Wild Places: Ventego Wetlands

Imagine a turquoise lake in the Selkirk Mountains just north of Canada’s Glacier National Park. Its water cascades over a cliff then meanders through mountain wetlands eventually traveling down a valley more than 15 kilometres to join the Beaver River. This is Ventego—a lake, a creek and a wetland, pristine and unmarred by logging or roads, a leftover pocket of an ancient, undisturbed ecosystem.

At an elevation of about 4600 feet, the Ventego Wetlands are surrounded by subalpine, Interior Cedar-Hemlock rainforest. The way into it is impossibly rugged, even in this region that is known for its ruggedness.

The high-elevation Ventego Wetlands are likely to house at least 4 species of frogs, with no predatory fish. However, that ecosystem changed earlier this year when 50 Westslope cutthroat trout from a different creek were airlifted in as part of a mitigation measure for a run-of-river power proposal. Along with their predatory nature, trout can carry a fungus that’s deadly to frogs— one third of global amphibian populations have been dying off since the 1980’s, and the decline is rapidly worsening. Scientists point to the fungus, known as chytrid, as a main cause of this decrease in amphibian biodiversity.

The 5.6-kilometre-long Ventego Wetlands now have predatory fish where none were before. Other than this man-made introduction thanks to Selkirk Power, the undeveloped wild Ventego drainage has not changed since the last ice age.

For more information about Ventego click here.