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A healthy environment is an absolute must if we are to remain healthy and disease free, and I’m sure it is obvious to you that our environment is being sorely threatened, from the air we breathe, to the water that supports all life, to the soil that gives life to the plants that provide food and habitat for land animals. There is a lot we can do to turn the fate of the planet around, and if enough of us act together, we can use our buying power to have a big impact quickly. Because companies are so bottom-line oriented, choose to only support companies that tread lightly on the earth. Make the environment part of your buying criteria when making large purchases as well as the small day to day ones. Don’t buy stuff that is overly packaged. Choose dish-washing and laundry detergents that are phosphate free, and only wash when you have a full load. With food, refuse to support commercial agribusiness that kill the organisms in the soil and pollute our waterways with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Only buy organic produce, preferably local, (farmer’s markets are great!) so the food doesn’t travel far using fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases.  Only choose pasture-fed meat and dairy, and free-range poultry and eggs.  Don’t support factory farms that are cruel to the animals involved and cause huge pollution problems. Governments are largely hamstrung by trade laws and industry lobbyists, and don’t have the courage to make the tough environmental decisions for fear of the economic and legal repercussions. As individuals, we have more power than governments to create big change, by how we spend our money. Companies are beholden to their customers, and even the worst offenders will change if their customers demand it, or they will go out of business. So, use your purchasing power wisely, and spread the word! Pass on these fun yet educational links: The Meatrix and The Meatrix II, Revolting and StoreWars.

Changing the subject rather drastically, let’s talk about the Elixir of Youth. Yes, such an Elixir does exist, and it is very powerful. To become younger, you must take this Elixir at least three times a week on a regular basis, and over time you will notice signs that you are regaining your youth. You will notice your energy increasing, your moods improving, your stress levels decreasing, your muscles becoming stronger again, your body regaining a more youthful appearance, your body-fat decreasing, your balance improving, and your skin becoming more clear and radiant. It won’t be long before you are sleeping much better, and you may even find that your aches and pains are disappearing! If we could look inside your body, we would notice that you are controlling your blood sugar much better, your bones are becoming stronger, your blood pressure is improving, your joints are lubricated and working better, and your digestive system is functioning better. Some may find that over time, your life is expanding – you are once again capable of doing things that perhaps you were unable to do for a while. You are indeed reducing your biological age. The Elixir works well if taken regularly, and doesn’t work at all if not taken frequently enough. Is this Elixir expensive or hard to obtain? No. Do you want some? It is yours for the taking. The Elixir is exercise.

Related tips:
Organic vs. Conventional meat, poultry, eggs and dairy
What is organic food?
Eat local and save the world

www.wellnesstips.ca

Written by Karen Munro, M. Sc., Environmental Scientist

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

I have focused on particular aspects of watershed health and touched briefly on the power of individual or group action in protecting the land and water we love through the previous three parts of this series. Now I can discuss the power of ordinary people to make a difference.

I have had the amazing privilege of watching a stewardship movement grow and mature in British Columbia and help in my own way. There are parallel stories throughout North America, for example, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Virginia, Michigan, and probably worldwide.

The British Columbia streamkeeping program www.pskf.ca began in 1994, with guidance and support from the public involvement program of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). The DFO community advisors, who at that time mainly help small groups with local salmon rearing facilities, found that the volunteers wanted to do more to ensure the fish they raised had adequate habitat to thrive in once released from the hatchery setting. They saw survival problems (water quality and habitat, see Parts 1 and 2 of this series) and realized that while they could increase the number of salmon fry through the addition of hatchery fry to a stream, this couldn’t guarantee a return of adult fish. They wanted to do more. On the government side, there was a strong acknowledgement that laws and regulations were not enough to maintain salmon stocks, and that interest and cooperation at the community level was essential. DFO sponsored development of the Streamkeepers Handbook, a training manual on methods for lay people to take care of local streams, based on sound scientific practices in stream assessment www.pskf.ca/publications. Volunteers began surveying streams, organizing cleanups and public awareness campaigns, and restoring habitat.

Like Alice’s Restaurant, streamkeeping has grown into a movement. There are thousands of volunteers in British Columbia, growing interest in other parts of Canada) and similar organizations elsewhere. Support, training, the Streamkeepers Handbook, supplies, networking and videos are provided through the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation, with one part time coordinator and a volunteer board of directors. Groups are organized at a community or watershed level, with few or no formal rules. DFO continues to provide support for the program through community advisors and funding of the part time coordinator position. Other than that, it is a grassroots movement. Knowledge and participation has helped people become stream advocates and has built partnerships among strange bedfellows because people focus on a common purpose.

