Dear Editor:
As the cold winter days bloom into spring and summer, people from across Canada and the world will come to visit the Kootenays to experience its pristine beauty and wildlife. A part of this wilderness We have been blessed with is the Columbia Wetlands that’s right on our doorstep, which supports over 260 bird species and many of our mammalian and amphibian species. The Columbia Wetlands cleans our water, protects us from floods and droughts, and is essential in maintaining our watersheds. Wetlands are among Earth’s most productive ecosystems. Yet they are disappearing, we have already lost 50% of them between 1970 and 2015 and we are losing them three times the rate we are losing our forests.
There is a lot we can do to protect our wetlands for future generations and one of the easiest things we can do is to not use motorized boats on our lakes and rivers.
Motorized boats create large wakes that contribute to shoreline erosion, destroy birds nests and disturb the bottom of the lake and river hurting native plant species and disrupting fish and their young. Motorized boats also conduit to the spread of invasive species, and pollute the water via leaked or spilled oil and gas.
This summer instead of going water skiing with the other three hundred motorized boats on Windermere or Columbia lake, try kayaking or canoeing. Let’s come together and protect what’s important.
Samson Boyer,
Wilmer
