Improving habitat connectivity to enhance productive capacity of arctic freshwater ecosystems

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In Canada, conservation and management of aquatic habitat is governed by the principle of No Net Loss (NNL) of the productive capacity of fish habitat. Thus, when fish habitat is altered, disrupted or destroyed by human activities, habitat compensation is required to offset the reduction in the ecosystem's productive capacity. Reviews of habitat compensation projects, however, indicate that because of our limited understanding of fish habitat needs, only a minority of compensation projects achieve NNL. Habitat compensation projects are essentially ecological experiments, from which we can advance our knowledge, and should be treated as such; thus, it is important that fish habitat management team up with aquatic scientists in compensation projects to improve our understanding of the productive capacity of aquatic habitats as well as our ability to design and evaluate compensation "experiments."