A watershed describes all of the waterways that contribute to a body of water in an area. In south eastern B.C. the main watershed is the Lower Fraser. The Fraser Valley has smaller watersheds, such as Stave River and the Chilliwack/Vedder River, that are part of the Lower Fraser watershed.
Watersheds provide many important social, economic, and ecological values. They provide areas for recreation, fertile land for agriculture, and diverse habitats for many species of flora and fauna.
As local leaders in conservation, we take actions to conserve, restore, and enhance watersheds and their values to benefit people and nature across the Fraser Valley.
Healthy watersheds benefit people:
• provides safe drinking water (do you know where your drinking water comes from?).
• provides food (think salmon & agriculture).
• enables us to adapt to the impacts of climate change more easily by cooling the air and absorbing greenhouse gas emissions.
• healthy forests within a watershed create the fresh air we breathe.
• provides recreational areas such as parks and trails for people to keep active and enjoy nature (think mountain biking, hiking, kayaking, fishing etc.).
Healthy watersheds benefit society:
• produce energy and supply water for agriculture, industry, and households.
• forests and wetlands help to prevent or reduce costly climate change impacts. This can include mitigating flooding, and reducing drought and forest fires.
• contributes to tourism, fisheries, forestry, agriculture, and mining industries.
Healthy watersheds benefit nature, natural processes, and biodiversity:
• conserves water, promotes streamflow, and supports sustainable streams, rivers, lakes, and groundwater sources.
• enables healthy soil for crops and livestock.
• provides habitat for wildlife and plants (including pollinators, needed for agriculture).
Watersheds embody many landscapes, and thus watershed management is unique region to region. The Fraser Valley, is a mosaic pf landscapes: agriculture, forests, wetlands, residential and industrial areas among many others. There is a variety of issues that can reduce the health of a watershed, and thus impact our social and societal well-being. While not exhaustive, these are some of the common challenges we have observed in our local watersheds:
• climate change and invasive species encroachment
• point source and non-point source pollution (including run-off and septic fields)
• loss of natural green-spaces from development and land-conversion
• habitat fragmentation (roads, trails, dikes)
• water diversions and dams
• air-pollution (Volatile organic carbon emissions precipitate into our streams and soil)
• loss of riparian (streamside) trees and shrubs (and thus destabilizing streambanks and lack of cooling water)
• garbage: the need for waste diversion
• households: improve our individual footprint (reduce water uses, improve recycling and waste diversion, product selection choices etc.)
