CROWSNEST PASS NEWS

Castle Special Place

In December, Crowsnest Conservation Board Member Bill Paton met with Minister Evan Berger, MLA for Livingstone-Macleod, Hunter Wight, and Annette Hester on behalf of the Castle Special Place Working Group. Also in attendance were Dianne Pachal (Secretariat), Barney Reeves (Waterton), John Russell, Lynn Calder (Shell), and Sarah Elmeligi (CPAWS). Bill presented Crowsnest Conservation's request for Legislated Protection of the Castle Special Place and endorsement of the Conceptual Proposal.

Bill's Presentation: 

Meeting - Premier Allison Redford’s Southern AB office December 14, 2011

INTRODUCTION

Audience:

Hon Evan Berger, Hunter Wight Executive Director Premier’s Southern AB office

Annette Hester Assistant, Special Projects

Ms. Hester, Minister Berger, and Mr. Wight, on behalf of the Castle Special Place Working Group I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. 

My name is Bill Paton, and I am here representing Crowsnest Conservation Society, a grass roots Registered Charity with a membership of approximately 100 individuals active in the beautiful Crowsnest Pass.

I am one of two members of CCS that served on the Castle Special Place Working Group that drafted the Conceptual Proposal.  Rick Cooke, the other CCS Working Group Member, is also CCS’s representative and Board Member of the  Southwest Alberta Trails Advisory Committee or SWAT, which is working to make trail use in the Castle sustainable for all users. 

Our membership supports the need for Legislated protection of the Castle Special Place and we endorse the Conceptual Proposal.

Very, briefly, I would like to answer 3 questions:

Why the Castle Special Place?  Why Legislated Protection? Why Now?

Why the Castle Special Place?

Our Conceptual Proposal identifies 12 reasons why the Castle Special Place is deserving of legislated protection (see pages 14 and 15), but if we had to choose just one of them, it would be to secure the area for its value in producing, storing, and releasing water.

This relatively small area, covering less than 4 percent of the entire land area of the Oldman River Basin, annually supplies 1/3 of the water flow in the basin.

In Alberta, provincially legislated areas have been established to protect source water for downstream communities such as Elbow Sheep Wildland Park for Calgary and Grizzly Ridge Wildland for the Town of Slave Lake.

Closer to our Southern Alberta home, many communities downstream, of the Castle Special Place headwaters, including Lethbridge, rely solely on the Oldman Watershed for their water. Legislated protection of the Castle Special Place headwaters is vital to ensuring a sustainable supply of quality water for these communities.

Why Legislated Protection/ Why Now

Regulation under the Forest Act in the over the 13 years since 1998 has not been sufficient to protect the watershed from degradation due to cumulative impacts; therefore, legislated protection and restoration are urgently needed.

Further to recent correspondence from the Working Group to Premier Redford, we note again that the Castle Special Place has international significance in support of the integrity of the Crown of the Continent ecosystem. 

Legislated protection will make a major contribution to ensuring intact forests in the headwaters of the Oldman River Basin as discussed at recent Provincial hearings and as confirmed by Alberta’s Natural Resources Conservation Board.

Legislated protection for the Castle Special Place would also improve Alberta’s international environmental reputation, especially in this year (2011) the UN International Year of Forests.

Our Request

We ask that the Premier encourage the Honorable Diana McQueen (Environment Minister), Honourable Frank Oberle (SRD Minister) and Honourable Evan Berger (Agriculture and Rural Development), MLA Greg Weadick and MLA Bridget Pastoor to work with the Honourable Jack Hayden (TPR Minister) to legislate the Castle Special Management Area within Alberta’s Parks and Protected Areas system as recommended by the Working Group. 

This is very similar to what was done for the Whaleback (Bob Creek and Black Creek Wildlands).  

When done, this will complete the unfinished business of providing the Castle Special Place with the protection that Albertans asked for in 1998 and still fervently wish for today. 

It will also complete the work that has already been done for the 79 of the 80 Special Places designated by Cabinet.

Logging in the Castle Special Place

Spray Lake Sawmills is scheduled to begin logging in the Castle area. Recent surveys of Lethbridge and Crowsnest Pass area residents showed that up to 75 % of respondents were against logging this special area. The Stop Castle Logging Group has organized a protest site. 

