The Nechako Watershed Roundtable is working on a three-step strategy to keep both the river and watershed healthy.
Part one is finding and addressing key issues surrounding things like water quality, fish, ecosystems, and resource development and conservation. Climate change, air quality, the spruce pine beetle, and loss of forest cover are just a few of the things affecting the watershed.
The Roundtable’s Theresa Fresco knows keeping the watershed healthy is crucial for a lot of Northern communities.
“It’s easy just to think of your one local area but when you think about the watershed scale … you start to realise that we’re all interconnected. The Nechako river really does connect five different municipalities (Prince George, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, Fort St. James, Fraser Lake) and what happens in one area of the watershed certainly impacts another.”
Fresco is scheduling a public meeting in Prince George sometime in early October.
The next steps after this are identifying priority actions to address the issues and concerns of the river’s health. The last step is putting the solutions into effect.