Did You Know?

• Water is the only substance found on earth naturally in three forms – solid, liquid and gas.



• The Great Lakes are the largest freshwater storehouse in the world.



• Nature Canada’s Communities in Action Program preserves freshwater resources at Important Bird Areas across Canada.

WATER! WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT!

Clean and abundant water is essential to ensuring human health and the health of our economy. The majority of the world’s population lives near and depends on freshwater environments to provide drinking and irrigation water, food, employment and recreation. Rivers and lakes are essential as transportation and shipping routes, and as energy sources.

Humans aren’t the only ones who depend on freshwater for survival. Freshwater ecosystems are rich in life. An estimated 12 percent of all animal species live in fresh water.

Nature Canada is working to protect our water supply, and you can help.

Freshwater systems occupy only 0.8 percent of Earth's surface, according to the World Resources Institute. And these limited water supplies are under threat.

The world's great rivers are drying up at an alarming rate. The glaciers and snow packs that have long supplied water to Canada’s Prairies are in retreat. Water levels in the Upper Great Lakes are falling. The consequences could be devastating for the humans and wildlife that depend on this precious resource to survive.

Across the continent, the picture is critically clear.   The U.S. government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

Canada has some of the world’s most extensive fresh water resources. Approximately 8% of its territory is covered by lakes, and it has about 25% of the world's wetlands.  But we cannot continue to take these resources for granted in the face of global warming.

Help establish National Parks, National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries to preserve these rivers, lakes and wetlands.

Protected areas not only preserve freshwater sources, including the critical headwaters of important river systems, they also protect the land around them from becoming polluted.

Canada’s national park system remains incomplete and millions of hectares of wetlands have yet to be preserved. We must do more. 

Please help to establish and maintain protected areas.