Special to the Eagle by Judy Stewart
Every spring, the Bow River Basin Council (BRBC) hosts a spring workshop on emerging policies, legislation or implementation tools that may have significant impacts on sustaining the resiliency of the Bow River. The Bow provides water for all our human needs in the Calgary Metropolitan Area. Resilient watersheds have the ability to recover promptly from a variety of both natural and human-caused disturbances and even be renewed by them, for example by floods, wildfires and rapid urban land development.
BRBC’s Policy and Legislation Committee meets monthly at the Cochrane RancheHouse to discuss these matters, and the topic selected for this year’s workshop arises from such multi-stakeholder conversations. This year, the committee decided to partner with the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB) to discuss conservation priority maps and other emergent conservation tools that municipalities might want to use to sustain the Bow’s resilience.
The CMRB is the newly provincially mandated growth board in our region. In Alberta, municipalities have been delegated authority by the province to regulate and control most land use development activities on private lands, and about 30% of the province is owned privately by individuals, corporations and other legal entities. Municipalities are, therefore, the target audience for sharing knowledge about these new decision-support tools.
The purpose of this workshop is two-fold: for BRBC to get to know and develop positive working relationships with the CMRB regarding watershed governance and management; and to introduce participating municipalities in the CMRB to new decision-support tools for land use planning and development that promote and conserve identified priority landscapes for watershed resilience.
The workshop, entitled “Collaborating for Resilient Watersheds” will be held on February 22, 2019 at the Cochrane RancheHouse, starting at 9:00 am. There are still tickets available through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/brbc-february-22nd-collaborating-for-resilient-watersheds-tickets-54934166571?fbclid=IwAR3SOpaB6UONldn8CQOq-5yTIWJHvIjx8UthqwXpAcQsNkxCuvbTjO8SdwE.
Tickets are free and the general public is always more than welcome, because an informed public ensures successful social learning.
Speakers include Dr. Ryan McDonald, Suzanne Marechal, and Justin Thompson who will introduce and demonstrate how the hot-off-the-press conservation priority maps for landscapes in the Bow River Basin may be used as support tools during land development decision-making processes. Dustin Pate will speak about land trusts and the long term maintenance and management of conservation easements and reserves. Kate Churchill, Heather Lazaruk and Chris Manderson will explain how newly developed “biodiversity targets” are being implemented in Calgary where Mr. Manderson is implementing the targets as a pilot project.
There will be two scenarios, one in Cochrane and one in Okotoks where workshop participants will be asked to work collaboratively and recommend how the tools may be employed should an application for land development be presented to a development authority, followed by a panel discussion. Everyone is invited to collaborate and learn together. Hope to see you there.
Chair, BRBC Policy and Legislation Committee
