Wetlands in BC

British Columbia's Wetlands — Two Types?

British Columbia is said to have two per cent of Canada's wetlands, and these 3,120,000 hectares constitute three per cent of British Columbia's total land area. In the 1980s it was estimated that wetlands covered about fourteen per cent of Canada, but the original, historic wetland coverage would have been substantially higher. About 50 per cent of the original wetlands (i.e., before European settlement) in the Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria areas have been converted to agricultural uses. An additional 25 per cent have been converted to "urban activities," which is to say that they have been paved over and built upon. Approximately 25 per cent of our original natural wetlands remain. In some areas, wetland loss is much more extensive. About 96 per cent of the wetlands in the North Arm of the Fraser estuary have been lost since the turn of the century. (Levings and Thom, 1994.)

Much of Canada's wetlands are frozen for at least six months of the year, during which time they virtually shut down as theatres of biological operations. The exception to this half-year-long frigidity is the Pacific coast — the Fraser Valley up as far as Hope, and the low-level wetlands all the way up and down the coast, north and south of Vancouver. The mild climate in these areas makes them valuable to migrating and resident waterfowl on a year-round basis. Their microbiological activities are chugging away straight through the winter, and their nutrient flows and food chain functions operate year-round.

From a bird's point of view, one could say that in the dead of winter there are two kinds of wetlands in BC — the frozen and the almost frozen. This is not to say that our coastal wetlands are more valuable than other wetlands, just that they do have somewhat special status within the overall context of Canadian wetlands, and because of that the remaining coastal wetlands must be cherished and protected.

A Wetland Ecology Ethic — The Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons is an old story. At its core is the "I don't care about the people downstream" view of the world which has repeatedly been the cause of our environmental catastrophes. It is also the title of a beautiful essay published in 1968 by Garrett Hardin which provides a paradigm for the development of a wetland ethic. The story goes like this:

In England in the 1600s great prosperity grew out of the trade in wool and woolens. Markets were expanding at a pace greater than the ability of sheep-owning farmers to provide wool. One `solution' to the `shortage' of this basic commodity was to allow more and more sheep to graze on common pasture land. It stood to reason that if the market demanded more wool, the producers were obliged to increase their flock sizes in an effort to meet the demand. Placing excess demands on the environment led to the destruction of the grazing lands, the collapse of many farming operations, and the shift from community-based common grazing lands to privately owned `enclosed' land. Their tragedy was rooted in demanding more of the environment than it could sustain.

Our wetlands have been subject to the same pressures as old England's grazing lands were. In an effort to "create wealth" we have radically diminished the environmental benefits that we all derive from wetlands. We've done this at our own peril, to say nothing of the certain death that was faced by all the organisms that depended on those wetlands. One extraordinary example of wetland destruction occurred near Chilliwack in the 1920s when all 2,600 hectares of Sumas Lake were drained to create farmland. That alone was a loss of 26 square kilometres of wetland habitat.

In the tragedy of the commons, the actions of individuals had a cumulative impact that eventually led to a loss of opportunity not only for the individual farmers, but the entire society as well. We need to develop a wetland ethic that will protect BC's wetlands for the indefinite future, or face the prospect of making the kinds of mistakes that can lead to tragedies of our common wetlands.

Protecting wetlands is simple when people agree on the same degree of protection for distant wetlands as they would seek for wetlands near their home. This can only be accomplished through legislation and education. Caring for wetlands can be accomplished through an application of the "golden rule" (do unto others...) but in the absence of laws, education, and care, wetland protection in BC will require hard lobbying efforts.

The first step in developing a wetland ethic is the acceptance of the fact that we have already destroyed as many wetlands as we can afford to destroy without bringing a tragedy of the commons upon ourselves.

With a wetland ethic it would be clear that the losses outweigh the gains and that we cannot afford to sacrifice more wetland habitat. The existence of wetlands in close proximity to human society is one of the signs of a true civilization. A human society that is founded on wetland destruction will eventually reap the curse that monoculture has to offer. In the absence of the biodiversity that wetlands support, we can expect the worst: from food chain breakdowns to floods and droughts as well as generations of children who are deprived of places to experience the joys of nature. We cannot afford to become a society that "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

One of the ironies of wetland loss is that the decision-makers who do nothing to save wetlands are often the same people who are deeply appreciative of what wetlands have to offer. They feel for the losses, but are caught up in a compli cated system. Our job is to remind them that BC's wetlands are underprotected, and that we have to work together to change this. A destroyed wetland means little to someone who is insensitive to the ecological and communal need for wetlands — so it is our job to provide a "wetland education" for as many British Columbians as possible.

The confrontations and sit-ins that have characterized the debate over logging practices have not yet become common in the wetland world. Will this state of relative peace continue in the absence of better protection for wetlands? The friends of wetlands in BC are a mixed group — ranging from kids who love ducks to the 100,000 or so senior citizens who take part in nature clubs and ad-hoc nature walks. This group has a lot of brains, a lot of money, and a lot of votes. There is a lot of pent-up anger and frustration over the ease with which so many wetlands have been filled and paved over — but for now the question of when this frustration will be transformed into a broad-based call for better protection of wetlands remains unanswered.

The Fate of BC's Wetlands

If one were keeping a scorecard, it would appear that humans are enormously hostile toward wetlands. It is as if a deep and terrible wrong against humans had been committed by wetlands in the past, and our history over the past 500 years has been a kind of "ecological cleansing" in revenge for the now long-forgotten offence. Farfetched though this scenario seems, one can imagine anthropologists from another planet drawing that conclusion after studying what we've done to the earth.

British Columbia has been a full participant in the demise of North America's wetlands, in part due to population pressure and urban expansion. The fate of our wetlands from here on depends on which of two viewpoints gets its way. One view is unsympathetic to wetlands, and says that we must use wetlands for such and such a development. The net result of this view getting its way is not only habitat loss, but the loss of wetland functions such as flood control and the retention of water for use during dry periods.

The other viewpoint is sympathetic to wetlands and the need for their preservation. It argues that we can work with the wetland habitats of the world. Humans can live in and with wetlands — in what Dugan (p. 45) has termed "aquatic civilization." In British Columbia the example of Finn Slough in Richmond is a reminder of how harmonious relations between humans and wetlands can be. Dugan (pp. 44-45) gives Vientiane in Laos as an example of a stilt-house city in which people are "working with the hydrological system rather than trying to control it with dykes and dams." There is even a substantial wetland community of several hundred stilt houses in New York City!

But just having knowledge of the ways that humans and wetlands could work in harmony is not enough to prevent further losses. The challenge is to get the principles of ecosystem management into every level of government decision making, and then into private land stewardship as well. Starting at the local level you could work towards getting your municipality to request that the Union of BC Municipalities adopts a "wetlands-friendly" position and that it lobbies the provincial government on behalf of wetlands.