Local naturalists have a new group through which to protect local rivers thanks to an Olympic athlete and a former Edmonton Oiler.
Olympic medallist Karen Percy Lowe and Oiler’s hockey operations president Kevin Lowe held a press conference Oct. 4 to launch the North Saskatchewan Riverkeeper organization. The group is a charitable organization dedicated to river education and protection throughout the North Saskatchewan River watershed, which includes the Sturgeon River.
The group is an offshoot of the U.S. Waterkeeper Alliance, said executive director Glenn Isaac, and is one of nine similar groups in Canada. “Our vision is a North Saskatchewan watershed where all can safely drink, swim and fish.”
There are many parts of the North Saskatchewan that have decent water, Isaac said, but others, particularly those parts downstream of Edmonton, have seen noticeable declines in water quality and fish habitat. Tributaries like the Sturgeon, which serve as backup homes for fish in the North Saskatchewan, are also under pressure from cities and farms.
Trevor Zahara, vice-president of the Big Lake Environment Support Society, said he hoped the group would act as a rally point for all the region’s watershed organizations. “The media attention they’ve gathered in the past few days, that helps us all.”
The group’s website is saskriverkeeper.ca.
A new chart from a federal think-tank could help residents visualize the effects of climate change in Alberta, says a local environmentalist.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), an independent federal advisory panel made of experts from across Canada, launched its Degrees of Change campaign this week.
Its main element is a chart that illustrates how Canada is likely to change if the world warms by one to six degrees (the amount of warming predicted by most climate models over the next century). The chart is included in this month’s issue of Canadian Geographic, and will be sent along with lesson plans to about 12,000 schools.
Many people are skeptical about climate change, said Bob Mills, NRTEE member and former Red Deer member of Parliament, but we can already see its effects in events like the mountain pine beetle invasion. “It’s real, so let’s prepare for it.”
The board, which has produced many reports on climate change, tapped its experts to map out the effects of different degrees of warming. Alberta is already seeing the effects of climate change in the form of earlier snowmelt, the chart notes. Two degrees of warming would lead to the eventual loss of half of our glaciers and make our land 50 per cent more likely to turn into desert.
Not all the changes are bad — two degrees could mean more golf time, the chart notes, and could make some crops more productive. Most benefits disappear at three or more degrees, however, replaced by a doubling of prairie drought and extreme rains, more air pollution deaths, and more Lyme disease.
Albertans need to prepare for these changes, Mills says. Edmonton and Red Deer will need bigger sewers to handle more extreme rainfall, while homebuilders will have to start using more renewable energy. “We can all do something to start alleviating the problem.”
The chart is an effective way to illustrate the long-term effects of climate change, says Jason Cooke, chair of the St. Albert environmental advisory committee. “These are long-term trends,” he says, trends that could put this region at risk of water troubles in the future. “Even though we had quite a wet summer, we’re not out of the woods.”
The chart is available at www.climateprosperity.ca.
