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Delegates from Lake Windermere Project and Lake Winnipeg Foundation met at the Living Lakes conference at Lake Chapala, Mexico. (Photo courtesy of Wildsight)
Lake Winnipeg and BC’s Lake Windermere form a national water stewardship network.
Strange, isn’t it, how we sometimes have to go half-way around the world to meet someone from our own home town. We may strike up a conversation with a stranger in an airport or on the street in some far-off place and find out the person lives just a couple of miles from our own home and we marvel at the way synchronicity works. This was certainly the case this past month, when Lake Winnipeg and Lake Windermere met at the 13th International Living Lakes Conference at Lake Chapala, Mexico.
Wildsight’s Heather Leschied of the Columbia Valley, coordinator of the Lake Windermere Project and Bruce Smith, President of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation met while they were both attending the conference. The theme of the conference was water contamination, loss of biodiversity and the need for adequate water management and they both had come to learn why Chapala, Mexico’s largest freshwater lake is one of the best studied lakes in Latin America and also one of the most polluted.
“Lake Chapala is highly threatened,” Ms. Leschied said, “and the Santiago River, the only outflow from the lake, is so polluted from untreated agricultural and industrial runoff that it is impossible to stand next to the river for more than a few minutes before your eyes start to burn”.
The lake, which is a source of drinking water for 6 million people and a stop-over for more than 2 million migrating birds, was declared a Ramsar site of international importance in 2009.
Mr. Smith was in Mexico to formalize the Lake Winnipeg Foundation’s inclusion in the International Living Lakes Network, which represents 64 wetlands and lakes worldwide. He and Ms. Leschied were comparing notes about the fact that neither Mexico nor Canada has much in the way of regulation of water resources.
“Canada doesn’t have a national water strategy to protect its freshwater resources,” said Ms. Leschied. “Water experts in Canada are urging our nation to develop one… even lakes as polluted as Chapala can be brought back to life, but only with extremely costly restoration efforts.”
As a result of their meeting, the Lake Winnipeg Foundation Inc, and Wildsight’s Lake Windermere Project are partnering to form a Living Lakes Network for Canada. Mr. Smith believes that this new partnership will help bring a higher profile to the health of lakes across the nation by allowing current and future generations of grassroots water stewards to share information and resources to help protect our freshwater lakes and wetlands.
“Wildsight is thrilled to be working with the Lake Winnipeg Foundation”, Ms. Leschied said. “We have already been approached by other water groups from across Canada who would like to be part of this network”.
Both believe that Lake Chapala’s current state illustrates exactly why stewardship groups in Canada shouldn’t give up. “…there is still an opportunity for us to prevent a Lake Chapala scenario from occurring,” said Mr. Smith.
As for Lake Chapala, both Leschied and Smith agree that its current state illustrates exactly why stewardship groups in Canada shouldn’t give up.
More information about the new Living Lakes Canada project can be found on the Wildsight website at http://www.wildsight.ca/windermere/program/living-lakes-canada.