For more information, visit http://stopcastlelogging.wordpress.com/ 

You can also express your feelings on this issue to the premier or your MLA. The Premier's office can be reached through the Government toll free line 310-0000, just ask for the office of the Premier and leave a message.

Crowsnest Pass Christmas Bird Count

Crowsnest Conservation led the Crowsnest Pass Christmas Bird Count on December 27th. To see what birds they spotted, see the chart below.

Thank-you to all participants

Participants:          Merilyn Liddell, Dawn Hall, Pat Lucas, Christopher Smith, Raymond Toal, Sam Miller, 

Shirley Enzsol, Danna, Becka, Peter Sherrington, Hilary Atkinson,  David McIntyre,  

Denise Coccioloni-Amatto  

Note that species with blanks beside them are ones we have seen in previous Christmas bird counts.

Beauvais Ridge Raptor Watch

Peter Sherrington of the Rocky Mountain Eagle Research Foundation has provided an update on a new reconnaissance count that he is conducting at a site to the east of Beaver Mines. 

REPORT FROM: Peter Sherrington

The site has yielded a remarkable number of migrating raptors for so late in the season, and they continue to move: the last 5 days have yielded 175 birds and today produced the 400th Bald Eagle since November 25. What all this means I am not sure yet but it is certainly interesting.

View the Interim Report below from Mr. Sherrington:

Beauvais Ridge Raptor Count, fall and winter 2011-2012 (Interim Report)

This is a preliminary report on a new raptor count which I am calling The Beauvais Ridge site which I have been conducting since November 25 from the deck of Phil Hazelton's home on the Gladstone Valley road about 4 km SSE of Beaver Mines. 

During October, on two occasions I observed migrating raptors that were moving from the west or northwest before moving to the south immediately east of downslope cloud and snow squalls. These were obviously birds had been migrating south down the Livingstone Range (over the Piitaistakis-South Livingstone site) and Carbondale Ridge system, that were displaced to the east by low cloud and snow over the high mountains of the North Waterton Main Ranges to the south. The following entries on the daily RMERF blog document this movement.

October 11 Today while having lunch with Phil Hazelton on the deck of his home on the Gladstone Valley road about 4 km SSE of Beaver Mines, I observed 51 Golden Eagles between 1254 and 1415 that soared high to the S and SE of the house before they glided high to the south towards Prairie Bluff (Corner) Mountain. On two occasions 8 birds could be seen soaring together in close proximity. Most of the mountains of the northern Waterton Main Ranges and the Continental Divide west of Prairie Bluff Mountain were obscured by cloud and snow/rain showers swept down by strong SW winds. The birds were obviously displaced to the east from the Beaver Mines Lake/Carbondale Ridge area over which they normally migrate after moving south from the Livingstone Range. Other raptors seen moving with the Golden Eagles were 1 Bald Eagle, 1 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 1 dark-morph Broad-winged Hawk and 3 Red-tailed Hawks. This was by far the highest number of Golden Eagles I have ever seen while eating an excellent lunch!

October 20 Late in the morning I noticed that thick cloud was enveloping the Livingstone Range to the NNW and cloud was also obscuring the Continental Divide to the west and most of the mountains of the northern Waterton Main Ranges to the south. I drove to Phil Hazelton's home on the Gladstone Valley road about 4 km SSE of Beaver Mines where I had seen eagles moving under similar conditions on October 11 and watched there between 1230 and 1530. As expected there was a significant movement of Golden Eagles and a few other raptors, with many of the birds flying from the W or WNW before soaring near the eastern edge of the downslope squall-line and then gliding high to the south towards Prairie Bluff (Corner) Mountain, the north-easternmost peak in the Waterton Range and the only one that was consistently clear. Movement was very steady with half-hourly Golden Eagle counts between 1230 and 1500 of 7, 15, 10, 15 and 16 birds. After 1500 the Waterton Range to the south substantially cleared and only 3 Golden Eagles were seen before I left at 1530. At 1416 8 Golden Eagles soared together and at 1450 7 did the same thing before gliding high to the south. The three-hour count comprised 2 Bald Eagles (1sa,1j), 1 unaged Cooper's Hawk, 2 Rough-legged Hawks and 64 Golden Eagles (39a,9sa,3j,13u).  

