An AWARE-sponsored plan to create a substantial Olympic Wildlife Refuge in the Soo Valley got a boost recently when the final recommendations from the Sea to Sky LRMP round table were submitted to the provincial government.
AWARE will make a major announcement regarding the proposed OWR at a special monthly meeting to be held on Dec. 10 in the Telus Conference Centre, starting at 7 p.m.
Although he couldn’t provide details, Eckhard Zeidler, the Wilderness Backyard director for AWARE and the principal architect of the OWR plan, said the Sea to Sky LRMP was a positive step for the Soo proposal.
"It looks good. We have agreements with all stakeholders in the area… and although the government really has the final word on this thing, it’s in the Sea to Sky LRMP recommendations and things are looking good," said Zeidler.
The Sea to Sky LRMP has been in the works since the spring of 2002. Zeidler and AWARE first tabled his proposal for an Olympic Wildlife Refuge in the Soo Valley in May of 2003 as an environmental legacy for the Games that would effectively offset Olympic development in the neighbouring Callaghan Valley.
The Sea to Sky LRMP process was not authorized to create any more protected areas, but members of the round table discussed the need for special management areas that take into account the environment, as well as values like tourism and recreation. As a result, the OWR would not be a protected area, but a special management zone where forestry and mining would not be permitted.
Both industries agreed, with some alterations to the proposed boundaries and concessions and compensation for the forestry industry. The new concept will be presented at the AWARE meeting, along with detailed maps of the OWR.
Zeidler said the process, while challenging, produced a good result that was better than he initially hoped for.
"It was an expensive process, expensive but gratifying – if we didn’t show up with this idea, it wouldn’t have happened, and that’s very gratifying to everyone who worked on this. That and the fact that all the different stakeholders in the region looked at the idea and said, ‘yeah, that seems like an appropriate thing to do’."
The original proposal was about 6,471 hectares, only 493 hectares of which were suitable for forestry purposes. The remainder was largely rock and ice, marshland and meadows. The new proposal is considerably larger, and while it’s still largely rock and ice, there are a few additional valleys and forested areas in the plan.
"Every time I talk about this plan in the future, I’d have to give credit to everyone at the LRMP, including the resource industries," said Zeidler. "Once we get our heads around the idea that if we can’t have new protected areas and still want to maintain biodiversity and wildlife in the region, these recommendations we’re putting forward to government will go a long way to make that happen.
"Whether the government accepts or endorses this plan, we don’t know, which is part of the reason we’re holding this meeting, to let people know what happened. We’ve signed off on the (recommendations), along with other stakeholders in the region, and we endorse the plan.
"We think people will be pretty blown away. We hope people come out of this meeting and say ‘this is great, I want to get involved’, so we can nail down this thing. We still have a lot of work to do, but the OWR is already being treated differently in the LRMP – it’s one thing stakeholders could all agree on."
Through the plan Zeidler says there is also an opportunity for the Resort Municipality of Whistler to continue pursue a special management zone for the Rainbow-Madley-21 Mile Creek area as a municipal watershed. With the Soo OWR in the government’s hands, Zeidler says he will make that his next priority.
Johnny Mikes, the conservation representative on the Sea to Sky LRMP table and a member of AWARE, will also present the outcome of almost two years of negotiations with stakeholders in the region at Friday’s meeting. Although negotiations got off to a slow start, he believes the plan and the recommendations endorsed by the majority of stakeholders reflect a lot of understanding and respect among different sectors.
"We were blinded from the start because the opportunity for more protected areas wasn’t really there, and we would have liked to see more stuff potentially for recreation," said Mikes, "but then we ended up achieving some success in conservation in terms of wildlife areas, flood plane management, and the agreement with a number of sectors over the Upper Soo. Those were some examples of the progressive things we were able to move forward."
The three main areas where LRMP stakeholders "agreed to disagree", were the Upper Elaho Valley, the Upper Sims Creek area and Douglas Creek area. According to Mikes, those were the biggest areas of contention from the start and the provincial government will have to decide the future of those areas as part of ongoing First Nations land planning processes.
Still, under the circumstances, there is a lot for conservationists to feel good about.
From the beginning, unhappy with the level of detail that the planners were going into, Mikes and other members of the Sea to Sky LRMP agreed to hold another round of meetings on their own to better address specific issues like the OWR proposal. The majority of members agreed to those additional meetings, although the energy sector did not participate and the mining industry was unable to attend many of the discussions. The second set of meetings resulted in a second set of LRMP recommendations, with strong majorities agreeing on many of the issues and a few unanimous decisions.
The energy industry was the one disappointment, says Mikes. They did not want to participate in an LRMP process where members looked at competing interests on creeks proposed for Independent Power Projects and determined which projects should go ahead, preferring to leave those final decisions up to the provincial government.
"All of the sectors except for energy felt there was a need for a regional energy infrastructure development strategy, because these things are coming out in a random order, popping up at different times with no co-ordination, no overarching strategy, and the possibility of having several different powerlines coming out of a valley – regardless of forestry values, the aesthetic values for tourism," said Mikes. "We felt it was important that people in the corridor don’t feel there’s this gold rush mentality at work, a wild west in developing IPPs without any thought or planning for the cumulative effects, whether they’re environmental, visual, social, impact on recreation."
However, the energy sector did agree to the need to co-ordinate in the future with stakeholders on the location of powerlines.
Mikes says the government is reviewing the Sea to Sky LRMP recommendations during the month of December and a decision will be made sometime in the new year.
Maps from the Sea to Sky LRMP, as well as the proposed OWR will be on display at the Dec. 10 meeting, showing where new wildlife management zones are being proposed.
