Our current membership stands at 163 families and individuals totalling 325 members. This number is down just slightly from last year but still up from the year before when we held our last membership drive.

Our trail guides have continued to be popular and this year we sold 583 of them at various outlets around town. Our first printing has virtually sold out, and last spring we began the process of revising the guide and preparing a second edition. That work is now on hold due to the uncertainty regarding the status of trails just outside the Park boundaries.

Late in 2001, the City of Kimberley received the License of Occupation for the Nature Park from the Province of B.C. Early this year, the Nature Park Society and the City signed a Memorandum of Understanding that formalized the role of our Society in stewarding the Park. With this formalization came an increased level of responsibility and a requirement to increase our liability insurance to $5 million.

Concerns about liability also prompted us to create and post new "Use at Your Own Risk" signs at the Park entrances. These signs also allowed us to remind users of the No Motorized Vehicle status of the Park. Many thanks to the Kimberley Recreational Projects Society and the Kimberley Community Fair committee for the funding for those signs.

Putting up caution signs, of course, does not eliminate the need to maintain our trails in a safe condition and to identify and reduce hazards. Members of our trails committee continue to be active in clearing deadfall and brushing back in-growth. This year we also roughed in a new section of trail on Keiver Way that we hope will forestall erosion in a steep area. Once again this year members of the Selkirk High School Outdoor Education class also worked on trails in and around the Nature Park.

We also learned this summer, that in order to get people out for work parties, we need to invest some energy in encouraging them. Our attempt to set a schedule of work party dates at the beginning of the season and rely on people to remember them, did not work very well.

Last winter for the first time, we created some official looking signs to encourage walkers and snowshoers to respect the ski tracks in the Park. We weren’t sure if the signs would be vandalized as the previous unofficial cardboard ones often were, but they seem to have survived quite well. We will need to get those up again when the snow arrives.

Our events committee did a great job again last year. Monthly walks through the spring, summer, and fall and another successful Nature Park Week in June with 17 different events over 8 days. We had good participation for many events and a lot of positive feedback from participants.

At the beginning of this year a number of KNPS members formed our first Natural History Committee. That committee held a number of meetings over the winter and several field trips in the spring and summer. They have now prepared a handout describing some plans for the coming year and we have that here this evening.

Also very active this past year, has been our Planning Committee. One of the requirements of the City’s license of Occupation over the Park was to do more detailed planning about the future of the area. Our planning committee has met numerous times over the last year, held one public meeting, taken part in a number of field trips and meetings with City and Provincial representatives and has developed a public survey form that we will find out more about after this business meeting. The Committee has prepared a draft copy of the first two sections of the Park Plan and is currently working on section 3 which contains specific short and long term action items. You can follow the work of the Planning Committee by visiting our website and checking out the What’s New page.

Back in April of this year we learned that Tembec Forest Products was planning to do some logging in the Horsebarn Valley area, just outside the Nature Park Boundary. Members of the Society attended an open house in Cranbrook to view the plans and then arranged a field trip with Tembec staff to view the proposed cutblocks on site. Following the field trip we wrote to Tembec asking them to modify some of the cutblock boundaries and road locations to help preserve trails in the area. We have recently learned that only one small modification of the plan will be made and that Summer Trail, Winter Trail, Mountain Trail and Front Road Boulevard will all be impacted to some extent.

In mid-August, we started receiving phone calls from the public about logging near Apache Trail just outside the Park’s southeastern boundary. We immediately contacted Teck/Cominco, the landowner, and expressed our concern about the impacts of the logging on the trail system and the lack of communication and consultation. Since that time we have had a couple of meetings with Cominco (one a joint meeting with the City of Kimberley) and some individual contacts with people in various positions within the company. We now have a written commitment from Cominco that logging will only proceed inside the area that is encompassed by the new loop road they are building. The nose of Forest Crowne which contains Keiver Way, and parts of Duck Pond and Apache Trail will not be logged, nor will the area directly behind the Bench.

Looking forward to the coming year, there are a number of high priority issues that we need to address.

We need to meet with Teck/Cominco to clarify their decision to forego logging in certain areas. Principally, we need to find out how long such a moratorium would last. We need to know this so we can proceed with the new version of the trail guide. If the trails in Forest Crowne will be protected for the long term, then we can continue to show them on our map. If not, then we must modify the map, and quite possibly build new trails inside the Park boundary to replace them.

On the western edge of the Park we need to monitor the activities of Tembec. For some time now we have been trying to get an Interpretive Forest License over the Horsebarn Valley area and have been stymied by the ongoing downsizing and program cutting in the Ministry of Forests. We have just heard in the last few days, that the Ministry is now ready to discuss with us some sort of management role for the Nature Park Society in that area.

Another top priority is to complete the Nature Park Planning process. If all goes well we will be holding public meetings this winter to get feedback on the remaining sections of the plan. Of course, once the plan is complete and has been accepted by the City of Kimberley, there will lots of work to do implementing it.

We already know some of the work that needs to be done. The Fire Department is anxious to have us maintain several roads in a condition that would allow emergency vehicle access. That and a long list of previously identified trail improvements means it is imperative that we have a strong and active trails committee this coming year.

We also need to take steps to prevent the spread of noxious weeds into the Park. This becomes even more important with increased logging activity adjacent to our borders.

One way or another we need to finish the revisions to our trail guide and get it printed before the spring hiking season begins. We also need to router and install a number of new trail signs that identify some of the trails shown on the new version of the map.

With all of these tasks to accomplish, this will be a good year to put some effort into signing up more members. In a few minutes, John Henly from out Planning Committee, will be going over the results of our first public input survey. I was amazed at how many of the people who filled out the form and gave us very supportive comments, were not members of the Nature Park Society. There certainly seems to be a lot of room for growth in membership.

This has indeed been an eventful year. Watching what is going on just outside the Park boundary has impressed upon me what a tremendously important asset to Kimberley the Nature Park is. And since the Park is stewarded, protected and promoted entirely by volunteers, it is more clear than ever just how important to Kimberley all of you are. Thank you very much to everyone who has taken out a membership, cleared a trail, attended a meeting, put up a sign, pulled some knapweed, made a donation or introduced a neighbour or visitor to the Park. It wouldn’t be there without you.