Season 1, Episode 8: Building Riparian and Community Health
with Dixon Hammond
The Gravity Well podcast explores the importance of maintaining healthy relationships with our environment, focusing on water, air, land, and life. Dixon Hammond, a long-time advocate for the Beaver Creek Watershed, shares his experiences and efforts in improving water quality and riparian health. He emphasizes the importance of grassroots involvement, collaboration with various stakeholders, and the need for evidence-based approaches to manage water resources effectively. Dixon highlights the challenges faced during droughts, the significance of proper water licencing, and the role of education in fostering sustainable practices.
The episode underscores the power of cooperation, the need for reeducation, especially among youth, and the importance of maintaining ecological health and stability. The hosts and guests advocate for continued dialogue and action to address environmental challenges and ensure a sustainable future.
Welcome and Round 1 Review
Alex:
Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle in our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs a healthy relationship with our homeland and each other’s is our guide.
Jenny:
That little opening has been evolving as we go. I’ve attached to this meeting a document that we’re using. This is the end of round one. We started our first discussions. The first round was talking about the broader why we’re talking. I’m just going to do a quick overview starting from last week and working my way backwards. Last week we spoke with Ryan Heavy Head. It was a tremendous conversation where we learned about Maslow’s visit with the Blackfoot First Nations and how this was before Maslow had created the hierarchy of needs which is the first system on mental health. Ryan explained to us that until that time they had talked about mental health disorders or conditions. But after Maslow visited with the Blackfoot, he started focusing on mental health. He learned a lot from staying with them about altruism and looking out for each other.
He started forming his whole new concept of learning, which was carried forward throughout Western society or at least in North American society. Hi Janet. Thank you for joining us. Dixon. Just so you know, Janet is a collaborator of mine. We both volunteer and work with an organization called Alberta Talks together. Janet has an environmental background, and she and I have had the opportunity to work together. Janet, if at any time you want to ask some questions, feel free to just raise your hand in the bottom right corner and we’ll bring you up to do subjects and said he’d be open to that. That was last week. As I said, Maslow visited Blackfoot, but the key part I forgot in the original video we saw is that Ryan had also met with David Suzuki and Al Gore when they were explaining the uncomfortable truth and trying to help people understand what the climate crisis looked like, et cetera.
He had a big breakthrough moment after that meeting, which was that the climate scientists and Al Gore and others are missing this key piece, which is this ongoing living relationship with the earth. And this is something that Ryan and I quite frankly believe is a really big key for us being able to overcome what we’re doing. And actually, it’s going to tie in a lot with what Dixon will offer us today in terms of honouring what the earth can give us and making sure we’re looking after it. Lastly, on this, I’ll just say we’re going to have future conversations with Ryan where we’re going to hear more about the Beaver bundle story, which is a really good example of the balance required with nature and making sure that we’re living in balance not only with our words but in our relationship and being humble in that we aren’t superior species or beings on this planet.
Those are the key takeaways from that. And then I’ll just quickly back up the bus. The week before we spoke with Janet and others about what is the crisis. We let ourselves “choose our own crisis”. We described it and let each of us explain how we see the problems that we’re facing and what that looks like. We have this crisis of relationships and that need a collective vision of success that we can all get behind. I think that’s again, another reason why we’re talking with Dixon is because this is a person of action. We want to make sure we’re talking with people that we’re working with, trying to impart real impactful change. And then the week prior we spoke to my husband and one other Mike Westwick, who is in the Northwest Territories about wildland firefighting and city firefighting and essentially emergency response in general and trying to back up the bus and think more about emergency preparedness.
Some people do this work for a living who just know it off the back of their, how can we let the general population learn from there in terms of being ready for an emergency and being ready to respond when we need to if we’re faced with something big? And Dixon’s going to walk us through some big things that he’s seen on the landscape in the last while. The week before that we talked about the laws of the land with our friend Colin Smith. We were talking about the nine planetary boundaries and just understanding the ecological system in general. The week before that we talked about sourcing quality news. Understanding that we have this centralization process of media and we need to make sure that we understand it’s not working in our best interests, it’s working in the best interest of corporations and special interests.
