Peace Connectivity Network

A Presentation By

Brian Churchill,

Phacet, 2004

Overview

• Phacet, Peace Habitat and Conservation Endowment Trust Society (PHACET)

• What is Wildlife Habitat Connectivity?

• Our Project, The Peace Connectivity Network

• What is Y2Y and what is the role of the Peace?

• Questions/Comments?

Peace Habitat and Conservation Endowment Trust Society(Phacet)

• Phacet, Local people working for Wildlife Habitat

• Goals– To foster public understanding and

support for the need to protect wildlife habitat and the link of local conservation effort to the broader Y2Y vision

– Increasing specific information on bird, animal and fish habitat and needs in the area and show the required links through the connectivity strategy and Y2Y science.

What is Connectivity?

• Ecosystems can be linked in a variety of ways, but overall a high degree of natural vegetation/forest cover reflects the ability of an area to provide connectivity for wildlife.

• Other components that contribute to connectivity includes wetlands, streams and riparian zones, all of which link one area to another.

Peace Connectivity Network

Those familiar with the Peace Region know that today it is a pleasant mosaic of forest and field providing and abundance of wildlife in a rural agricultural setting.

However with incremental development from rural developments and oil & gas, fragmentation of the wildlife habitats continues and ecological linkages between key habitats are progressively impacted.

Peace Connectivity Network

– Identifying connectivity • The Peace Region includes deeply incised river

valleys that connect a patchwork of habitats. Wildlife depend on these patches as well as the ability to move between them.

• The routes that animals repeatedly use are considered corridors. A corridor can be important as a migration route for mule deer moving from seasonal foraging grounds or as a means of dispersing juveniles to new habitats to mate and reproduce.

Peace Connectivity Network

River valleys and adjacent hillsides form a connectivity network that is essential to the ecological integrity of the area.

Key habitats, ungulate winter range, riparian areas and wetlands are connected with forested areas.

Indicators: –Rare & endangered habitat–Wildlife special features–Key ungulate habitat–Waterfowl habitat–Key bird habitat–Land status–Level of planning–Current state–Potential activities–Risk

Peace Connectivity Network in the Peace Lowlands

Elements included:• Key habitat and land tenure identification• Habitat linkages• Mapping products• Identification of 30 priority sites• Stewardship and management

recommendations

A Joint HCTF - Phacet project 2001-2003

What is the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative?

The initiative is a joint Canadian-US network of organizations, institutions, foundations, and conservation-minded individuals who have the value of working together to restore and maintain the unique natural heritage of the Yellowstone to Yukon region

and the quality of life it offers.

Y2YToday, scientists,

conservationists & others are working together to promote the Y2Y mission and to enable, energize, and inspire the efforts of individuals, grassroots organizations and communities who support that mission.

Phacet & Y2Y The Connection

The Peace River Basin is the most heavily and intensely impacted areas in the Canadian portion of the Y2Y corridor.

Phacet & Y2Y The Connection

The Peace region provides some of the most productive lands for wildlife in British Columbia. The region is an essential space in the Y2Y corridor, a separation between the northern and southern Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Phacet & Y2Y The Connection• Dramatic increases in

conventional oil & gas exploration and in the past year, coal bed methane exploration, have increased the threat to maintaining this essential connectivity network, especially in the Hudson’s Hope area.

Peace Connectivity Network

The Peace Region is a major element of a network of wildlife habitat from the Yukon to Yellowstone, providing exterior linkages between the southern and northern Rocky Mountains and interior linkages between important habitats within the Peace.

The Conservation Challenge

• Get the information out, create an understanding of

the critical value of the connectivity network

• Seek partnerships with government industry and

landowners to develop stewardship plans,

acquisition projects, information signs and

funding, to increase the long term security of wildlife habitats in the

network

Questions/Comments?

References:-Y2Y www.y2y.net/overview-Phacet www.phacet.ca

Acknowledgements– Habitat Conservation Trust Fund– Yellowstone 2 Yukon (LaSalle Adams Foundation)– Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection

* All pictures by Phacet, Brian Churchill and Karrilyn Vince