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  • Interior Watershed Task Force

    The Interior Watershed Task Force is a coalition of more than twenty NGOs, Community Organizations, and Professionals that was initiated in 2023.  The IWTF advocates for the legal protection and preservation of water, primary and natural forests, wildlife and critical habitats in the BC interior. We are based in the Okanagan region of BC and respectfully live and work on ancestral territories of several First Nations.

  • IWTF events, articles and videos

    Jennifer Houghton
    After her Grand Forks home flooded in 2017 and 2018, Jennifer became involved in reforming forestry in BC. She co-founded Boundary Forest Watershed Stewardship Society along with a small group of locals concerned about the damage from industrial logging to local ecosystems. Jennifer has filmed the effects of the flooding on local people. She was lead organizer of Forest March BC, forestry summits, and runs the Facebook group BC Forestry Reform. She continues to speak, present, and collaborate with BC grassroots groups to drive for forest management to prioritize ecosystems and local communities rather than corporate profits.
     
    The Power of Forests
     
     
    Michelle Connolly
    Michelle Connolly has a background in ecology and experience crafting and communicating conservation policy. She is at home in the old-growth forests of Prince George. She is  one of the founders and a director of Conservation North, a 100% volunteer-run, non profit, science-based community group serving northern BC. Michelle’s advocacy has put the wasteful “greenwashed’’ practice of clear cutting BC’s primary forst as a source for pellets to fuel UK and Japan.
     
    Why we need primary forest protection, not better logging
     
    Taryn Skalbania
    Dr. Alila spoke in April 2024 to the Future of Our Forests conference in Kelowna.
     
     
    Dr. Alila graduated from the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor degree in civil engineering in 1985, a Master degree in water resources engineering in 1987, and a Doctorate in engineering hydrology in 1994.
    Dr. Alila teaches and conducts research on climate and land use change effects on water resources. Dr. Alila’s work over the last 20 years on forests effects on floods challenged  century-old conventional hydrologic wisdom about how forests affect large floods. His work on this topic has been the subject of much peer reviewed discussion among academics in the field and generated press releases by the American Geophysical Union.
    Dr. Alila served as an expert witness in three court cases: Randy Saugstad vs. Tolko Industries Ltd. (logging effects on hydrology, 2015); Waterway Houseboats Ltd vs British Columbia (flood hydrology unrelated to logging, 2018); and Ray Chipeniuk and Sonia Sawchuk vs BCTS & Triantha (logging effects on hydrology, 2022).
    Professor Alila’s research confirms the negative impact clearcutting has on forested watersheds and the long-overdue need for forest-related legislation to catch up with science. Dr. Alila includes a dire warning to governments who ignore the call for improved forest management practices. He says they are risking taxpayers’ money, which will be needed to pay for costly lawsuits which he says will become inevitable as the improving science continues to make the case. “Time is running out on us,” Alila said.
    He adds that the rest of the world—Europe and Asia in general, and China in particular—has long recognized how clearcutting in upstream watersheds exacerbates both the frequency and intensity of flooding. Here in western Canada and the US, that scientific understanding has not been applied. “Here, we’re logging like there’s no tomorrow,” he says. 

  • Lakes, streams and wetlands of the Peachland Creek Watershed

    In the map below, named watersheds are shown as a semi-transparent background colour. Lakes are darker blue, streams are light blue and wetlands are light green. The size of the component parts of the watershed and the name of the larger watershed this are contributes to can be found by clicking on a coloured area.

    Zoom into and out of the map using the + or - buttons. Pan around the map by clicking it and dragging.

    Does your forest conservation organization need a map like this for your area of interest? Let us know and we will make one for you.

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