The Nature Trust of British Columbia (NTBC) have expanded their Skaha Lake Eastside conservation complex with the purchase of 29.2 hectares of land that provide vital habitat for bighorn sheep.
Human development along the shorelines of South Okanagan lakes like Skaha Lake has inevitably led to the loss of grasslands that house numerous threatened and endangered species. This makes undeveloped grasslands as rare as they are valuable to NTBC.
“Protecting properties like Skaha Lake Eastside, with complex and sensitive ecosystems that support many at-risk species, is one of our top conservation priorities,” says Jasper Lament, CEO of NTBC. “When we save habitat for bighorn sheep, we also protect numerous other species at risk.”
The new land parcel at Skaha Lake is even rarer in that it houses three different ecosystems that bighorn sheep require to keep their populations thriving: grasslands, open forest, and rocky terrain. Local populations can now birth their lambs in the spring, as well as forage and escape predators year-round, on protected land that will not be developed in the future.
Their need for widely varying terrain is part of the reason that bighorn sheep numbers have reached concerning levels in B.C. All of the habitats they need to survive have shrunk due to human encroachment and resulting stress on the ecosystem, scattering the bighorn sheep population and reducing its overall size.
“By securing this latest piece of ecologically significant land,” said Dan Buffett, CEO of the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, “NTBC continues contributing to a growing assembly of conserved lands that provide important habitat for many wildlife species such as Bighorn sheep.”
“Large landscapes with protected intact grasslands, forests and wetland habitats become more resilient to the impacts of climatic change and provide more connected linkages for wildlife. [We are] excited to partner with NTBC and the other funding partners on the Skaha Lake Eastside conservation complex.”
Left to right: Bighorn sheep, Western Rattlesnake, and Mule Deer.
The other funding partners who helped NTBC to secure the Skaha Lake land include the Government of Canada’s Natural Heritage Conservation Program, Canada’s Nature Fund, Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, Wild Sheep Foundation, and Wild Sheep Society of B.C., along with individual donors and supporters.
NTBC are also close to locking down a 194-hectare conservation property in the Similkameen Valley adjacent to the 20 hectare Keremeos Columns Provincial Park. The property houses seven discrete ecosystems, extends across two biogeoclimatic subzones that the province has designated for conservation concern, and contains at-risk flora as well as fauna.
Large, multi-parcel properties like Keremeos Columns Grassland are vital to fighting habitat loss through fragmentation, which is what happens when human development or degradation of one type of habitat separates threatened species from the full variety of land types that they need to survive.
Some of the species found within this property could not even survive in any other part of the province, like the Lark Sparrow, which can only nest and breed in the South Okanagan-Similkameen region’s unique scrubland.
Along with the bighorn sheep and Lark Sparrow, these two NTBC acquisitions can provide protection for the Pallid Bat, American Badger, Lewis’s Woodpecker, Western Screech Owl, Desert Nightsnake, Western Rattlesnake, Great Basin Gophersnake, Western Yellow-bellied Racer, and Mule deer.
Federal minister of environment and climate change Stephen Guilbeault lauded the government’s partnership with NTBC for their work in land preservation and wildlife conservation to combat “the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.”
“By working with partners such as The Nature Trust of British Columbia, we are helping to protect the natural environment in British Columbia and across the country … helping us progress toward conserving a quarter of lands and oceans in Canada by 2025.”
The NTBC deadline to raise $50,000 for the purchase of Keremeos Columns Grassland fell on April 30, so it remains to be seen if they will add that property to their recent acquisitions.
