — if you look upstream across the whole Chilcotin plateau: dramatic forest cover loss. So, yeah, this is such a bigger story than we had time to get into in this film.”

Alila came to forest science in the 1990s as an outsider. From his experience in urban hydrology and as a professional engineer, he saw cracks in the way scientists have studied the impacts of clearcuts on floods.

Climate change is responsible for some of the increase in flooding. But decades of research by Alila and his peers suggests the role of industrial forestry is significant, and has long been underestimated and overlooked. He spent years investigating the problem with the existing methodologies and developing a new paradigm — one that actually accounts for how the cumulative effects of clearcutting are increasing the frequency of major flooding events in B.C.

His published findings, including a landmark 2009 paper, sparked heated debates in the pages of scientific journals. But Alila came to realize that convincing his peers was only part of the battle. After the 2021 atmospheric river that caused devastating floods in the Fraser Valley and elsewhere, he decided it was time to speak up — publicly.“I’m on a mission, and I’m advocating for what I think is the only defensible science that should guide management,” he said.

Alila sees hope in ongoing class-action lawsuits: people impacted by floods in Grand Forks, Chemainus and elsewhere in B.C. are suing governments and forestry companies, arguing that allowing overharvesting of trees contributed to the harm.

“I think we’re moving into an era of decades in B.C. where we’re going to see more and more of these legal actions against the forest industry and government,” Alila said.

As for Pierce, whose film was made possible with support from the Sitka Foundation and the Science Media Centre of Canada, he says he wants to see a massive investment in the health of forests across the country. “Right now, we’re spending untold billions of dollars, year after year, putting out wildfires and responding to floods and responding to these disasters — and the costs that are coming down the line are absolutely gargantuan,” he said.

If we put half that amount into restoring the ability of forests to reduce floods and mitigate wildfire risks, “not only would that pay dividends for generations to come, but we could put so many people to work in an effort like that,” Pierce said. “Workers need to see themselves in that story, and communities need to see themselves protected in that story.”

“Yes, it’s going to be a massive investment, but that investment will pay off, and it pales in comparison to what we’re going to be paying if we just keep doing the same thing that we’re doing now.”

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As Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatens to cut off electricity exports to the U.S. in retaliation for sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods, B.C. Premier David Eby is striking a different tone when it comes to the flow of power over the international border. 

“We have had to enter into contingency planning about our electrical supply and our relationship with the United States,” Eby said during a media availability on Wednesday. 

Eby cited “significant layoffs” last month at the Bonneville Power Administration in Oregon, saying personnel cuts made by the new U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, colloquially known as DOGE and run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, “seriously weaken an independent agency that we depend on for electrical sales to the United States.”

Last month, the Trump government laid off 600 employees at the organization that distributes hydropower from 31 U.S. federal dams in the Pacific Northwest. (Some employees have since been rehired.)

B.C.’s electricity grid is deeply enmeshed with — and sometimes relies on — power from Washington State, Oregon and California.

“The chaos, the uncertainty and potential instability that these kinds of decisions cause means we have to have backup plans in place,” Eby told reporters, adding B.C. is also bracing for the possibility of U.S. tariffs on Canadian energy, should Trump take similar steps to what Ford has proposed.

“This is contingency planning that happens in case of emergencies, natural disasters and so on and, unfortunately, now it’s contingency planning around a man-made disaster, made by the president of the United States,” the premier said.

Eby’s description of B.C.’s power situation is about as far from Ford’s threat to cut off power to the U.S. as Vancouver is from Toronto. Here’s why.

Why doesn’t B.C. threaten to halt electricity sales to the U.S.? 

When the U.S. tariffs kicked in on March 4, Ford responded by announcing a 25 per cent surcharge on provincial energy exports to the U.S. He also promised further retaliation if tariffs on Canadian products persist into April — including a last resort of shutting off power exports entirely.

“If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything — including cut off their energy with a smile on my face,” Ford told reporters on Monday. “They rely on our energy, they need to feel the pain.”

