STORIES

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Zo Ann Morten

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Community: Fraser Valley

November 16, 2006: Pacific Streamkeepers Federation (with special mention of Zo Ann Morten) wins the Fraser Basin Council’s Caring for Ecosystems Award!

Zo Ann began her involvement with salmon in 1988 when she decided to help with an enhancement project at the school her children attended. After three years, the school project moved to the Premier Street landfill in North Vancouver, where there was nothing but a small trickle off the hillside. Today, this functioning tributary has been re-named Morten Creek by the District of North Vancouver.

Zo Ann is not only an active member of the stewardship community, she is:

• Executive director of the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation
• A director on the Pacific Salmon Foundation Board
• A member of DFO’s Salmon Enhancement and Habitat Advisory Board

Her knowledge of stewardship, community, and government dynamics; her participation in government policy consultation and implementation, national and provincial program development, and community and public engagement is coupled with a will and wisdom that she brings to her stewardship efforts. Her work culminates in the training and support of the 30,000 volunteer aquatic stewards active in British Columbia. Through her mentorship, she has personally contributed to the conservation of hundreds of streams and unique gene pools of not only salmon but the interconnected ecosystems they support.

Zo Ann brings Citizen’s Science to the thousands of volunteer stewards throughout BC. The methodologies she continually tests and evaluates against rigorous and exclusive “higher level” science is brought to the community through training in scientific observation and monitoring, that is scientifically defensible, that empowers individuals and the community and enables them to take action, based on science to protect critical habitats and the fish and wildlife dependant on it. 

She demonstrates that when science is made available to the individual at a level where their scientific observations can be shared at a scientifically defensible level with peers, governments, and other citizens you are creating an informed community, that creates political will, that will influence government policy at the highest levels.