PROJECTS COMPLETED AND UNDERWAY
1. Fulfilling Our Primary Goal:
BCPS’s State of the Watershed Report, 10 years in the making, saw it’s publication in October, 2025. The full report is posted on this website and will also be made available in print form. This report is the culmination of our main objective for the society.
Writing coordinator Wendell Koning did the gargantuan work of putting our document together. We thank him so much, as well as our three main funders in this last phase of our work, the Land Stewardship Centre, Alberta Ecotrust and Bow River Basin Council. We thank all the volunteer writers and our editor and Sonia Landwehr for the great gift of formatting the report and doing final edits.
Now, with all this accumulated information at our disposal, BCPS will move towards its next and even more challenging and ultimate goal – to get greater protection for this very special land area, water way and wildlife habitat before development overwhelms it. This will be a project where we will need much community help and support.
2. Stewardship:
BCPS undertook several maintenance projects on the Environmental Reserve lands that we steward in Bighill Creek’s valley. Downed trees were cleared from pathways and a board walkway was added to the footbridge to facilitate crossing a wet area. We also carried out a pilot spraying of roadside thistle and tall buttercup this past fall. A wooden stile was erected by the owner of land flanking the decommissioned roadway through the valley between Cochrane and Big Hill Springs Provincial Park. The narrow stile is at the east of the lands that BCPS stewards. We have installed an instructive sign for using the roadway near the stile.
A project that has long been on BCPS’s books is the cleaning up of old barbed wire fencing running along the roadway. This will require significant effort as much of the wire is embedded in heavy grass. We hope to gain some funding over winter to help with this project, but we will rely on volunteers for most of the work. We will keep you posted.