1996	FALL	Editorial: Will ecological reserve wardens get lost in BC's new protected areas? Grasslands roundup Mill Farm preserved Covenanted lots in Highlands Marbled Murrelet news New woodlot to border Mara Meadows ER Inland rainforests The unique Cummins Valley
1996	SPRING	Getting to Know our Grasslands Do Fence Me In: BC's Endangered Grasslands Gap Analysis: Just what does it do? Marbled Murrelet News Water Storage Threat to Mara Meadows ER Goal 2 results in 8 new ERs on Vancouver Island Mount Tuam/Mount Bruce Protected Area Proposal

FALL 1996

Editorial: Will ecological reserve wardens get lost in BC's new protected areas?

On a recent, duly-permitted field trip to an ecological reserve we met the volunteer warden, a avid naturalist with a interest in plant life, and his partner, who unofficially cared for the bird life around the site. They lived immediately adjacent to the reserve for several years. They had yet to meet a BC Parks official. The site isn’t accessible by car. But it isn’t remote, either.

Not long after, a letter from Parks minister Paul Ramsay to the Federation of BC Naturalists addressed the concerns of a member, Rolf Kellerhals, about the ministry’s low priority for ecological reserves, as evidenced by its lack of support of volunteer wardens. Past issues of The Log have documented Rolf’s observations as warden of the Nimpkish River ER.

“Last year BC Parks was reorganized to address the tremendous increase in the protected area system and to ‘manager smarter’ with few resources,” Mr Ramsay wrote. “During the process of reorganizing, it appears that the volunteer warden program did not receive much attention.

“BC Parks staff and I recognize how very valuable these volunteers area and how much the province depends on them. We are now addressing how to revitalize and restructure the program for optimal management and recognition.

“One approach being considered is to incorporate the old volunteer warden program into a new volunteer stewards program. This new program would reflect the need for volunteers to assist in managing the new protected areas, in addition to the ecological reserves.

“A renewed and revitalized volunteer program will be of great benefit to both the ministry and British Columbians. The management of our protected areas requires dedicated and talented volunteers supported effectively by BC Parks.”

The volunteer warden concept is excellent—to help understaffed BC Parks district offices manage and protect all those protected areas by providing a presence that BC Parks cannot itself. The people entrusted with this responsibility know the sites and live in nearby communities. Depending on their knowledge of ecosystems, environmental expertise and willingness, they can systematically monitor the reserves and document the various assaults and indignities that go with being an ecosystem today.

Reports vary widely as to the state of relations between BC Parks and the wardens. One warden has at least one meeting a year with parks officials about the reserve. Another takes a proactive attitude to management of the reserve and has frequent on-site discussions with BC Parks about such projects as fencing and revegetation. A third has been entrusted with the task of developing the draft management plan for the reserve.

Jennifer Balke, warden of the Tsitika River ER, says it’s important to separate two volunteer roles—warden and environmental activist. To be fair, BC Parks’ support is only at issue on “wardenly work”, which may or may not extend to monitoring and reporting ongoing impacts.

While Jenny wholeheartedly supports Rolf’s activism, it’s not strictly relevant, she thinks. “Our role as wardens is to do whatever jobs BC Parks sets us to.”

Signs of rededication at the official level are surfacing. The south Vancouver Island volunteer warden meeting convened by BC Parks on October 24 was warmly welcomed. We hear that BC Parks officials are calling and writing wardens to check up.

What’s in store, we learned from talking with Bill Shaw, manager of extension services with BC Parks in Victoria is this: the ecological reserve wardens will be subsumed under a larger protected area stewardship program, with liaison provided by the area supervisors in BC Parks districts, as they do now. Rather than enrolling hundreds of new volunteers, however, BC Parks will be initiating discussions with natural history societies and other local groups aimed at partnering on clusters of protected areas. While continuing to work with the present ER wardens as individuals, BC Parks will begin to sign agreements with groups, and the groups will in turn co-ordinate warden assignments and activities.

BC Parks has been a steward of land and resources for almost as long as the BC Forest Service, but it’s only now becoming a land manager with authority. A relevant factor has to be the beefing up of provincial park legislation that provides real sanctions for offences. We wish BC Parks every success with its new initiative. We only hope that with so few employees on the ground, BC Parks can co-ordinate a vastly expanded warden program—not to mention policing vastly expanded protected areas. May we also hope to see a beginning made to resolve the intractable management issues that dog a number of ecological reserves, not just the Nimpkish River?

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New woodlot to border Mara Meadows ER

Salmon Arm Forest District is establishing woodlots on the east, south and west sides of Mara Meadows Ecological Reserve, near Salmon Arm. The Mara Meadows reserve protects a rare and fragile calcareous fen with many rare and endangered plan species. (The Spring 1996 issue of The Log documented a continuing threat to the reserve from another direction: the District of Salmon Arm’s plans to impound water in the Larch Hills, above Mara Meadows.)

The BC Forest Service will issue a 15-year licence to a 520-hectare woodlot bordering the reserve on the east and south, with an allowable annual cut of 1000 cubic metres. The Friends wrote to the Forest Service in May supporting establishment of a 500-metre buffer zone in the woodlot. We recently spoke with district woodlot forester Gary Nielson. Nielson has walked the reserve with BC Parks staff and reserve warden Peter Bailey, and the Forest Service hired an engineer to do a hydrology study. Based on the engineer’s report, from which, Nielson says, “it’s well understood that the water movement in Mara Meadows is 99 per cent subsurface,” and given an existing 350-metre-average forested buffer between the fen and the boundary of the reserve, the Forest Service rejected the additional buffer. The woodlot licence has been advertised.

