New StoryMap for McNab Creek Watershed

McNab Valley – A Small Valley with a Big Role

Our Project Director, Mica Anguita, has published a StoryMap on a remote but essential watershed in West Howe Sound as part of a new Terrestrial Atlas program. If you are wondering “why?” then read on. 

McNab Valley – thought by some to be a jewel in Átl'ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound. But wait a moment. McNab Valley, where even is that? Tucked away beyond Gambier Island on West Howe Sound, it’s a distant valley that people can see as they travel the Sea to Sky Highway, but very few visit. So if we can’t visit it, hardly see it, don’t live there or don’t work there, and if it’s not a particularly big valley, then why should we care whether it’s a jewel or not?

The reason we should care about this remote valley comes down to how we treat our collective home – these precious watersheds we live in – and the economic value of the ecosystem services this valley and its estuary provide.

The estuary and watershed of McNab Creek in West Howe Sound. Credit: Sea to Sky Air

This valley is a watershed within a larger watershed and in many ways is a microcosm of Átl'ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound. It’s a glacier-carved valley with sub-alpine peaks and forested slopes cascading down to a valley floor that leads to an estuary. It has an industrial past and present, some residential use, and a landscape that has changed through colonial human impacts. If you know Átl'ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound, then that probably sounds familiar. Most estuary systems in the region have been altered by human use. McNab is unique here as it remains relatively intact. 

Coast Salish peoples have inhabited these lands and waters from time immemorial. The Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Uxwumixw know the mouth of McNab Creek as Kw’ech’ténm, meaning "fish cutting place." Most of us, however, will never visit there, but we need that valley to have a healthy ecosystem. As one of the richest types of habitat around for the life it supports, estuary ecosystems help keep our food web functioning. They also help mitigate climate change impacts and more so as those impacts get worse. Those are of course two things incredibly important to all of us. Without these types of natural systems providing these ‘ecosystem services’ as it is called, life will be a whole lot more challenging and an awful lot more expensive.

So every estuary system – and the watershed that feeds it – is precious to us, as are the species that make a home there. 

McNab Valley is part of our collective home in Átl'ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound. Like the wiring in our homes, we neither see nor generally think of it, but we certainly need it to be fully functioning.

But more than that, the changes in McNab over the decades, including restoration and monitoring projects that have happened, give us a wonderful opportunity to study human impacts and the ways in which we can learn from the past and innovate for the future. With this in mind, we have published a StoryMap as part of our new Terrestrial Atlas initiative. You can learn more about the valley, its critical habitats and its human-impacts, past and present here.