The executive director of the Lake Huron Coastal Centre says she was very pleased to see about 165 people attend their conference at the Oakwood Resort in Grand Bend on Friday.
The "Is the Coast Clear?" conference is the major event of the year for the centre and Erinn Lawrie says she thinks the number of people that attended this year reflects increased awareness.
“So I think people just in general are more aware of environmental issues. They care about the planet, they want to take care of it for the future generations and it really does give me hope to see so many people aware of these issues and coming together to work on it,” she said.
Lawrie says when people think about the Great Lakes they tend to think of the particular Great Lake that they live near.
“It's easy to forget just how enormous these Great Lake systems are and we have over twenty per cent of the world's fresh water in the Great Lakes here and that just tells me what a great responsibility that we have to care for this water for the rest of the world. It's such a precious resource,” she said.
Lawrie adds one other benefit of living near the Great Lakes is that they do sometimes serve as a bit of a buffer against extreme weather events.
