The Importance of our water is often neglected.

A dear friend and environment concerned citizen, Celia Brauer recently wrote an article for the Georgia Straight (online) about the importance of cleaning up our natural waterways.

Vancouver in the 1850s map from Vancouver – A Visual History

by Bruce Macdonald, with drawings and design by Celia Brauer.

June 3, 2010 online Georgia Straight article by Celia Brauer:

Backyard fish streams? Okay, but let’s clean up natural waterways first.

Here are a few excepts from the article…

“the sad reality is that we have continued to grossly pollute and ignore the needs of the vast honest-to-goodness wild fish-bearing waters that surround us…”

“False Creek, which was once an inland waterway that offered food aplenty, now has richness primarily in the high land values of surrounding human development. While the waters are cleaner than they once were in the deep, dark days of active industry, the shoreline is still mostly devoid of life.”

“Should we not use our human resources and tax dollars to prevent further damage and to clean up compromised habitat instead of paying royal commissions to examine fish loss and funding environmental assessments for new developments that will inevitably harm wild ecosystems?”

Celia Brauer is a member of the Livable Region Coalition. She is a cofounder of the False Creek Watershed Society and works as a volunteer educating the public about the lost natural history of Vancouver, watershed issues, and the state of our wild Pacific salmon.