The antidote is to be objective and seek good faith efforts. Almost done here the week before we talked to Brad Chapin about behavioral health and safety and we reflected on my good friend Mary and everything, her bringing us together and understanding that she is the person who brought a lot of things to Brad that were extreme fight or flight is suicide. She’s been a very strong advocate in this province and she deserves the, we had the opportunity to be in contact with Mary after those discussions with Brad honouring that she knows that we support her and want to make sure her story and her mission get out in the public, will do our best to help her with that and hoping to connect with Brad in the summer. He’s offering a book. We’re going to go through it in another room that I do with Angie and use that in this room, will carry forward his knowledge in terms of identifying our early warning signs when we’re triggered, when we’re in fight or flight, and how to practice to make sure that we can stay calm when we need to.
We started with our community agreement. The first week we met with these coaches that I’ve been working with to understand how can we make sure we create a space that leaves us open to respectful listening and an exchange of ideas that are in the best interest of the public and the planet. We want to make sure that everybody in this room understands they’re a participant that we want their feedback and that this is a call to action. We’re looking to expand this group, this room, and make sure that the people that we know in our lives understand that we’re just trying to make real change in this province letters for the benefit of everyone. The last thing I’ll stop and just offer, Dixon, is if you hold down on your image, like the photo you’ve used, you can see some emojis. You’ll see Janet was giving some emojis there.
Introduction to Dixon Hammond and the Beaver Creek Watershed Group
Jenny:
It’s nice. We’ll give you some feedback as you’re going with some of those. If you want to use that, that’s helpful if you’re on mute. And then lastly, I’ll just go ahead and introduce you and then I’ll let Alex give his reflections, offer some input for you and then we’ll let you get going. I met Dixon at the Beaver Creek Watershed Group meeting. Dixon has been at this for 23 years. This is what’s the beauty of a conversation with somebody like Dixon. We are trying to look at this as the Apollo 11 moment so that we’re ready when we need one more cold to be. And Dixon’s 23 years ahead of us in a lot of ways. This is where we get this awesome opportunity to learn from all the work that Dixon’s done. I went to that meeting and my friend Roger Gagne joined us.
Jenny:
We were just talking about how that was one of the best meetings we’ve attended because it was not only the right conversations, but also the right people were in the room. It was all the local landowners, the Hutterite community, the neighbouring Indigenous community, the watershed council group, and the environmental organizations. There were town councils and municipal councils in the room. It just really had everyone that you’d want to be there in terms of making key decisions for the community, the conversations, the presentations that happened were the right presentations, talking about the real issues that we’re dealing with right now. Impressive. I’m going to stop there, Alex, go ahead and approve some of your stuff that you want to and then we’ll let Dixon go.
Alex:
Oh, hi, my name’s Alex. I’m sort of a jack of all trades. I’ve worked in anything from public service to a farmhand to private security construction. I was an art student as well. I’ve always been passionate about trying to make a difference in the world. My experience has been diverse in the sense that I’ve been able to learn from people from all sorts of walks of life and acquire skills from those people. And I’d like to say my profession is a habitual collector of skill. I’m generally a kinesthetic learner, but I love to do research and take people’s experiences that they choose to trust me enough to share with me to heart and put in the effort to try and better understand what they’re doing. I won’t go back on my takeaways from the previous episodes because I think Jenny did a great job in terms of filling you in. And for the sake of saving time, I’d like to hand it over to Dixon. Thank you.
Jenny:
Please start with your introduction, Dixon. Thank you.
Dixon Explains What Led to the Beaver Creek Watershed Group
Dixon:
Thanks for the kind words and the introduction for me and the Beaver Creek Watershed Group. But I do have to say that it’s not a one-person show. I’ve had the backing of some supportive and passionate people behind me and we’ve been able to achieve some great things over a short time. My background, I grew up in the Pincher Creek area down here near where Beaver Creek is, and that’s the watershed I live in is a Beaver Creek watershed. I grew up in the house that I live in and until I was about five years old, we moved off to a bigger ranch. And then when I went off to college, came back and always wanted to live at the Beaver Creek Farm. And I ended up moving there with my wife in the summer or spring of 95 just prior to the flood of 1995.