By comparison, B.C.’s response to the Trump administration’s economic belligerence has been somewhat subdued.

In late February, Eby told reporters he had pitched Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a retaliatory measure to impose tariffs on U.S. thermal coal exports, which make their way through the Port of Vancouver at Roberts Bank on their way to China. It’s not a move the province can make on its own because ports are federal jurisdiction. B.C. has also removed liquor imported from Republican states from store shelves and is urging people to buy B.C. and Canadian-made products, as well as prioritizing B.C. and Canadian companies for government procurement contracts.

If B.C. does decide to cut off power to the U.S., it would create “a serious risk, in peak times, of brownouts and blackouts on the West Coast of the United States,” Eby said during a news conference on Thursday.

In large part, B.C. hasn’t moved to slap its own tax on electricity exports to the U.S. because the province increasingly relies on power from south of the border to keep the lights on.

“We do import electricity from the United States at times of low cost, when it’s beneficial for British Columbians,” Eby told reporters on Wednesday.

“What happens if that got cut off?” he asked.

How much electricity does B.C. need to import?

Like most provinces, including Ontario, B.C. buys American electricity and sells power across the border.

BC Hydro’s wholly owned subsidiary, Powerex Corp., exports power when prices are high and imports power from other jurisdictions when prices are low. Powerex reaps bigger profits when BC Hydro’s generators slow down to import cheaper power, especially at night when demand is low.

B.C. has a history of importing electricity when it’s cheap and convenient as a way to keep costs low rather than out of necessity. 

“We made almost a billion dollars selling electricity to the United States last year, so [cutting off exports to the U.S.] will have significant rate impacts on hydro ratepayers here,” Eby said at Thursday’s news conference.

The difference between the amount of power B.C. needs and the amount of power produced in the province varies hugely from year to year. Over the past five years, BC Hydro has had an annual average power surplus of 925 gigawatt hours, according to the utility’s latest service plan, released on Tuesday as part of the provincial budget. That much electricity could power 92,500 homes.

In 2021, the province produced nearly 10,700 gigawatt hours more than it needed.

But last year, as drought continued and water levels dropped in hydro reservoirs, power demand outstripped provincial supply by 10,430 gigawatt hours, according to the BC Hydro’s service plan. As a result, nearly one-quarter of electricity the province used was imported, much of it from U.S. sources. That’s more than twice the 1,100-megawatt generating capacity of the $16-billion Site C dam that took almost 10 years to build on B.C.’s Peace River.

At the legislature on Wednesday, B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad expressed frustration at the depth of B.C.’s dependence on the U.S. for electricity and other commodities.

“British Columbia is an incredibly vulnerable situation,” Rustad told reporters. “We depend so much on the Americans for the electricity we consume, for the gasoline that we use, for the food that we need, for health care services.”

Why does B.C. need to import electricity? 

B.C. has historically benefited from an abundance of cheap, reliable and relatively clean hydroelectric power. But climate change has begun to erode the province’s longstanding power advantage. As winters get warmer and summers become hotter and drier, water levels in the reservoirs that generate B.C.’s hydropower have started to drop — and they’re not filling up as much during the wetter months.

Drought has impacted much of the province in recent years and the dry conditions are having an impact on BC Hydro’s power generation capacity.

Last spring, low snowpack in the Columbia River and Peace River basins — where more than half of the province’s electricity is generated — resulted in “energy challenges,” according to BC Hydro’s new service plan.

“Hydro generation remains forecast to be below average” and drought will continue to have a “significant” effect on BC Hydro’s power capabilities this year, the service plan stated.

What comes next for B.C.’s electricity production?

As B.C. eyes a future without U.S. electricity imports, Eby said his government is looking to strengthen energy ties with its provincial neighbours.“This is one of the reasons you saw [Energy Minister Adrian] Dix entering into agreements with Alberta to find ways that we can strengthen our interties across the mountains to be able to sell electricity more readily to Alberta,” he told reporters. 

