{"id":166393,"date":"2025-09-24T15:51:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T15:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/166393\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T15:51:12","slug":"it-is-really-sad-western-painted-turtles-saved-from-whats-left-of-b-c-lake-okanagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/166393\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It is really sad\u2019: Western painted turtles saved from what\u2019s left of B.C. lake – Okanagan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slow and steady won\u2019t win this race; it\u2019s the fast action from the team behind Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society that has saved 39 turtles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Western painted turtles<\/a> are now in the care of the society after being taken from Frazer Lake in the Upper Mission neighbourhood of\u00a0 Kelowna, B.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe turtles were healthy and all different ages, so we have some in from very small juveniles to sub-adults to large turtles that are fully grown,\u201d said Eva Hartmann, Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation Society executive director and co-founder.<\/p>\n

The turtles were rescued because their home, Frazer Lake, is drying up.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery wetland that we can support, I think it\u2019s definitely worth supporting in order to keep what is left, because over 90 per cent of all the wetlands in the province are gone since the 1800s,\u201d said Hartmann.<\/p>\n

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While the turtles wait to be rehomed, Kayleigh Postowski is trying to save the lake she has grown up visiting.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI would come out here every day in the summer, we would watch the turtles and set them free; so many memories were made here,\u201d said Postowski.<\/p>\n

A petition to restore<\/a> the lake that has garnered more than 400 signatures.<\/p>\n

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Postowski says this area used to be full of water but now it\u2019s much different.\u00a0\u201cIt is disgusting, honestly, it\u2019s really sad. It smells awful, it used to smell so clean and fresh up here,\u201d said Postowski.<\/p>\n

The lake was created to hold water for farm irrigation in the early 1900s, and was naturalized by the city in 2016.<\/p>\n

Emil Anderson Construction owns the property the lake sits on, but the City of Kelowna owns the water license and the dam.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly in the longer run part of a development, but as to how the lake will end up post-development, I don\u2019t know. It is a very nice place, the city certainly wants to maintain it as a natural wetland as best we can,\u201d said Kevin Van Vliet, City of Kelowna utilities services department manager.<\/p>\n

A request for comment to Emil Anderson Construction went unanswered; however, the city says the situation is due to climate change, a low snow pack, and four years of drought conditions.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe don\u2019t have any sort of water licence to refill it. The only possible way to refill it is to pump drinking water from the lake, which also isn\u2019t good for habitat,\u201d said Van Vliet.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no fast answer on what the future looks like for Frazer Lake; however, the relocated turtles are quickly adjusting to their new home.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slow and steady won\u2019t win this race; it\u2019s the fast action from the team behind Interior Wildlife Rehabilitation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,15736,6091,295,66,85891,47815,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-166393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-conservation","11":"tag-drought","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-western-painted-turtle","15":"tag-wetlands","16":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}