A Pincher Creek based group, the Castle Crown Wilderness Coalition, is gearing up for a busy summer throughout southern Alberta. The coalition intends to educate the public on a series of environmental concerns for the Castle Special Place -an area immediately north of, and sharing an eco-system with, Waterton National Park.
Bree Stefanson-Korobanik, environmental scientist and outreach coordinator, outlined a few of the coalition’s goals for the upcoming season regarding the ecosystem southwest of Pincher Creek.
Korobanik indicated that Waterton National Park and the Castle Special Place are governed by different authorities, and as a result, the system for classifying and protecting the wildlife which inhabit their common eco-system is also different.
As a national park, Waterton’s wildlife are classified according to the federal Species at Risk Act. In contrast, wildlife in the Castle are classified according to the Wildlife Act -which is provincial legislation.
Though the two areas are governed under separate acts, wildlife migrate between the two areas without respect to national park boundaries, and the Castle Crown Wilderness Coalition is intent on educating the public on those species of wildlife.
Staff at the coalition will receive training and education on the Castle ecosystem from the Alberta Plant Council, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (ASRD), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Waterton Lakes National Park.
The Alberta provincial government has recently released its new management plan for species at risk. The plan considers a time frame between 2009 and 2014.
One of the noteworthy changes between this year’s management plan and previous plans, is that three animals have been dropped as species of special concern.
One species of fish (the arctic grayling), and two bird species (the western grebe and Weidemeyer’s admiral) were dropped. Korobanik was unsure at this point in time why these three animals had been dropped from the list.
Management plans are reviewed every five and ten years; ASRD, which is the government body that publishes the management plan, designates wildlife into extinct, extirpated, endangered, threatened, data deficient and species of special concern categories.
The term “species at risk” is an umbrella term defined by ASRD as “a species at risk of extinction or extirpation (endangered or threatened), or a species that needs special management attention to prevent it from being at risk.”
Using the management plan as a framework, the wilderness coalition is planning for a summer full of educational programming. Korobanik said the coalition staff would be conducting research throughout the summer, while educating the public on issues concerning area’s species at risk.
Through its programming, the coalition hopes that interested members of the public learn to identify the various species, and learn appropriate methods for reporting species found in the wild. According to Korobanik, identifying a species requires that photograph and GPS measurement be sent to officials at ASRD.
The wilderness coalition has accumulated years of data on the Castle’s wildlife through stewardship work, said Korobanik.
The coalition leads hikes every Saturday to various destinations throughout the Castle as part of their educational program. The coalition also partners with youth groups and hosts speaking events to make their cause known.
Publisher: Kathy Taylor Proprietor and published by Sun Media Corporation - A Quebecor Media Company at 714 Main Street, PO Box 1000, Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada T0K 1W0
