Bridget Wright, executive director of Save the River.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank - You for having me.

- If I can have you rewind the clock a bit.

Can we look back 10 years, 20 years compared to today, what are the most noticeable changes you see in the river?

- The most noticeable changes I see right off the bat would be we're having warmer summers.

Many years ago, we rarely had a day in the summer where we were needing air conditioning or needing that kind of relief, maybe one or two days.

Now we're locals, everybody's setting up for, we need air conditioning, we need this kind of cooling periods because of the high humidity as well.

We're also seeing less ice and people are noticing the shorter season of winter at some points and less winter activities, such like that.

That's I think one of the main things people see right off the bat.

- So I think when we think of climate change, our brains immediately go to warming and the effects that that has.

So how is the warming climate impacting the river directly?

What are we seeing?

- Well, there's a number of factors.

So even with the river warming just a few degrees, you're going to see a number of factors, even though it's just a couple of degrees over historical amount of time.

So the first thing we were seeing is the fishermen and the anglers and such, they're like, where are these fish?

Where are the musky, where are the pike?

These cold water fish are essentially staying in colder parts of the water longer.

The fishermen's fishing ship cycle has kind of shifted.

The warm water fish, such as like bullheads, perch, stuff like that, they're staying in areas that are more suitable to them.

And so we're kind of seeing a shift there.

When the water does warm up, there's less oxygen available, less dissolved oxygen.

There's just not enough of that cool water and oxygen available for fish.

So you're going to see less fish and you may see more invasive species.

With this warmer weather comes more volatile storms.

So we're going to be probably seeing more of that in the future and even just in the past couple years.

So more thunderstorms, rainstorms, these torrential storms coming in in the summertime.

And then as we saw last winter, particularly last winter, these, we call them the polar vortexes.

We may see a mild warm winter, and if we do, we'll probably see more and more of those crazy polar vortexes coming in immediately and freezing everything up and staying for a certain amount of days and then exiting the area.

So - It impacts the fish.

What about plant life?

- Yeah, same thing.

So the plant life, the native plant species are used to a certain temperature.

They're used to a certain amount of oxygen.

We would see the same thing with them.

If it's not the right environment for them, they won't thrive the same way.

And that opens up to other plant species and invasive marine species that are like, "Oh, this area is good for us."

And of course, that's not the balance that we want to see.

- We've seen so many headlines about invasive species in the river, not just the river, but also neighboring lakes, other bodies of water.

Yes.

Is that related to climate change?

- Yes.

There are some.

So for example, a lot of times people look at zebra mussels, certain, the gobies and such.

They came in through shipping.

They don't like the warm weather either.

So they're just happenstance, however, but there are a number of invasive species that kind of thrive in a warmer environment.

And some of them even like bugs that have gotten into the hemlock trees or certain trees and stuff that are being wiped out.

I think they were talking about the lanternflies taking over now, but same in the water.

There are certain species that will just kind of dominate the area, eat up all the food and they become a little bit stronger where the native species not being in their optimal environment will become weaker or become food.

Yeah.

- And it's food not just for the fish and the plant life, but also we're talking about birds and mammals as well who - Rely on the.

Yes, exactly.

And so definitely with migratory birds and birds that thrive or nest in the wetlands.

So we're seeing with the warmer air, we will see less of the wetlands thriving because they need that consistent seasonal cool air coming in.

And without these natural wetlands, the birds don't have their regular place to migrate, like something like a black turn are used to using the Atlantic flyway as a way to come in and nest.

If it's not there, they might move on or just kind of have less habitat to thrive and would decrease it numbers.

- What kind of work is being done to monitor these changes and ultimately do our best to mitigate them?

- Save the River, we have our own programs to help monitor certain species.

Obviously, there's not a lot.

We do that as high tech, but it's valuable.

So we gather our own data.

We banned our turns that we monitor.

So we protect our turns and we ban them and kind of monitor their data from year to year and see if they're thriving.

They were on a threatened list and endangered list at one point.

The musky catch and release and then we started the bass catch and release started such a movement of awareness that, hey, let's not catch all these fish and put them on the dock and take pictures of them and then throw them out.

Let's value them and put them back.

And I think that's created a wonderful movement there.

But there's, if you look towards the Thousand Islands Biological Station and NOAA and up, they have much more higher technology that can monitor the water flows and they do fish tagging and such amazing things to have even better information, which they share, which is wonderful for us to be able to track all of that.

- Is there any one thing in particular that you've noticed during your time with the organization that has really made a remarkable difference or something you're proud of?

- We've always had the musky catch and release program and, and touted about how great it is.

And it, and people, fishermen that fish musky, they're, you know, they're very respectful of the musky and along with Thousand Islands Biological Station, they actually help to breed the muskies.

They take care of the muskies.

They make sure that they have a habitat to do so.

And so the musky population is coming back and we're starting to see that with Sturgeon, which is, you know, one of my favorite fish, which is on our shirt this year.

You know, they've been gone from the river basically for a very long time due to overfishing and we're slowly but surely, they're getting restocked and Tibbs is watching them.

So that's very exciting.

We've had other projects that we're very proud of.

Not everybody's proud of Plan 2014 that it, you know, helps to.

And basic idea of the Plan 2014 that went through was to just have the water levels mimic Mother Nature just a little bit more to try to get some fluctuation in the wetlands because they were, they, they, you know, if they're dried out or they don't get some sort of water fluctuation, they don't thrive.

It did go through.

We were proud of that.

And of course, we were proud of stopping winter navigation, you know, having the ships go through when it's iced over is so bad for the river, for the shoreline, for the fish, for a number of reasons.

Plus the thing that's the thing that keeps you up at night is the chance of those ships being stuck in ice and maybe having a rupture or a spill like we saw almost 50 years ago today with the NEPCO oil spill.

It's our.

The anniversary is in a week.

So we're always on a little bit of an alert with that.

It's.

I don't think we could really come back from something like that in the winter.

So being able to stop that and continuing to fight it is something that we're very proud of as well.

- I, I started our chat by asking you to look back 10 or 20 years and, and think about what's changed since then.

If I can get you to fast-forward now.

Yeah.

Think about 20 years from now.

When you look out at, at the river, what would you like to see?

What would be your ideal?

- My ideal would be, wow, look at this beautiful river ever since we changed 20 years ago and stopped treating it like a commodity to make money or to dump our toxic byproducts in, and we started treating it like a, a living system and a friend, it is now thriving and we don't have to worry about our drinking water, which is used to be toxic from time to time.

We don't have to worry about fish die-offs, which we were seeing from time to time.

It's just thriving and it's wonderful and it's all about treating it with kindness and respect.

- We're all.

I mean, it's part of our backyard, right?

The St.

Lawrence River.

You get to spend a lot more time on it than most of us.

What, what is your favorite part in, in, in 20 seconds about being a part of this ecosystem?

- Oh, my favorite part is, is after a day of working and knowing that we're about to help something, we're about to save, maybe help save a species or we're bringing awareness to people and that is always the first step and the most important step is awareness that, "Hey, this is your drinking water.

We're testing it and it has e.coli in it.

Let's all work together, please, to help keep it alive.

It is a living thing.

It does need oxygen."

That is really rewarding at the end of the day compared to jobs I've had way long time ago waitressing or whatever, which was fun, but you don't have that end of the day thinking, "Wow, I just really helped this little buddy of mine."

So I do have to cross the bridge every day when I go to work.

So every day I'm like, "I got your back today," you know?

That - Is so good to hear.

Yeah.

- Bridget - Wright, thank you so much for doing this.

You're very - Welcome.

We really - Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- You can learn more at