March 18, 2005. Guide-Outfitters Association joins Trench Society. Coalition is now nine members strong.

The Southern Guides & Outfitters Association is the ninth organization to join the Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society, the umbrella group of environmentalists, hunters and ranchers working to restore the East Kootenay’s grassland ecosystems.

Bill DuBois of A Bar Z Outfitters in Windermere will represent the Association on the Trench Society’s Board of Directors.

The Association, which represents most big game guide-outfitters operating in southeastern BC, decided to add its membership to the Trench Society coalition because the guide-outfitting industry depends on healthy grasslands to sustain wild ungulate populations.

“We want to be part of any effort that improves habitat in the Trench,” DuBois said. “Elk and deer need that habitat, especially for winter forage, but in the past 50 years we’ve lost about half our grasslands to forest ingrowth.”

Dave Beranek of Sparwood, immediate past president of the Association, says his industry and the ranching industry both rely on productive Crown range and warns that the potential for resource-use conflict increases as grasslands deteriorate.

“We’re all convinced that if Crown range isn’t improved, a day of reckoning will come where you’ll see us fighting over the last blade of grass,” Beranek said.

Consulting biologists Dr. Steven Wilson and Rick Morley, hired by the provincial government to draft a new five-year elk management plan for the East Kootenay, support Beranek’s assessment.

“It cannot be overstated that the current deterioration of grassland ecosystems on Crown land is an ecological tragedy,” Wilson and Morley say in their December 2004 report. “It is not just the economics of the local ranching industry and habitat for elk and deer that are affected … grasslands are a rare ecosystem in BC and home to over 30 per cent of species considered at risk in the province.

“If current ecosystem restoration efforts are not increased immediately and substantially … we are likely to see continuing social and economic upheaval, as well as significantly worse ecological conditions for at least the next two to three decades,” they predict.

The Trench Society, a founding member of the Rocky Mountain Trench Ecosystem Restoration Steering Committee, came to the same conclusion several years ago.

The Restoration Steering Committee, a multi-sectoral group representing government and stakeholder interests, is in year eight of a 30-year plan to restore 135,000 hectares of low-elevation open range and open forest on Crown land.

Trench Society members believe the program can be improved and have been lobbying for an opportunity to develop a demonstration project that will produce enhanced restoration results and be self-financing.

The breakthrough came last year when the Ministry of Forests gave the go-ahead for a large-scale pilot project that the Society anticipates could become the model for future restoration efforts.

At 2,059 hectares, the Waldo North project on the northeast side of Lake Koocanusa is the biggest grasslands restoration undertaking in the region to date. It also has the potential to be significantly more effective because the Society will be issued a temporary timber harvesting licence, provided all planning requirements are met.

The timber licence is the key restoration tool that will allow the Society to reduce tree density to achieve optimum grassland recovery across the entire Waldo North site. Revenue from timber sales will fund restoration costs. 

The Trench Society represents about 2800 people through its member organizations: Cranbrook Archery Club, East Kootenay Wildlife Association, Kootenay Livestock Association, Rocky Mountain Naturalists, Southern Guides & Outfitters Association, The Land Conservancy of BC, wildsight/East Kootenay Environmental Society, Waldo Stockbreeders Association, and Windermere District Farmers Institute.

Both the Waldo North project and the Society’s communications program are funded in part by grants from Columbia Basin Trust environmental programs.