Watershed Management & Planning

A watershed, also known as a catchment basin or area, includes all of the land that is drained by a watercourse and its tributaries. It is a dynamic and complex web of natural resources - soil, water, plants and animals - where we live, work and play.

Features of a watershed include physical features such as size, terrain and soil type as well as social-economic features such as population, industry and water uses.

There are many interconnections and relationships between human activities on land and what happens to water and subsequently to the organisms that use water. The boundaries of a watershed provide natural limits for managing these interconnections and their impact on the environment and natural resources within.

The watershed must be managed to protect and preserve the natural features important to our society and to ensure that our continued use of them is sustainable.  Watershed management preserves a healthy ecosystem and a dependable supply of contaminant-free water.

Watershed management planning considers the entire ecosystem for land use planning and provides for guidance on the interrelationships between land uses and the health of ecosystems over time. This approach recognizes that ecosystems have limits to how much stress land uses can put on them before the ecosystems are irreversibly damaged or destroyed.

Watershed management and planning is a co-operative effort by stakeholders, Conservation Ontario, municipalities and government agencies to create a long term management plan for resources within the watershed.