The following is an excerpt from the Valley Voice newspaper announcing the SWAMP presentation event. Funding for this event was provided by RDCK, Walter Popoff Area H.

“This is an opportunity for the public to talk to a number of scientists and researchers from different disciplines who will, with beautiful pictures and great stories, tell us about their work in our watershed. Our Member of Parliament, biologist Dick Cannings, will attend the event and has been invited to say a few words.

More than 150 wetlands have been mapped, and exciting finds of rare and unusual flora, fauna and wetland types have been documented. Hidden assets in our watershed, wetlands are pockets of high biodiversity. They may be major complexes along a river, or tiny alpine basin fens, but they all provide breeding and feeding habitat to myriad flora and fauna. Unfortunately, these ecosystems are seriously undervalued; considered boggy, wet and buggy nuisances they are drained for development and agriculture, mined for soil and peat, or flooded for hydroelectric installations. But it is by their ability to retain and purify water that wetlands serve the watershed as a whole, insuring our clean domestic water sources, abundant wildlife resources and mitigating against the effects of climate change. Data from this project will be added to a growing body of knowledge about the Slocan Watershed. This information is then available to land managers, private property owners and government agencies for conservation or restoration decision making.

Funding is available for wetland restoration on private land and this summer, Streamkeepers, SWAMP technicians and a land owner are planning a restoration project adjacent to the Slocan River.”

For the full article please see page 23 of the Valley Voice Online at http://www.valleyvoice.ca/_pdf_2014/ValleyVoice160224web.pdf