Watershed Reports - Water Rangers

The Watershed Reports, first created in 2017 by WWF-Canada, are the first national-scale assessment of the state of freshwater in Canada. As of September 2023, Water Rangers is the Watershed Reports’ new steward!

The Watershed Reports were created to identify and address critical knowledge gaps about freshwater health in Canada and to help guide efforts to improve. Prior to the creation of the reports, there was no nationally standardized assessment of Canada’s watersheds – a concerning situation given the vital importance of watersheds to our ecology, economy, culture and history! The Watershed Reports contribute to understanding the challenges of collecting data across such a vast area and making data on freshwater health available to the public.

What are the Watershed Reports?

Who

The Watershed Reports includes data from governments, researchers, and community groups. They were originally created by WWF-Canada. Starting in 2024, will be stewarded by Water Rangers, powered by AquaAction.

What

The Watershed Reports are an interactive tool that shows scores for 4 aspects of river health and 7 key threats at a watershed and subwatershed scale.

When

The Watershed Reports are updated every 3-5 years. The last assessment was made in 2020 and the next one will be released in Fall 2024.

Where

The Watershed Reports assess watersheds across the country, at a high-level. While it can't provide nuanced answers to local concerns, it shows where to start searching for answers or investing in sharing data.

Why

The Watershed Reports are the only national assessment of water health and have been a driving force investment in open data sharing in Canada! Importantly, the Reports are created independently of government, with an expert review board.

Looking forward

The Watershed Reports contain recommendations on moving from data to action. Water Rangers will be publishing the next version in 2024, showcasing progress since the last publication.

The history of the Watershed Reports

2017

First Watershed Reports was published

WWF-Canada published the first edition of the reports in 2017, with assessments completed for each of Canada’s 25 major watersheds and their 167 sub-watersheds. At the time, 110 out of 167 sub-watersheds lacked enough data to paint a baseline picture of their overall health. That’s right- we didn’t even have enough data to determine how healthy most of our sub-watersheds were!

The launch, as part of the Healthy Waters Summit, featured groups from across the country, including decision-makers, academics, and environmental non-profits.

CTV News article about the launch, featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's comments

CBC News article: "Patchy information leaves Canada unable to determine quality of watersheds"

2017 Report (pdf)

Latest Watershed Reports online experience

2019

Projects across Canada funded to address data gaps and improve watershed health

After the publication of the first report in 2017, funders and organizations had a common language to determine how they could make progress on filling data gaps and improve water quality. Water Rangers was one of the successful projects, which included equipping communities in data deficient sub-watersheds with water testing tools. This project showed the value of building local capacity for water monitoring. Not only that, but Masters students at McGill used this project as part of their research on behaviour change in relation to water testing, too! By and large, the results show that people want to help. Our project was just one of many that informed the publication of the next Watershed Reports.

Growing the Flow whitepaper (pdf)

Growing the Flow Impact Report (pdf)

2020

Second Watershed Reports was published

In 2020, WWF-Canada released an updated assessment showing that data deficiency was still a major concern, with nearly 60% of sub-watersheds not being attributed a score.

However, that means that 5% more subwatersheds had enough data: some progress was being made! Much of this progress, in fact, came from organizations actively promoting data sharing and capacity-building in communities. For example, leadership from organizations like DataStream in providing standardized and open datasets has been integral. Their work with regional and national collaborators like Water Rangers, Atlantic Water Network, Lake Winnipeg Foundation, and so many more, are leading this progress.

Of the watersheds with sufficient data to be assessed, 64% received a score of Good or Very Good. To this day, Watershed Reports are still the only national-scale assessments of watershed health and threats of their kind in Canada.

2020 Watershed Reports (PDF)

Water Rangers feature: Good news brought to you by WWF-Canada’s Watershed Reports!

Article: DataStream Data Informs Assessment of Freshwater Health

2020 press release: New WWF-Canada Report reveals the health of 60 per cent of Canada's sub-watersheds is unknown

Article: 5 future fixes from WWF Canada’s 2020 Watershed Reports

2024

Transition to Water Rangers

Water Rangers became the stewards of the Watershed Reports in 2023. Our team has begun work on the third edition of the reports, set to be published in the fall of 2024. This work includes the formation of an expert advisory committee and review committee to inform the reports and review the data assessment prior to public release. Following the recommendations, Water Rangers has committed to regularly updating the assessment.

If you have any questions about this process, please get in touch!

Water Rangers' press release about the transition

AquaAction's press release about the transition

WWF's press release about the transition

Have ideas for the next Watershed Reports? Contact us!