Lenore Lake is a partly saline lake in the province of Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. It is part of the Lenore Lake Basin, which includes several saline lakes (Basin, Middle, Frog, Ranch, Murphy, Flat, Mantrap, Houghton, Deadmoose and Waldsea

Waldsea Lake

Waldsea Lake is a lake in central Saskatchewan, Canada 100 km east of Saskatoon near Carmel, Saskatchewan. The lake is partially saline with strong consentations of Sodium, Sulfate, Magnesium and Chlorine ions...

) as well as the freshwater

Freshwater

Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...

 St. Brieux Lake and Burton Lake. The basin has no natural outlet. Lenore Lake was designated a migratory bird sanctuary in 1925 and sustains a habitat for walleye, whitefish, perch and northern pike

Esox

Esox is a genus of freshwater fish, the only living genus in the family Esocidae — the esocids which were endemic to North America, Europe and Eurasia during the Paleogene through present.The type species is E. lucius, the northern pike...

.

Environmental concerns

In recent years, water levels in the basin have risen to historic levels. Nearby Houghton Lake, a highly saline body of water, has drained water into Lenore Lake. To prevent the highly saline water from damaging the fish habitat in Lenore Lake, Environment Canada ordered the permanent closure of a culvert between the two lakes on May 10, 2010.

In 2009, Saskatchewan's Ministry of the Environment issued fish consumption guidelines for walleye and northern pike taken from Lenore Lake, due to the level of mercury

Mercury (element)

Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...

detected in the fish.