Our group, the Northshore Streamkeepers, has three criteria that guide group activities – Is it good for the stream? Does someone want to do this with you? Is it legal (do you need a permit)?

There are amazing stories of volunteer work, typically requiring much cooperation among community members, local businesses or industry, various levels of government, and funding organizations:

• fish ladders have been built to create passage through culverts to upstream habitat;
• habitat has been restored (off channel habitat, spawning and rearing areas, native plantings, buried streams have been daylighted);
• streams have been surveyed and valuable information provided for land use planning and conservation;
• salmon have returned to streams after decades of absence;
• festivals are held to invite the public to learn about and appreciate local streams (Rivers Day, Earth Day, Oceans Day, Coho Festival, salmon sendoffs, salmon welcome homes, and many more);
• people have become advocates for streams, lobbying local governments over land use planning and environmental by-laws, requesting provincial and federal government agencies;
• volunteers have become creative about informing and engaging the community through festivals, artwork, theatre, and music

It’s not just about salmon, but they are wonderful icons of the west coast, and we are happy to use them as the bait to fish for volunteers. Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, school groups, fishing club members, conservationists, professional biologists, and a multitude of just plain folks are happy to call themselves streamkeepers.

When I feel a little down about the power of a group to protect a stream, when, for example, there is news of another fish kill caused by human carelessness, I recall the story of the Rouge River in Michigan (www.rougeriver.com). It was so polluted by industrial effluents that it used to catch fire. By 1994, citizens in the watershed, in cooperation with local and state authorities, focused on cleaning up the water. Considerable progress has been made in diverting sewage from the river and in treating it, in dealing with industrial discharges, and in community-based monitoring and awareness programs. The Rouge doesn’t catch fire any more and there are reports of gulls fishing in the river.

There are lots of resources and weblinks to follow. You can start with these:

• the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation website
• the Stewardship Centre of BC

Written by Karen Munro, M. Sc., Environmental Scientist

Ah, life in the city. We love it, and we love to get away from it all, too. Urban growth appears to be inevitable, especially among planners and developers.

Having seen the impacts of sprawling cities, decay of the inner city and suburbs that now overlap, recognizing that we have lost and continue to lose significant amounts of valuable farmland and forest and realizing that we can hardly afford to drive our cars around all those places, many communities are starting to talk about alternative growth strategies.

There are many options and approaches, but they all include densification – putting more people into the same area. We can build up, build more multi-family complexes, plan “complete communities” so we can work close to where we live. The approaches are called many names, including smart growth, livable region strategy, sustainable development … There are a lot of benefits to such planning initiatives, and they really are necessary.

My main worry about these strategies is that they don’t get to the root of the problem and deal with how we live, locally and globally. I worry that we will set aside green space now but want to use it later. Assume we start out now and keep 50% of the land for conservation, agriculture and resource use. Within a couple of decades, as we get a little more crowded, we may decide we need some of that green land for housing so begin to shave just a bit more off (say another 50%, in the name of compromise and for affordable housing, of course) – we now have only 25% green space left. Then, a couple of decades later, we’re just getting a little too crowded again, so … you get the picture. For smart growth strategies to work, communities will need to commit to preserving the green spaces for a long, long time.

On to streams, though. What happens when communities grow, or when new developments happen in a watershed? The effects of urban growth on streams are well documented now, particularly in British Columbia and Washington, but applicable everywhere. Two key indicators are increased impervious area (paved areas like roads, patios and rooftops) and loss of streamside vegetation (discussed in Part 2 of this series). Along with increased population size comes increased incidents of storm drain abuse (Part 1) and wear and tear on the habitat (Part 2).

As the percentage of impervious area increases, the amount of rainfall that can get into and filter through the soil to naturally recharge the stream decreases. This leads to higher peak flows in the rainy season and lower low flows during the summer, changing the stream channel (bank erosion, altered substrate characteristics) and making it more difficult for salmon and other native species to survive. Effects on salmon populations are noticeable at 12% impervious area. Suburban areas easily have 50% impervious. New York City – close to 100% if you don’t think about Central Park or that tree that might still grow in Brooklyn.

What can we do to help? At home, we can adopt ways that step more kindly on the earth, for example, using water wise and natural gardening methods, disconnecting downspouts off your roof (this allows water to drain to the soil to be filtered before entering the creek rather than entering directly to the storm drain system), and consider using permeable surfaces (pavers, wood decks) instead of asphalt and concrete in our yard or business.