And it wasn’t the same place that I remembered as a child, and that’s what sparked my whole interest in water and creeks and the environment. In the spring of 1995, we had that big flood and it took away quite a few trees and bushes and things that used to be around the area. And when it subsided, all it left was a Bear Creek bottom with rocks and very few shrubs. Time went on and by 98, 99 came around, we’d had some more high water years in there, and 99 was a really dry year. And that’s when it hit home that this creek had gone from a full-blown river to a dry creek bed when we walked up the creek bed, we found dead fish, beaver houses and dams that were abandoned and empty. And it hit home to me that there’s got to be something that we can do to make this better.
Long story short, in the fall of 1999, we got together with a few of my neighbours who shared similar concerns about the water, we met in my folks’ basement and we just talked about memories and how we remembered it and how the creek used to flow and you could lie on your back in the water and pick saskatoons off the overhanging bushes and how they used to be mink and pheasants around. And those were all gone. We ended up deciding that we needed to do something as a collaborative group and things work better together than they do singly. We formed a Beaver Creek watershed group and by the spring of 2001, we were breaking ground with a number of projects to start off-stream watering sources. We weren’t using the creek so much. The biggest thing we did was remove a big portion of numbers of cattle from drinking right from the creek on intensive livestock operations and move those up to upland pastures so that we were no longer polluting and degrading the banks of this creek.
In time, we started to find out that we didn’t know everything and we were just a bunch of farmers and producers that did what we knew was best and it was handed down from generations before and we only could do what we could do and what we knew when it came to figuring out where to start, we got involved with a group called Cows and Fish, and they gave us a benchmark for us to start from. We needed to know how bad the creek was, and how far we had to climb out to make it better, and that gave us a good benchmark and a starting point. That was in the spring of 2001. We started those through that summer and got our results by the next year, and we were able to build some really good plans around what they found in what was missing in the creek.
We needed all stages of shrubs, we needed all stages of grasses, and we needed stream banks that weren’t eroded and channelized. We needed a lot of these things that make a creek and biodiversity work. The presence of fish were still there, but they weren’t in good quality. And then on top of all that, the water quality was really poor. We went through a number of years where the Old Man River basin and Water Quality Initiative when they first started up had flagged our creek as being a poor water quality creek. And that sparked our ideas to, well, let’s find out where the problems are. And we started a water quality monitoring program that we did for five years. We monitored flow and contaminants that were in the water and we did it every two weeks for the flow months from March to October.
And we did that for five years and got a pretty good understanding as to where the problems were. And again, that came back to where those intensive livestock operations were. We decided that we needed to try and get our wintering grounds away from the creek so that we weren’t depending on the water specifically, but also we needed the creek shelter from the trees and protection from the wind from creek bottoms. We built upland windbreaks that were up on the upland that were manmade structures, movable, some were permanent. We built water troughs on those uplands so that 3000-acre pastures that normally couldn’t be used other than aftermath grazing in the fall now had water that was accessible for those winter months. That gave us a big boost in our water quality and also gave us some better ideas about how to develop springs and how to develop water and different things.
After we got a few of those beneficial management practices in place, and shortened that to BMPs, as time went on, we had 22 off-stream watering developments, and several cattle bridges crossing so that they weren’t crossing right through the water. We did a couple of closures in Alberta Forestry to train and educate people that crossing streams with a machine isn’t exactly the best thing to do for fish and the habitat around it. Also for the stream banks, our group or our watershed runs through four jurisdictions. We had four government bodies we had to deal with and we worked with Alberta Forestry for the enclosure project and Alberta sustainable resource Development back then. They saw what we were doing and they wanted to make sure they got the educational part out on their end of things. They had a good section of the creek.
And then it flowed into the MD of Willow Creek, a good portion of the creek is in the MD of Willow Creek. A good chunk of our landowners were in the MD of Willow Creek and they teamed up with the MD of Pincher Creek to hire a coordinator that would oversee conservation throughout the three MDs of Ranchland, Willow Creek and MD of Pincher Creek. Once we got that person in, everything started to flow well. What it came down to is that we needed a working group to help work with the people that were on the properties, but the most important of the whole success of our group I think you would say is that everything we’ve always done has been producer-driven. It’s always been grassroots. It’s always started with something that the producer saw was missing or needed or just felt was a good idea to let things rest or do better at. We always made sure it was done by that.
Alex:
Can I throw a question out there?
Dixon:
Sure, you bet.
