The Slocan Wetland Assessment and Monitoring Project (SWAMP) is pleased to announce that a report on species-at-risk in the Slocan watershed has been completed. The report describes the occurrence of 47 species-at-risk that have been found through a literature search as well as two years of SWAMP field work. An additional 11 species have been identified as having a high potential to occur here. The BC Conservation Data Centre only has 20 species listed in its database for this area.

This report shows that more field work, beyond the 154 locations that have been visited, is needed and will probably uncover more threatened species. Wendy Castellanos, a student at Selkirk College, is currently investigating several methods of identifing the location of more wetlands. Preliminary results indicate the potential for 345 wetlands over 0.3 hectares in size exist in the Slocan watershed. Since wetlands often contain several assemblages of vegetation and the associated ecosystems, the potential to identify more species-at-risk is high. SWAMP plans to continue mapping and classifying wetlands in the Slocan watershed.

The research for this report was funded by Columbia Basin Trust.

Click here to download the full report.