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magazine / ja08
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July/August 2008 issue |
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EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
The thirsty Okanagan
Rattlesnakes are not generally included in the suite
of species you expect around the property when you buy
a million-dollar house. Except in the Okanagan
Valley,
as near to a desert environment as you’ll encounter in Canada.
Snakes find the area congenial. So do humans.
For winter-numbed prairie farmers, Vancouver’s soaring real-
estate refugees, well-heeled vacationers from the United
States, skiers and Ironman athletes, the Okanagan is a playground,
despite its serpents. It has orchards, vineyards, sandy
beaches, deep blue lakes, ski hills in the surrounding mountains,
ponderosa pine forests, long hot summers and short
mild winters.
One visit, and you’ll want to live there. The region’s attractions
are irresistible. In 1961, Kelowna, the biggest city in the
valley, had a population of 13,000. Today, it has 106,000 is and
one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country.
Blame the appeal of the place, at least in part, on the adiabatic
lapse rate. Put down the dictionary, and I’ll explain.
The valley is cradled on the west and east by mountains.
Wet air masses arriving from the Pacific Ocean rise as they
cross the Coast Mountains. In doing so, they expand and
cool (height and temperature correlations are defined by the
adiabatic lapse rate), which makes them less able to hold
moisture. So the mountaintops benefit from a steady delivery
of rain and snow.
When those same air masses descend into the valley, they
compress and warm, becoming giant sponges. That accounts for
the near desert conditions in the Okanagan. Rising again, over
the Monashee Mountains to the east, the withheld moisture is
released. Thus nearby ski hills and dense forests.
While the weather patterns have shaped the valley’s distinctive
ecology, it is the big lakes — Okanagan, Skaha, Vaseux and, near the U.S. border, Osoyoos — that give the region its singular
geographical character. Those lakes aren’t reservoirs created by
dams, as is the case with many lakes in the arid western United
States. They are natural lakes, the remnants of glaciers lodged
in deep clefts in the valley.
Surrounding the lakes are hot, dry benches, once graced by
orchards and now, increasingly, sprouting orderly rows of vineyards.
In 1984, there were 13 wineries in the area. At last count,
there were 134. What nourishes them is natural sunlight and
an ambitious irrigation network.
Writer Allan Casey’s story explores the region’s
beauty, its threatened ecology — one-third of British Columbia’s
species at risk inhabit the Okanagan — and its explosive growth
and asks how big a human population the valley can sustain,
given the limits of its water resources. It’s a thoughtful question
posed by a journalist with a unique perspective on the matter.
This is the second story we have presented from Casey’s
ongoing investigation into the health of Canada’s greatest lakes.
Two years ago, we published his disturbing account of troubled
Lake Winnipeg (“Forgotten
lake,” Nov/Dec 2006). Like this
story, it will become a chapter in his forthcoming book, scheduled
for release in spring 2009.
The plight of the rattlesnakes in the Okanagan may not
generate much sympathy and concern and is not likely to slow
the flow of retirees and rentiers into the region. Those snakes,
whose habitat is being turned into water-thirsty golf courses,
vineyards and new suburbs, are less and less at home in Eden. But
they may be back. Unlike us, they need hardly any water at all.
— Rick Boychuk
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