FRIENDS OF ROBERT LAKE SOCIETY

The Friends of Robert Lake Society (FoRL) was as formed as an advocacy group for the alkaline lake/wetland ecosystem of Robert Lake, which is found within the Kelowna B.C. city limits. Saline lake (alkaline lakes are a type of saline lake) ecosystems are rare in B.C.  Robert Lake is such a hotspot and home to rare biological species such as American Avocets (shorebirds) and Great Basin Spadefoots.  Robert Lake is a well-known birding site because of the diversity of waterfowl and shorebirds which are supported by the highly productive nature of this alkaline lake.  In addition, saline lakes and their surrounding wetlands provide many important ecosystem services and are known to host microbial species (most of which are under-explored and under-described) that possess novel enzyme systems with useful industrial and bioremediation applications.

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Robert Lake is unusual in that it occasionally dries up.  This has allowed for private ownership of the lakebed and thus, for such a small waterbody, many stakeholders have an interest in its fate.  Stakeholders include a number of individual private landowners, The City of Kelowna, The University of British Columbia, and The Regional District of the Central Okanagan.

 

The formation of FoRL, as a voice for the lake ecosystem as a whole, was prompted by observations that the lake’s salts were being diluted to the point where the lake was becoming more brackish (i.e. fresher)  than saline. This is due to, in part, by an elevation in lake level caused by increased inflow of freshwaters, and the subsequent action of the City of Kelowna to pump water (and therefore salt) out of the lake in order to prevent flooding of bordering residential properties.  Although pumping has currently ceased, water levels remain high and are much more dilute than historical records show.  The city is working on plans to divert freshwater around the lake, but will remove water (along with salts) from the lake if water levels become high enough to potentially damage adjacent roadways and private properties.

 

If water becomes fresher, the types of organisms that live in the water body change and this can have negative conservation consequences.  The City of Kelowna landfill largely eradicated Alki Lake, located just upslope from Robert Lake, in a time before the conservation value of this type of ecosystem was appreciated, and now Robert Lake is being altered even though we now have a much better understanding.

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Respectfully acknowledging that Robert Lake exists on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Syilx people.