Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Ducks Unlimited Canada is grateful for the opportunity to appear before this committee on this important issue. My name is Jim Brennan. I'm the director of government affairs based here in Ottawa and my colleague, Dr. Mark Gloutney, also based here in Ottawa, joins me here today. Mark is director of regional operations for eastern Canada.
Ducks Unlimited Canada maintains a very keen interest in water quantity and water quality in the Great Lakes Basin, primarily because of the high importance of this area for waterfowl and Ducks' mission. In fact, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence valley ecozone is widely recognized in the waterfowl conservation community as being continentally significant, with the coastal wetland habitats of the lower lakes supporting millions of migrating ducks, geese, and swans, and the supporting inland wetlands being the nursery to many of the birds that migrate up and down the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways. Today we'll categorize water quality issues into two broad categories: sediment-based issues and water-based issues.
Sediment-based issues refer to those issues that concern suspended particulates in the water, including those materials accumulated along the beds and banks of water bodies via erosion, among other reasons. Most often, elevated levels of sediment results in issues like turbidity or contaminant buildup. These issues tend to be localized and well-known, and have formed the basis for ongoing remediation strategies over a number of decades.
On the other hand, water-based issues typically generate lake-wide and sometimes even basin-wide effects. As you are no doubt aware, these can have very serious social, economic, and ecological impacts. Water-based issues are largely the result of activities within the broader watershed, both activities undertaken in and around water as well as activities undertaken in adjacent upland areas. Phosphorus loading is an example of one issue that arises from broader land use practices in a watershed and that has far-reaching water quality effects.
While the negative effects of sediment buildup and runoff in the Great Lakes are significant, our core area of expertise is in wetlands and water. As such the balance of our comments will focus on water-based issues. On this matter we are pleased to report that we bring some good news. Wetland conservation and restoration form a practical and highly effective part of the solution to improve Great Lakes water quality.
At this time I'd like now to hand over the balance of our presentation to Dr. Gloutney.