On November 25 I was watching the spectacular daily afternoon and evening roosting movement of Common Ravens flying into the mountains from the plains when I became aware of a number of raptors embedded in the stream of ravens. In contrast to the displacement movement noted above all the birds were appearing from the north and moving to the S or SE over a line of hills immediately east of Phil's house located SW and S of Beauvais Lake. The highest part of this ridge is about 1700 m. I observed for 1.75 hours and recorded 8 Bald Eagles, 3 Rough-legged Hawks, 7 Golden Eagles and 1 Prairie Falcon. This was not surprising as our fall counts at Mount Lorette and Piitaistakis have often extended to December 12 (and on one year to December 18) and have yielded reasonable numbers of migrants. This movement, however, did not appear to be connected to the Front Range movement monitored by those counts and appeared to coming from the north with the birds probably proximately originating from the north-south Oldman River and Todd Creek valley area some 23 km to the north.

The Oldman River is well know for its concentrations of Bald Eagles during spring and fall migration periods. After leaving the Beauvais Ridge the birds appear to be moving to the SSE or SE which would make them pass to the east of Prairie-Bluff (Corner) Mountain and thence to the south immediately east of the Waterton Main Ranges. 

I decided that this was interesting and that it merited further investigation and so spent a couple of hours each afternoon watching the ridge, fully expecting the movement to diminish into December. This has not been the case as the attached table of daily counts indicates. As of December 30 I have spent 30 days (68.82 hours) of a possible 36 days at the site (3 days lost to bad weather, 3 other days I was unable to watch) at an average of 2.3 hours a day. During that time I have recorded a total of 660 migrant raptors of 9 species at an overall rate of 9.59 raptors/hour: Bald Eagle 409, Northern Harrier 3, Northern Goshawk 6, Red-tailed Hawk 4 (1 calurus, 3 harlani), Rough-legged Hawk 191, Golden Eagle 39, Merlin 1, Gyrfalcon 1 and Prairie Falcon 1. 

These numbers are surprisingly high, but even more surprising is that the most sustained movement has been during the last 5 days (December 26-30) during which time 175 migrants were recorded including 

135 Bald Eagles. 

One reason for these numbers is almost certainly the very mild autumn and winter so far, although the corollary to this has been an even greater prevalence of  very strong W-SW winds. No major Arctic Front has passed so far, cold spells have been short-lived and rarely below -12C, and snowfall east of the mountains has been well below average and that which has fallen has quickly been removed by the warm downslope winds. 

It will be interesting to see for how long into the new year the movement will persist as there is presently no indication that the unseasonable weather is about to change any time soon.

Also included on the table of daily counts are the daily numbers of roosting Common Ravens that move to the south along the ridge, and counts of migrating Canada Geese (including 1 Cackling Goose on December 8) that moved as late as December 14, much later than I have ever seen them moving south.

Aquatic Hitchhikers

Eliminating invasive species goes beyond what is on land, but also includes what is in our waterways. The Municipality of Crowsnest Pass’ Agricultural Services is currently working on developing an educational strategy for managing aquatic invasive species in Crowsnest Pass watersheds.

When you leave a body of water:

• Remove any visible mud, plants, fish or animals before transporting equipment.

• Empty water from equipment before transporting.

• Clean and dry anything that comes into contact with water.

• Never release plants, fish, or animals into a body of water unless they came out of that body of water.

A new TV series called “Silent Invaders” on the Pursuit Channel (Fishing and Hunting Channel) showcases problems with aquatic invertebrates, such as Zebra Mussels, Quagga Mussles, and Eurasian Water Milfoil in the Great Lakes.  See http://www.pursuitchannel.com/ShowDetail.asp?ShowID=191.

For more information on how to protect our watersheds, visit http://www.protectyourwaters.net/resources/.

As Crowsnest Pass is at the headwaters of the Oldman Watershed, it is important to be aware of how we are treating our waters and understand that Everyone Lives Downstream.

REGIONAL NEWS

OWC Municipal Conservation, Efficiency & Productivity Planning Workshop Synopsis 

1)    What is currently being done in your municipality or within other municipalities in the Oldman River basin to conserve water?

2)    What opportunities are there to increase water conservation?

3)    What barriers are there to achieving an increase in water conservation?    

4)    What suggestions do you have for OWC's Urban Team that would assist municipalities in the Oldman River basin with water conservation planning?