Advancing understanding of trout population change to guide conservation and management efforts
by the University of Northern British Columbia
April 23, 2026
As climate change reshapes rivers and ecosystems across northern British Columbia, new research led by Master of Science student Carly Walters is advancing understanding of how stream-dwelling trout populations are responding, offering critical insight to guide targeted conservation and management efforts in B.C. and beyond.
Working under the supervision of Rio Tinto Research Chair in Climate Change and Freshwater Fish Ecology Dr. Eduardo Martins, Walters examined long-term changes in rainbow trout population dynamics in the Stellako River, revealing that environmental effects on productivity and warming summer temperatures are reducing the survival of younger fish and driving population declines observed since the early 2000s.
In her first co-authored paper published in the journal Ecological Applications titled “Disentangling the contributions of density dependence and independence to population growth rates”, Walters drew from a rare and extensive dataset—35 years of snorkel counts collected annually on rainbow trout by the B.C. government in the Stellako River running from François Lake to Fraser Lake between 1988 and 2022.
Read the Ecological Applications paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.70199