Mr. Bailey has a hunch that with numerous little creeks feeding Violet Creek, disturbances could have a significant impact on Mara Meadows, and he would like to make those little side drainages.

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SPRING 1996

Water Storage Threat to Mara Meadows ER

Tilman Nahm, a member of the Friends [of Ecological Reserves] in Grinrod, holds a water licence on Violet Creek below Mara Meadows ER (#42). In The Log (October 1992) we detailed his correspondence with the Province over several years about the District of Salmon Arm’s application to divert and store one million gallons a day (since amended to 250,000) in East Canoe Creek, which backs into Violet Creek, in the Larch Hills.

Last November, Salmon Arm’s water licence application was rejected after more than three years of review, and the assistant regional water manager wrote an extraordinarily detailed eight-page report. The cover letter cited two crucial documents the district failed to prepare: an environmental impact study of the dam project relative to the ecological reserve and an “engineering solution that would ensure water for storage was only taken for t he East Canoe Creek watershed.” The report cites an order-in-council dated September 25, 1975 creating a water reserve on Violet Creek upstream of the ecological reserve’s lowest point. According to the Guide to Ecological Reserves, Mara Meadows’ “unique calcareous fens” support “a great diversity of habitats and plant species in [a] relatively small [189 hectare] reserve”: more than 220 species of higher plants, 56 mosses and 43 lichens; most notably, 14 of 32 species of orchids found in BC—“a diversity unmatched anywhere else in the province.” Four orchid species are rare. BC Parks’ submissions on the application underlined the fragility of the ecological reserve” “If the water regime to this fen was permanently altered, trees would grow into former wetlands, and the diverse vegetation including the orchids would be lost.” BC Parks’ 1995 report pointed out that unprotected upper Violet Creek may also harbour rare plants.

Salmon Arm has nonetheless appealed the decision to the deputy comptroller of water rights in Victoria. The district maintains that its amended plan will not impinge on waters that flow into Violet Creek, despite the location of the proposed reservoir on the Violet Creek side of the line.

In a February 2 letter to the deputy comptroller, Salmon Arm operations manager C.R. Ward emphasised that the “application is only dealing with surface waters which are already flowing into East Canoe Creek and have been for fifty (50) years or longer albeit from an existing diversion (authorized or unauthorized).” He queried why the need for an environmental study and engineering solution “wasn’t first communicated by Water Rights some 3 or 4 years ago at the start of the application and not on the date of the refusal…. early discussions with Water Rights (1989-91/Penticton) indicated that there was little need for environmental assessment studies as long as the application was scaled back to only formalize existing water flow patterns and not to create an impact on the downstream Violet Creek water availability (the current 1992 application). I am not sure if this is understood by Water Rights (Kamloops) and the objectors.”

Ward hinted legal action to defend right of access: “There are doubts that Water Rights can deny without compensation an existing diversion (authorized of unauthorized) which has been known to them and which has existed for some 50 years or long before the Violet Creek Mara Meadows Reserve of 1975.” [The reserve was actually created in 1972.]

Ward complained about having no opportunity “to address all concerns and to meet with all objectors.”

Salmon Arm views its heavy dependence on water piped from Shuswap Lake as an emergency. Ward explained in the same letter: “In total, the benefits of East Canoe Creek as a secondary water supply source to Salmon Arm can not be overemphasized. A study of BC community water supplies has found that for communities servicing over 12,000 people directly from surface waters, only Campbell River is totally dependent on a single source (means over 90% of BC population has multiple water supply sources). Kamloops for instance is maintaining the old pump stations on North Thompson for the emergency under which the South Thompson supply became inoperative (spills from CPR and/or TCH and similar). If the principal Shuswap Lake supply was to become inoperative for Salmon Arm, then the average connection would be out of water in 22 hours in the winter and in 1 hours in summer peaks (sooner with continued growth in water demands).”

In a final pitch, Mr. Ward made this extraordinary claim: “The peak diversions from Upper Violet are critical to East Canoe Creek, have been recorded over at least the last 11 years in high flow conditions and are probably of significant environmental benefit to the sensitive ecology in the Violet Creek Mara Meadows in any case (i.e. increased flows to Violet Creek may “washout” the orchids).”

Tilman is worried the project may yet find support, despite what he suspects are faulty assumptions about the impacts of machinery on wet soil. Tom Crowley, a biology instructor at Okanagan University College and a 26-year resident of Salmon Arm, sent us Mara Meadows clippings from the local press that reveal deep concern about the proposal. Salmon Arm’s cross-country ski community is aghast at the spectre of a reservoir in the middle of the scenic, snowy Larch Hills. Crowley gives the appeal a 50:50 chance.

“It’s a very drawn-out process,” Tilman explains. “It could take months.” In support, the Friends have approached the deputy comptroller of water rights and are grappling with a restriction in the appeal process. The act provides for intervention only by direct stakeholders—water licensees, in other words. Meanwhile, Tilman would welcome advice from professionals in the field.

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