PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Rideau Lakes Environmental Foundation Announces 2026 Research Grants Four projects to study the impact of docks, long-term lake change, microplastics, and road salt in the Rideau Lake Portland, ON — March 2026 — The Rideau Lakes Environmental Foundation (RLEF), a registered Canadian charity, today announced the recipients of its 2026 Small Grants Program. Four research…
Every year, the Rideau Lake Environmental Foundation invites researchers to submit proposals for environmental research on and around Big Rideau Lake. This year, we budgeted to fund three projects. The proposals came in, and now we have a problem: four of them stand out. In each case the issue is timely, the science is sound, and the work would directly…
A new article in Aquatic Conservation from the Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory at Carleton University reports on research funded by the RLEF (Dusevic et al., 2024). Fish sanctuaries on Big Rideau Lake and two neighbouring lakes benefit a much wider range of wildlife than they were designed to protect. …
RLEF has been supporting research on lake fish populations, including that Dr. David Philipp and Dr. Steve Cooke for some time. Studies have shown that the Bass populations in Big and Upper Rideau Lakes was declining over time due to preseason catch and release fishing taking male bass away from their nests. Fisheries Conservation Foundation (FCF) is working on a…
December 2025 Dear Lake Friends and Neighbours, As the year winds down and the snow settles on the lake, it’s time to pause and reflect on the value of this special place to our own well-being and that of our families. Time at the lake allows us to reflect and reconnect. We rely on a healthy lake environment for our…
Small Grants for Scientific Research on and around the Rideau Lake
DEADLINE: January 31, 2026
To develop our understanding of the science that underpins our environmental activities, the RLEF has established a program of small grants to support research projects. We are interested in receiving proposals from scientific researchers working in any discipline that contributes to our knowledge of the flora, fauna, or environment of the Rideau Lakes.
Here is an update on getting a larger, new Bass Spawning Sanctuary Study up and running in the expanded group of bass lakes that make up our Coalition for Innovative Fisheries Conservation (CIFC). That all said, it became very clear that the study as we envision it, cannot get started until spring of 2027. Even if we could have had…
RLEF activities are featured in an article in the Westport Review-Mirror, September 18, 2025…
Restoring degraded aquatic habitat is one of the most appealing tools in freshwater conservation.
A study on Big Rideau Lake, published in 2024, tested one such intervention for smallmouth bass spawning habitat — and the results illustrate how difficult translating that logic into practice can be.
Layer by layer, sediment cores reveal centuries of biological and chemical change in lake-bottom sediment. This study looked back more than 200 years — far enough to capture the disruption of canal construction beginning in 1828 — but the most striking finding concerns the past 25 to 30 years. Despite significant improvements in phosphorus levels since the 1970s, the lakes…
The expansion of Bass Spawning Sanctuaries (BaSS) will help regenerate the declining bass populations in our lakes. BaSSs are areas of the lake in which all fishing is prohibited but only until the first week of July. Angling in BaSSs is permitted during the rest of the year. The Fisheries Conservation Foundation is leading a local effort to expand BaSSs…
Dr. John Smol addressed the Big Rideau Lake Association (BRLA) on Algae and Aquatic Plant Growth in the Big Rideau Lake, on May 17, 2023. … The PEARL Lab has received support from RLEF’s Small Grants Program.