Book Description

Six government partners - Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, Parks Canada Agency, the Ministère du Développement durable, de l'Environnement et des Parcs du Québec, the Ministère des Ressources naturelles et de la Faune du Québec - and Stratégies Saint-Laurent, a nongovernmental organization that works actively with riverside communities, are pooling their expertise and efforts to provide Canadians with information on the state of the St. Lawrence and long-term trends affecting it. To this end, environmental indicators have been developed on the basis of data collected as part of each organization's ongoing environmental monitoring activities. This fact sheet illustrates why the Northern Gannet, a seabird whose expansive feeding grounds and a diet rich in fish can provide information on the abundance of its prey and the degree of contamination of the ecosystem, was chosen as a sentinel species (or "bioindicator") of the state of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.