B.C. has been pressing Alberta to invest in improving the electricity link, called an intertie, between the two provinces for more than a decade. Last July, Dix’s predecessor, former energy minister Josie Osborne, wrote to Alberta’s Minister of Affordability and Utilities Nathan Neudorf, arguing Alberta was restricting imports of electricity in violation of interprovincial agreements and to the financial detriment of B.C.

Since then, Neudorf has directed Alberta’s grid operator to initiate work on the intertie, but it remains unclear whether that work will satisfy B.C.

Dix struck a positive note when asked by The Narwhal about the status of intertie discussions.

“We’re working closely with the Alberta government and look forward to a positive resolution for both our provinces one of these days,” Dix said.

B.C. is also working to boost local power production, with a focus on clean and renewable energy sources. Last December, Dix announced new wind projects will not have to undergo environmental assessments, a move he maintains will help get wind farms from the application stage to producing energy much faster. 

Nine wind projects and one solar power project are among the 18 energy and resource development projects the B.C. government plans to fast-track as part of its response to U.S. tariffs — although details about how the province plans to accelerate projects remain murky.

The tariff situation keeps changing. Could B.C.’s stance on electricity exports change too?

On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump changed his mind again and granted most Canadian and Mexican imports a reprieve from 25 per cent tariffs until April 2. As the trade uncertainty continues, Eby urged Canadian leaders to take a firm stance against the “uncertainty and chaos” across the border.

“This is unacceptable and we’re going to ensure that the Americans understand how pissed off we are, how unified we are, how committed we are to working as a country to stand up for each other and our own independence,” Eby said at the Thursday news conference. “I say we don’t let up until the president takes the threat off the table.”

Ford, meanwhile, announced Ontario’s 25 per cent tariff on energy exports to the U.S. will still take effect on March 10 as planned.

Eby said B.C. is open to working with the federal government and Ontario to develop a coordinated approach to energy export tariffs.

“We are highly integrated with the U.S. electricity system and it will definitely send a strong message to Americans, but we’ve got to do it in a coordinated way and I look forward to working with [Ford] and the prime minister on initiatives like that,” the premier told reporters.

The B.C. government also plans to pass legislation giving the province more power to respond to economic threats from the U.S.

Eby said the new legislation will empower the government “to remove internal trading barriers that stop us from trading with our partners and friends from coast to coast to coast.” 

“The legislation will give [the] government flexibility to respond rapidly to executive orders from the president as they arise.”

Eby singled out U.S. commercial trucking as a target of the forthcoming legislation, which will give the province the power to impose tolls or fees on American trucks that use B.C. highways to reach Alaska.

“It will be one tool among a number of tools that enable us to respond to escalations from the American side,” Eby said. “It will not be implemented immediately, but we will have it available if it’s required.”

Updated on March 6, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. PT. This story has been updated to include comments from a press conference held by B.C. Premier David Eby at noon on March 6, as well as breaking news on U.S. plans for tariffs and Ontario’s response.

Updated on May 22, 2025, at 10:46 a.m. PT. This story has been updated to correct the estimate of how many homes could be powered by 925 gigawatt hours of electricity to 92,500. The story originally stated that 925 gigawatt hours could power 925,000 homes.

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White-throated sparrows teach each other new songs on migration stop-overs. Dainty Tennessee warblers make unexpectedly long stops in Quebec’s semi-urban forests to replace their flight feathers. Sandpipers use temporary wetlands created by flooding farm fields in the Mississippi Valley.

These are some of the discoveries researchers have made from strapping tiny solar-powered backpacks to migratory songbirds.

For the past 10 years, scientists, educators and organizations across North America and beyond have been contributing to a program that follows the paths of migratory birds on their epic journeys by outfitting them with solar-powered “backpack” trackers no bigger than a dime. It’s an ambitious international network called Motus, which is Latin for movement or motion. 

