Oldman Watershed taking action
to preserve local headwaters
Lindsay Goss photo
Oldman Watershed Council and Water Matters invited the public to a meeting that discussed the future of the headwaters in the Pass. The event was held at Country Encounters at 7 p.m. on Thursday, November 29th.
LINDSAY GOSS
Pass Herald Reporter
The Oldman Watershed Council, in conjunction with Water Matters and Crowsnest Conservation Society is hosting a number of events in the Pass to better inform and create awareness on the new Headwaters Action Plan, as part of the Source to Tap initiative.
The series of events, which are set to take place throughout November and December, allow participants to put stewardship actions to practice.
On Thursday, November 22nd, a talk entitled ‘Stumps, Sawdust and Sediment,’ was put on by Lorne Fitch that focused on the future of the native fish living in the Crowsnest Pass.
David McIntyre attended the presentation. He described the talk as eye-opening. “Fitch, using the benchmarking health of the fish populations over time, quickly showed the audience that our native Bull Trout and Cutthroat Trout are in deep trouble.”
“The interesting thing that Fitch talked about was that we see that a number of our fish are missing from their former range.” McIntyre went on to explain that today, the Bull Trout occupy only 30 per cent of their historic range and the Cutthroat trout only occupying five per cent. The Cutthroat Trout used to be found in streams in the Lethbridge area and even as northeast as Calgary in prior years.
“Now we have the cutthroat trout living in very few tributary headwaters and that is it- they’re gone.”
McIntyre said that Fitch explained at the talk that these fish were here for approximately 10,000 years and they were in our local headwaters since the ice age.
Despite the natural disturbance the fish have encountered in the area since then, they were literally thriving in their natural environment. However, in approximately the last hundred years, people have virtually wiped them out.
“The immediate question is what changed? What happened to them?” McIntyre asked.
“It’s very simple once you back away and look at pictures of what is going on.”
McIntyre explained that the primary problem comes down to logging.
Other contributing factors boil down to off-roading activities.
“It’s amazing to think that these fish were here, thriving for thousands of years and suddenly, we have turned their lives upside-down in a matter of years. Now, they’re just hanging on, or they have already let go.”
McIntyre said that the fish are found in the places where people have not yet left a footprint, places where outback roads are not present, nor is logging established.
“The interesting thing I see in this is if someone introduced you to the Crowsnest Pass in the year 2012, and talked about fishing in the Crowsnest River, they would have an image of what fishing would look like,” he said. However, if you then look back to the mid 1800’s what fishing looked like back then and compared the two, we typically don’t have a real picture of what it looked like before the present because we don’t have the ability to see that far back,” he said. “One of the big examples of this is the Bull Trout.”
McIntyre went on to explain that the Bull Trout used to be a large fishery in a number of tributaries of the Crowsnest River, and in 70 years, people have wiped the species out.
“They were there for 10,000, yet what we did to them in 70 years, wiped them out. That sort of thing is colossal,” said McIntyre.
The irony is that society, overlooking a wall of damning roadway data, is building a new logging road into Hidden Creek as we talk.” Despite the discouraging downhill data, trends and trajectory of the equation, Fitch offers hope. He says, “Society needs to rally behind positive change. We need to decrease our footprint and initiate ecosystem-based planning in order to save Alberta’s native Bull and Cutthroat Trout. An intact forest is a symbol of progress- a clear-cut is a reflection of a depressed community.”
On Thursday, November 29th, Oldman Watershed Council with Water Matters and Crowsnest Conservation Society hosted a workshop, named “Your Voice-Your Water- that focused on the health of Oldman River headwaters and how to protect the future of the headwaters.
The interactive seminar split participants into three groups and provided each group with questions. The groups would then brainstorm and discuss and present final answers to the rest of the group.
The second session of this will be a stakeholder meeting through Crowsnest Conservation Society’s upcoming Partner Advisory Network to create the Headwaters Action Plan- a voluntary collaborative effort to maintain and protect source waters and headwaters in the Oldman watershed.
