WC137 JulyAug 2024 - Magazine - Page 10
WATERSHEDS
How can you love a lake?
Taking tangible steps to protect the areas
we love the most through the Love Your
Lake program. BY MONICA SEIDEL
68%
SCENERY
53%
SHORELINES
Monica Seidel
is the Communications and
Fundraising Manager for
Watersheds Canada.
10
COMMON WORD in today’s society is “love.” We love
people, food, animals, and music. We even use the word
to describe our feeling for and connection to a place, like
how we love going to visit a grandparent’s house, or a
vacation spot.
As Canadians jump into these beautiful summer months, we
will be visiting many watery places that we love. Our country
is home to more than two million lakes and rivers, places that
we love to spend time on, in, and around. These areas are full of
loving memories: learning how to fish or tube, catching frogs,
laughing while doing cannonballs, drying in the sun on the dock,
and taking in the beauty that is a sunset over perfectly still waters.
Though we love these freshwater places dearly, we often have a bit
of a complicated relationship with them.
A
How are we treating our lakes?
Out of 44,274 shoreline assessments completed on 187 developed
Canadian lakes, only 22 per cent of properties met the minimum
criteria for sustaining wildlife and lake health (Love Your Lake,
2021). There is a huge disconnect between people’s values—what
they love—and their actions. The places that we love the most
are the places that are also threatened by our actions. Overland
runoff and pollution, algal blooms, increased erosion, and the loss
of wildlife habitat are just a few ways that on-land human actions
negatively impact the freshwater environment. The places that we
love would benefit from us treating them differently, so what can
we do?
Healthy shorelines are important to Canadians—53 per cent
said natural shorelines are an element that affected their personal
enjoyment of being by the lake, and 68 per cent said the same
for scenery/view (Love Your Lake, 2021). Healthy lake ecosystems
also provide important environmental services that protect water
quality, provide homes for wildlife, and shield against erosion and
flooding. Identifying the values we hold, and the actions that will
protect them, ensures the long-term health and resiliency of our
freshwater areas. Maintaining a healthy vegetated buffer is a critical way to protect the health of our lakes, but there are many other
things that can be done.
WATER C AN ADA • JULY/AUGUS T 2024
Watersheds Canada
Canadians said their
personal enjoyment of
being by the lake was
affected by
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
