Our Actions Matter – Everything we do has either a positive or negative impact on our watershed (We are all standing on a watershed wherever we are).
Brandy Lake and the adjacent wetlands are part of one of the 17 watersheds that make up the Muskoka Watershed. The conference focused on the importance of the Muskoka Watershed to human health, economic health, and ecological health and the need to manage these needs as we adapt to a changing climate.
From the perspective of Brandy Lake and our watershed the following information from the conference has particular relevance to us.
There are things we can do to help protect our watershed:
1. Avoid deforestation and plant trees and native shrubs. We need vegetation to protect our water and the air we breathe and to contribute to cooling the climate
2. Support riparian zones (naturalize our shorelines as much as possible)
3. Manage invasive species
4. Care for the land and the water
- Avoid pesticides and herbicides
- Avoid homeowner use of salt in winter (Increases in chloride are damaging lake health)
- Avoid toxic chemicals and cleaners
- Maintain septic systems
- No pharmaceuticals down the drain
- Reduce our carbon footprint http://www.muskokawatershed.org/wp-content/uploads/CarbonFootprintReductions-KBoyle.pdf
5. Protect our wetlands because they
- Help mitigate flooding
- Store carbon and are essential to help respond to climate change
- Help manage nutrient run-off which contributes to lake health
- Provide habitat for species biodiversity
- Contribute to the health and efficiency of the watershed ecosystem which in turn sustains our human health as well as our social and economic health
Three key take away points to ponder:
1. Complex problems often have easy to understand WRONG answers. We need to look to science to help guide desirable end results. Muskoka’s Watershed is under the care of some of Ontario’s (and indeed Canada’s) premier scientists. We can help.
2. We cannot solve today’s problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
3. What we have now and take for granted has more value as is than the value it will have in the near future so we had best find ways to protect it now so that we can go on living here. Protecting water (Brandy Lake) in Muskoka means protecting the land around it as well.