Join the Lake Biodiversity Photo Challenge
By Contributor
This summer Living Lakes Canada is calling on all Columbia Basin residents to get involved in the Lake Biodiversity Photo Challenge.
Simply snap a photo of your favourite lake(s) and submit it to the contest for a chance to win prizes from Kicking Horse Coffee and Lush.
Photo submissions will be accepted until July 31, 2021 and displayed in an online gallery and shared on social media.
There will be one winner for each category:
- Most Biodiverse,
- Public Favourite
- Most Impactful
Winners will be chosen by Earth Rangers President Tovah Barocas and announced at the end of Lakes Appreciation Month in July.
“Living Lakes Canada is thrilled to announce the Lake Biodiversity Photo Challenge,” said Georgia Peck, program coordinator with Living Lakes Canada.
“We want to provide Canadians with a fun and engaging opportunity to visit their local lake and take notice of things they may not always be aware of.
“Biodiversity is all around us, you just have to look for it.”
Canada is home to two million freshwater lakes, but not all of them are monitored regularly or even photographed, which makes it hard to tell how these lakes have changed over time.
Lakes are subject to impacts such as shoreline development, changing nutrient levels, and water levels. Photos provide reference points that can help determine the scale at which human activity or natural occurrences are impacting these water bodies.
These issues, combined with the impacts of climate change, make community-based water monitoring efforts like photo documentation even more important.
“The ‘Most Biodiverse’ category encourages photographers to capture a single snapshot of as much flora and fauna as possible. As for the ‘Most Impactful’ category, we want to raise awareness around the pressure felt by freshwater biodiversity,” said Peck.
Submit your photos by email to lakeblitz@livinglakescanada.ca, via the online submission form at lakeblitz.livinglakescanada.ca or by using #LakeBlitzPhoto on social media.
This photo challenge is part of Living Lakes Canada’s inaugural National Lake Blitz program, a community-based lake monitoring initiative that provides Canadians with easy-to-use water monitoring tools to help them monitor climate change impacts on the health of their favourite lake. To learn more, to get involved, and to view the online gallery of submitted photos, visit lakeblitz.livinglakescanada.ca.
About Living Lakes Canada
Living Lakes Canada is a national non-profit organization based in B.C.’s Columbia Basin that is working towards the long-term protection of Canada’s fresh water. Our mission is to normalize water stewardship through community-based water monitoring. We believe that this is a way to empower localized climate adaptation and provide support for decision-making by helping to fill important water data gaps. Much of our work has become a grassroots template for aquatic ecosystem monitoring across B.C. and Canada. We are affiliated with Living Lakes International, a global network of over 120 non-governmental organizations that are working to protect lakes, rivers, wetlands and watersheds world-wide.
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