“Essentially Motus uses radio telemetry to track small flying animals,” Amie MacDonald, a migration scientist with Birds Canada who works on the network in British Columbia, tells The Narwhal. “Mostly that’s birds, but it’s also been used to track bats in a number of studies and there’s even been some work on large insects like monarch butterflies or darner dragonflies.”

Birds Canada, a national conservation group, launched the project about a decade ago, partnering with individuals and organizations around the world. Today, 34 countries contribute to the Motus database and researchers have produced more than 200 publications based on the data. MacDonald says the collaborative nature of the project means it’s easier for researchers to leverage limited conservation funding, which often comes with restrictions based on geographical location. 

Migrating species don’t care about political borders — and neither does climate change. Every year, tens of millions of birds take to the skies along major migratory routes like the Pacific Flyway, an aerial artery that stretches from Alaska to Patagonia. 

Climate change is causing cascading and, in some cases, catastrophic effects on birds’ seasonal stopover locations, breeding grounds and wintering sites, which are also under threat from habitat loss. Drought in California, for instance, reduces available habitat for birds that call both Colombia and British Columbia home for part of the year.

And at home, MacDonald notes there is increasing interest in using the Motus network to study the impact of renewable energy projects. In December, for example, B.C. announced it had approved nine new land-based wind projects, exempting them from the environmental assessment process.

“We’re starting to look at potential opportunities to co-locate Motus stations with offshore wind energy, seeing how Motus can help to understand potential impacts, in terms of placement,” she says. 

From backpacks to towers: how Motus works

The Motus network allows researchers to share information about individual birds as they cross borders using radio tags that operate on the same frequency; each one has a digital identifier. 

“That’s what enables the scale of the system because all of the receivers can be listening for these shared frequencies,” she says. “So animals that get tagged, say, in northern British Columbia, can be detected not only by stations set up by those same projects that I’m working on but also by other stations in Costa Rica that are set up by other folks who are not directly collaborating with me necessarily, but are part of the same Motus network.”

If a bird with a solar-powered backpack flies past a Motus receiver, the data will be recorded and shared to the entire network, including with participants thousands of kilometres away. Scientists and conservationists can start to piece together the details of where birds are going, what their specific needs are and where they might be running into trouble.

“Understanding where birds are going across their full annual cycle can give us more insight into threats they might be facing,” she says.

White-throated sparrows show ‘cultural transmission of song’

Beyond practical applications, the network is providing fascinating insights into bird behaviour. MacDonald says they tracked the migration routes of white-throated sparrows from northern B.C. to develop a “potential hypothesis” on how the birds are sharing songs.

“It’s not necessarily related to climate or directly related to conservation, but it’s an interesting way that being able to track small birds at long distances can give us some insight into why these things might be happening,” she says.

Different breeding populations — sometimes separated by hundreds of kilometres — somehow learned the same songs, which was initially a head-scratcher for scientists observing the populations. 

“They started singing different variations of their song and then it spread quite quickly,” she says. “But they’re overlapping on migration. On the non-breeding grounds they may be learning these different song variants and then bringing them back to their breeding territories — which is just kind of neat. You can call it kind of a cultural transmission of song.” 

Tracking birds can help answer questions about how drought affects migration

MacDonald started studying birds as a way to spend more time outdoors. One of her current projects is in the Fraser River estuary, collaborating with researchers in California and Mexico, to understand how shorebird physiology and movement is affected by drought in California’s Central Valley. 

“We can work together to track birds in those different locations and hopefully compare how the physiology of the birds differs among the different sites where they spend the non-breeding season and then link that to any potential differences in movement patterns.”

Researchers can use Motus to answer questions about how drought and other factors affect migration — and whether the birds that make it are breeding in sufficient numbers to sustain the population. 

Some of their research feeds into unique conservation projects in California and other states, where rice farmers are paid to flood their fields at specific times of year, creating temporary wetlands that benefit migrating shorebirds and other species. MacDonald is hopeful the work will feed into existing programs to support the birds.

“In B.C., we are tagging birds at another site along the coast that hasn’t been experiencing that level of drought to compare.”

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