KNPS 1999 AGM
Report from the Executive
Nineteen-ninety-nine has been a very busy
and successful year for the Nature Park Society.
After several years of much hard work,
but very little progress toward officially establishing the Park, conditions now
seem right for some significant advancements. We are ending the year with a real
sense that the momentum is now in the Park's favour and that some groups in the
community and government which have, in the past, been lukewarm to the idea of a
Park, are now jumping on the bandwagon and actively helping us move forward.
In 1999 the Nature Park Society had 69
memberships representing 164 individuals. This is a slight drop from the
previous year and may indicate that the time and energy we are directing at
various levels of government and other stakeholders to establish the Park is
reducing our effectiveness at attracting and keeping members. We need to pay
attention to that issue in the coming year.
This year we distributed 581 of Roy
Musser's trail guides at a number of outlets throughout town and while not quite
a record for us, considering the weather, it was not a bad year. Once again, our
thanks to Frank Goodwin for looking after map distribution and to all the
businesses that host our map boxes.
Our trails committee has been active
again this year cutting the blowdown off the trails and fixing problems as they
arise. In addition we have had a couple of work parties that have made
improvements to drainage on Eimer's Road and, with the help of the Canada World
Youth made a good start on our new trail which will connect Duck Pond Trail to
Southwest Passage and thereby replace Skid Road. Our hope is that next year,
when the trail is complete, we will have a safe skiable route around Myrtle
Mountain. We have also begun reconnoitering the area of the Park across the road
from the new Municipal campground site, with the intention of building a trail,
in the next year or two, that will allow campers easy and safe access to the
Park. We are also grateful to Cominco, this year for replacing the damaged gate
at the end of Jimmy Russell road on Sunflower Hill with a brand-new one which
appears to be built to withstand a nuclear attack.
Our program of trail sign maintenance and
improvement continued this year, thanks to Struan Robertson for repainting the
lettering on some of our faded, older signs. In addition, the McKim woodworking
class and their teacher, Wayne Heppner, routered twenty-five new signs more than
half of which have now been installed by volunteers. A number of new metal
boundary signs have been put up along the northern border of the Park, in part
to discourage dirt bikers from using the area. Dirt biking in the Park,
especially in the gravel pit area behind Swan Sub continues to be a major
problem. The Regional District has now posted signs declaring that the area
contains a significant noxious weed infestation and we have well-founded
concerns that dirt bike use will spread that problem further into the Park. This
is an issue that will require a good deal of attention in the coming year.
This year we have also embarked on a
major project to update our trail guide and build information kiosks in a number
of locations in and around the Park. Using the information that we collected
last year with the help of Eaglevision Geomatics and their satellite positioning
system, we plan to create a shaded relief map of the Park and surrounding areas
(including the Nordic Ski Trails). This map will serve as the basis for the new
trail guide and will be featured on panels in the information kiosks. The total
cost of this project, including several thousand dollars of volunteer labour, is
just over $18,000. We have applied to the Provincial Millennium Fund and the
Columbia Basin Trust, for most of this money and have already received $4000
from the Trust and an unsolicited $1000 from Cominco.
A number of special events were held in
the Park this year. The Kimberley Volksmarch Club used the area for a number of
walks, and the Kootenay Freewheeler Bike Club made it part of their Wednesday
evening bike rides. In addition, we hosted guided nature walks on both Father's
and Mother's Day this year. On the education front, the students of McKim school
continue to use the Park as an outdoor classroom and have even started featuring
the area on their school webpage.
Our own internet site is being updated on
a regular basis, and this year we added a new geology section, that explains how
the land was formed and shaped by tectonic forces and glaciers. Many thanks to
Bill Olmsted for all his work on that section. We also updated the Nature Park
brochure this year and created a Nature Park display that we took to Kimberley's
first nonprofit trade fair at McKim School during Winterfest. We are also making
an effort to get more press releases about the Park into the local papers. Other
community events and projects in which we participated, included lunch with the
Lieutenant Governor of BC, meetings to build Be Bear Aware initiative and
discussions about creating a Community Forest for Kimberley.
Last winter we focused some of our
membership meetings on the creation of a new vision statement for our Society.
That statement, which has now been finalized, helps to clarify for us and
others, just what the Nature Park will be like when it is formally established.
Our liaison committee has been using that document in a whole series of meetings
that we have had over the last year with a number of groups and agencies. These
include, the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council, the City of Kimberley, the
Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Forests, the Alpine Resort, the
Kimberley Nordic Club, and the BC Assets and Lands Corporation. As a result of
those discussions and with the encouragement of both the City and the Provincial
government we are now working on a management plan for the Park that will be
used by the City to apply for a license of occupation over the area. While this
falls short of absolutely protecting the land from logging or development, it is
a significant step forward that will finally give the Park some legal status. We
hope that the application will be ready in the next couple of months and the
approval of the license will follow quickly.
Perhaps one of the most interesting
developments of the last year was the appearance of two mountain goats in the
Park not too far from the Overwaitea store. They were obviously just passing
through, as that is not the kind of habitat they usually frequent, but it was
still nice to know they visited us. Whether the two muskrat that have recently
appeared at Dipper Lake are just passing through or planning to stay is still
unclear.
All the things that we have accomplished
over the last year have been accomplished by volunteers. The Nature Park Society
cannot function without the active involvement of its members. In a few minutes
we will be electing a new executive for the coming year. It would be great to
see some new faces on that executive. As well, we have put some sheets of paper
up around the room with the names of our committees on them. If you don't wish
to be on the executive, you can still help out by joining a committee and
working on a particular issue.
The Kimberley Nature Park is a really
special place. Decades from now, visitors to Kimberley are going to marvel at
the foresight of those who helped create this Park at a time when pressures to
log, to pave and to develop were at their peak. With a bit of hard work and some
good will from our friends and neighbours, a year from now, we will be a giant
step closer to making the Park a reality. Thank you all for being members and
coming to the meeting tonight to be part of this worthy project.
Kent Goodwin
Vice-President
For the KNPS Executive
1999 Kimberley Nature
Park Society Directors
President - Kent Goodwin
Vice-President - Struan Robertson
Secretary - Julie-Anne Davies
Treasurer - Lorne Hope
Director - John Dunbar
Director - Katie McCay
Director - Ruth Martens
Director - Ivan Mather
Director - Peter Moody
Director - Marty Musser
