Walk For Wetlands: Saturday February 19, 11 am – 12 pm — Orillia Wetland Watchers Event

The Orillia Wetland Watchers invites everyone to join us on our Walk for Wetlands. This short and peaceful walk from the Opera House to City Hall is being held to send a message to Orillia’s Mayor and Council that we oppose development on the Inch Farm wetlands, and to raise awareness about the alarming rate of wetland loss in the City of Orillia. People need houses, but we need wetlands too. There needs to be better urban planning so we can have both. Together we can send a message to Mayor Clarke and Council that they need to keep their “hands off wetlands”. So please, make a sign with one of our slogans and join us to show your support and to let our elected officials know just how many people care about our natural heritage.  Public health guidelines for Covid-19 safety will be followed at this event.

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A message from Bob Bowles

The purpose of this walk is to engage everyone public person to learn about and protect wetlands and we want to engage everyone, especially families.

This is a peaceful walk and not a power protest walk that we are now seeing across Canada but especially in Ontario where all levels of government are not listening to the people.

We have seen this in the Federal and Provincial governments but sadly now I am seeing it in all municipal governments, especially in my city. I asked my City of Orillia mayor and one of the eight councillors (the one that the other seven look to for environmental advice) and they told our local reporter that they didn’t think the Inch Farm Wetland was a wetland and they had no concerns about what the developer was doing to this wetland with his large housing development.

You can’t protect what you don’t recognize or understand so that is why I am purposing every municipal councillor takes a short wetland course at the start of their term. The young people in my university classes or grade 12 environmental high school classes understand wetlands and their importance but our municipal councillors that make all the local decisions don’t understand them and can’t even recoginze them.