On a broader scale, we can examine our own priorities, listen critically to other opinions and participate in development of official community plans and neighbourhood plans. We can challenge our city and regional planners to strive for truly sustainable communities and to set aside valuable green spaces in ways that are not easily lost in future generations. Here in British Columbia, for example, there are periodic challenges to remove land from the Agricultural Land Reserve, especially near populous Vancouver, where the Fraser Valley land contains much of the usable farmland in the area.

Like many other issues, the ongoing conversation and involvement in contributing to our communities is essential. We cannot be sure of the outcome, but we know that if we don’t speak about what is important, we may lose it. The relationship to human health should be obvious.

Some starting places for resources:

http://earth.google.com/ (great aerial shots of everywhere, close-ups of your community)

www.smartgrowth.org/ (North American wide organization with local offices)

www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints (ecological footprint calculation)
www.envisiontools.com/ (planning tools and scenarios)

www.gvrd.ca (sustainability efforts, storm-water management planning, livable regions strategy for the Greater Vancouver Regional District)

www… your town (check out what your community offers)

Written by Karen Munro, M. Sc., Environmental Scientist

More ramblings about connections between healthy lives and healthy watersheds, this time about habitat. Habitat is a fancy term for “where we live” – habitat provides food, water, shelter, space. Imagine a hamster cage. Every organism has a habitat, even humans, although we can feel quite disconnected from our habitat.

A watershed is all the land that drains into a body of water. The Mississippi River watershed may cover half the United States (that’s a guess). Several watersheds might snuggle up in a coastal town.

When we think about stream habitat, we can think of the many animals that live there, what they need, how they interact and adapt. Natural streams are a wonder, in that they provide all the ingredients needed by the organisms that live there. Stream environments contain substrates (stoney, sandy or silty bottoms), pools, riffles (faster flowing areas), and stream bank vegetation. These areas are highly productive, with high biological diversity (biodiversity), like other interface environments, for example the edge of a pond, the seashore, an estuary where fresh water meets the sea, the fringe between meadow and forest. While these areas can be thin bands or interconnecting habitats, they are unique environments that support large amounts of life.

Streambank vegetation provides many benefits to the aquatic species and birds and wildlife that flock there:

• shade to cool the water;
• leaf litter to feed stream and terrestrial insects;
• roots to stabilize the banks and prevent erosion;
• instream woody debris to provide varied niches for many organisms;
• berries, seeds and roots for birds and wildlife;
• a great spongy soil to absorb and slowly release water to the stream, purifying the water in the process.

The same characteristics that make streams and river valleys so attractive to wildlife make these areas attractive to humans. What a joy to walk a forest trail and come upon the coolness of a stream, small brown birds flitting through the branches, a canopy above, the mysterious sound of water tumbling over boulders or the deep slow majesty of the river. We feel purified and energized in such places. If the path hasn’t been compacted by too many travelers, we will reap the benefits of the extra bounce in our step from the spongy soil.

There are threats to such places, particularly as cities grow and farmland or mountainsides turn into suburbia. Here are just a few:

• sediment loads from poorly designed construction projects silt up spawning gravel for fish and degrade stoney habitat needed by pollution sensitive insects (mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, these are a food source for birds and fish), turning the water murky or grey;
• a steady march of invasive plants from garden to stream (in my neck of the woods, these include English ivy, Japanese knotweed, Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom, Eurasian milfoil, holly – note the strange geographic and cultural references, none of them Pacific or even North American);
• landscaping with lawns and ornamental species, leaving the stream exposed to the heat of the sun;
• culverts that allow road crossings but prevent migration of fish, squeezing the water so in times of rain it constrains the water like a firehose;
• channelization (straightening of the stream and armouring the banks with large rock known as riprap), historically done in the name of flood protection, but now known to make flooding problems worse;
• burying of headwater tributaries to make way for more houses;
• removal of valuable estuary and valley bottom land because it is flat and useful for human activities; and
• fragmentation of green spaces, making it difficult for migratory birds and large mammals (deer, bears) to use the areas they call home.

As with water quality issues (Part 1), there are many things we can do, ranging from individual efforts to maintain native vegetation on our own property and community days to remove invasive plants (ivy pulls, broom sweeps, etc.), to lobbying local governments to preserve streamside areas through zoning, bylaws and covenants.

The websites below provide information specific to British Columbia, but also have links to organizations across North America:

• the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation website
• The Stewardship Centre of B.C.

Websites of the many conservation organizations also provide great information and local links.