CANFISHPASS

The Canadian Fish Passage Assessment (CANFISHPASS) app is part of the Canadian Aquatic Barriers
Database (CABD) project developed by the Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF).
Freshwater ecosystems are maintained by flows that regulate water temperature, distribute food and
nutrients, and facilitate the movements and migrations of fish and other aquatic species. Unfortunately,
aquatic barriers, like dams and stream crossings (e.g., culverts), across the country disrupt these
processes and are barriers to fish passage, fragmenting freshwater habitat. The first step in addressing
these issues is to map and identify barriers. This helps us understand the scope of the problem,
advocate for change, and prioritize barriers for ecological restoration.
The CABD is the most comprehensive aquatic barrier inventory in Canada, having compiled information
from over 800 existing data sources. However, the CABD isn’t perfect – data gaps still exist! Filling these
data gaps is a huge job because we need to visit these structures on the ground to confirm whether they
exist and evaluate whether they are barriers to fish passage. With hundreds of thousands of potential
barriers, CWF can’t do this alone so we’re hoping you can help!
CANFISHPASS turns everyone into a community scientist, allowing you to visit the location of potential
aquatic barriers and perform quick, easy assessments to contribute key information and improve the
CABD. No specialized training or equipment is required – just your smartphone and a bit of curiosity!
By answering a few simple questions and taking photos of the site in the app, you can help us:
- Confirm the existence of dams and stream crossings on the landscape and identify unmapped
structures
- Collect basic information and photos to help us learn more about the structure, including
classifying what type of structure it is
- Broadly assess whether these structures are barriers to passage for fish and other aquatic
species
- Engage with you to raise awareness of the impact aquatic barriers have on freshwater
ecosystems and inspire action to support barrier rehabilitation and connectivity conservation
and restoration initiatives
Every assessment submitted through CANFISHPASS will be directly integrated into the CABD datasets,
helping to ensure that practitioners and decision makers have access to the best available data to inform
conservation, restoration, and infrastructure asset management and confidently take meaningful action
to replace problematic structures with nature-based designs, while increasing the resiliency of both the
infrastructure and ecosystems.
This project is partially supported by financial contributions from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It is also
funded in part by the RBC Foundation, in support of RBC Tech for Nature.
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Check out the CABD web tool: https://aquaticbarriers.ca/
Learn more about CANFISHPASS and the CABD: https://cabd-docs.netlify.app/

Privacy policy: https://cwf-fcf.org/en/about-cwf/policies/privacy-policy.html
Terms of Use: https://cabd-docs.netlify.app/docs_user/docs_user_app/terms_of_use_copyright
Need help, have feedback, or want to request a new feature? Contact us at cabd@cwf-fcf.org.