Your Wetlands, Your Future

Our wetlands are important to our future. If you want to learn about the wetlands in the Okanagan, and get involved in protecting them, this site is the place to be. Welcome.

Our Natural Resource

Wetlands are portions of the landscape strongly influenced by water. You can recognize them by the waterloving plants along rivers, streams, lakes, springs, ponds and seeps. These green zones are one of the most ecologically diverse and productive landscapes in the world. Healthy wetlands are crucial for sustaining a majority of fish and wildlife species, maintaining functioning watersheds, providing good water quality and supply, forage for wildcrafters, and supporting people on the landscape.

Today, wetlands are seen to be among the most valuable, productive, and vulnerable areas for the agriculture sector. Issues around wetlands health and management also extend beyond agriculture and include recreational, industrial and urban land use. One major issue is ensuring water quality; others include increasing agricultural sustainability, restoring biodiversity and buffering the impacts of floods and droughts.

We've created a series of learning material modules for our public outreach program, including the poster above, and a PDF leaflet which you can download here.

We need to meet growing public concern with a proactive, cooperative and community-based approach to address and correct wetland management issues. If we work together those actions will demonstrate good stewardship of shared resources.

Why Wetlands Matter

We not only depend on our own health to sustain us, but on the health of the environment in which we live. Wetland health matters for the same reason our own health matters. Healthy, functioning wetlands offer us:

Resiliency: the ability to bounce back from floods, droughts and human-caused problems;

Ecological services: a long list of goods, benefits and values;

Stability: landscapes that maintain themselves, persist and are sustainable.

We all need our wetland landscapes to be resilient, stable and provide us a long list of ecological services, whether we are farmers, anglers, bird watchers, hikers or downstream water drinkers. Wetland health varies across the Okanagan region. Our use of these landscapes represents an additive and cumulative effect which has often compromised resiliency. Agriculture, urban development, transportation networks, recreational use, industrial uses and water management have impacts. We can only ensure better wetland health if we adopt better land and water use practices and restore function to compromised wetland landscapes.

Wetlands are important to us because of their agricultural benefits, the biodiversity values they represent and to address our water quality concerns. Some of our most significant wetlands have declined in their ability to perform the ecological functions that ensure these benefits and values. Healthy wetlands sustain us, especially their ability to store, filter and buffer water, and will require us to restore those that have declined, in order to maintain our quality of life.

The Future is Now

The Okanagan Wetlands Regeneration Alliance was formed to apply the principals of ecological regeneration to the wetlands of the Okanagan, which are the source and heart of the future of human habitation and economy of this area, and which are in continuous need of study, understanding and nurture.

A growing list of individuals, groups, organizations, institutions and communities have joined the effort, and through their support we can undertake projects that ensure that our region continues to be one of the best places in the world to live.

We invite you to join with us to conserve, restore and maintain one of our most vital natural resources, now and into the future. Your wetlands, your future.

Okanagan Wetlands Regeneration Alliance

The
Okanagan Wetlands Regeneration Alliance

is a group of progressive citizens, groups, companies, institutions, organizations and communities who want to put nature back into the centre of Okanagan life.

The Alliance was formed to apply the principals of ecology to the wetlands of the Okanagan Basin, which are the source and heart of the future of human habitation and economy of this area, and which are in continuous need of study, understanding and regeneration.

Please contact:
Robert MacDonald, Director
1473 Ethel Street
Kelowna BC V1Y 2X9
Telephone: 250.870.2690
Email: click here

The Partners in the Wetlands Alliance are

Okanagan Basin Water Board

District of Lake Country: James Baker, Mayor

Okanagan Greens: Angela Reid, President

Okanagan Institute: Robert MacDonald, Director

Okanagan College: Douglas MacLeod, Associate Dean, Science and Technology

Community Futures of the Central Okanagan: Larry Widmer, Director

Summerhill Organics and Wildcraft: Gabe Cipes, President

Okanagan Nation: Chad Eneas, En'owkin Centre

Okanagan Network for the Environment: Deb Thorneycroft, Coordinator

Aspire Media Works: Geoff Millar, President

The Alliance welcomes participation from members of the public, as well as from companies, organizations and institutions of all kinds.