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Slashing and pruning for conservation
By Lesley Marian Neilson
On March 20, a group of volunteers gathered on the east side of Columbia Lake to clear out an area where small conifer trees were starting to encroach onto formerly open grassland habitat.
Seventeen members of the Lake Windermere Rod & Gun Club and the Canal Flats Wilderness Club joined Nature Conservancy of Canada’s stewardship staff on the group’s Columbia Lake – Lot 48 conservation area (pictured above) for a day of slashing small conifers and pruning the lower limbs of larger established trees.
“This work benefits the native bunchgrass communities and improve the winter range for elk, deer, and sheep, including other grassland-dependent species,” says Richard Klafki, stewardship coordinator for the Nature Conservancy of Canada in the Kootenays. “The pruning allows the animals – particularly bighorn sheep – to feel more comfortable as they move down into the opened up areas because they can see and avoid predators more easily.”
In the past, wildfires kept forests from overtaking the low elevation grasslands of the Rocky Mountain Trench. Additionally, First Nations people used fire to maintain grasslands and dry open forests thereby improving browse for ungulates, preventing shrub ingrowth, and encouraging other resource uses.
Over the past century, with the increase of permanent human settlement in the valley, wildfires have been suppressed in order to protect our communities. This has allowed a dense forest to creep ever onward into the grasslands. Plants and animals that had evolved to live in open areas are losing the habitat they need to survive.
“The Nature Conservancy of Canada’s mission is to protect ecologically important lands and habitats that support rare and at risk species. Sometimes we do this by restoring land that has been damaged or altered. Restoration and land stewardship is an important part of how we achieve our conservation goals,” says Klafki.
Volunteers like the club members who helped out on Columbia Lake – Lot 48 contribute valuable person-power to the enormous task of tending over 2,700-hectares of conservation lands that the Nature Conservancy of Canada owns and manages in the Rocky Mountain Trench.
“The people that come out and help us clear forest ingrowth, or treat invasive plants, or clean up garbage are making a real and direct contribution to conservation in their community,” says Klafki. “And they have a great time doing it too.”
To find out about volunteer opportunities with the Nature Conservancy of Canada in the Columbia Valley, email [email protected] or call 250-342-5521.
Lead image: Volunteers at work March 20 on Lot 48. NCC Photo
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