Alex:
It’s a big one. There are 8 billion people on the planet. They need three meals a day. That’s 24 billion meals a day. How do we do that? I’m open to suggestions, but I think with regards to centralized management of agriculture, they’re missing something key, which is the grassroots. Could you explain how important it is to maintain the watersheds and how important it is to understand the topography and the land locally?
Dixon:
Absolutely, great question. The biggest thing is that the people that have these water courses running through their land, they’re probably the most passionate people on the planet when it comes to taking care of what’s in front of them. Whether it be animals, families, community, and ultimately water is the one thing that drives this world, both economically and physically. We need water to survive. Water is life. As producers, we have to feed the continually growing 8 billion people population. The best way to get forward with it is to talk to the stakeholders that are out there, be it community groups, organizations, whatever they are, they’re doing good work.
The Secret to the Beaver Creek Watershed Group’s Success
Jenny:
Just quickly, Dixon, I just wanted to circle back with what you just said there because it is so important. As you said, the two things that I understand from what Dixon has done is not only did he make sure that he started with the right people in the room, but he stayed with the right people making the decision. He’s given the responsibility to the producers as it should be, and also the decision-making. Is that fair Dixon?
Dixon:
That’s a hundred per cent accurate. We’ve built it so that the people that sit at that working group table are who we used to call “agency people”. We had Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Cows and Fish, what’s it called? Alberta Conservation Association. Oh, they’re all just jumping out of my head right now. They had the Prairie…
Jenny:
Farm Rehabilitation Association.
Dixon:
PFRA was what the acronym was, it was Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Association and then Sustainable Resource Development. We had range people, we had water people, we had water quality people, we had all the people that have all this, we often call it fresh air wisdom in our little community because you have all these people that sit at office desks all day and they’re in it for the right reasons and they’re doing all the right things by the textbook. But when it came to putting things into play, everything can change in a five-mile span and our area it’s very diverse and what works in one place doesn’t work in another. Getting that across to these fresh-air wisdom thinkers was that it didn’t always work. They could see what the producers were doing that would work or that old pioneers that were around that could help us guide to that. That working group became another big part of the secret sauce was that producers had the ideas and then we were going to people that would help with the numbers, with the metrics, with all the important information that we need and we’d build these great plans to alleviate future problems. And I think that was the ticket. I hope that covers it.
Jenny:
Based on the meeting that I attended there. As Dixon’s saying, Cows and Fish was there, Ducks Unlimited, I think as well, but the work that you had been doing Dixon over the last 20 years, now the analysis is happening to show the benefits of that effort. The key that I took away from that is, and you can say the levels, that in every area that was measured, the landscape had improved over that time. Is that right?
Dixon:
Yeah, that was correct. We had Cows and Fish revisit some of those original polygons that they had assessed for Creek Health. In all those cases, we had portions of the creek that, I don’t remember the numbers exactly off the top of my head, but we had portions of the creek that were unhealthy but with problems. And then we had some sections that were unhealthy and very few places that were what they called healthy. We had two areas that we called profile sites that were healthy, that were excellent for us to be able to compare other pieces of land to that that was basically what the best it could be. We used those as something to guide us after 23 years most of those unhealthy sites had disappeared and we’d moved up from that healthy but with problems into a greater portion of the creek. And then we’ve expanded the profile sites a little bit more. It’s taking its time. Nature will win in the end and it will repair itself, but just have to let it do its job and take its time.
Alex:
What’s the status of the dugouts currently under the regulation?
Dixon:
As far as water usage? You mean.
Alex:
Collection or usage?
Dixon:
We had to follow certain rules for both the geology and geography of certain places. We didn’t want to be tapping into aquifers where we weren’t supposed to be. We didn’t want to interrupt the spring flow. We were able to develop big pieces of land that had no water by simply building a small, well, I guess some people would call it a dam.
Jenny:
Nature-based dam, right?
Nature-Based Solutions and Their Conversations
Dixon:
Nature-based dam, exactly. And we try to do what the beavers do, but not quite in the same form. We had to use some heavy equipment to do some of these jobs, but it provided water in locations that typically don’t ever have water. The big trick to getting a creek to stay running is to allow the water to remain in its channel for as long as possible. And if we’re removing all the time, that’s not exactly the best situation.
Alex:
Is that like a regulatory flow management kind of thing?
Dixon:
The government of Canada has a hydrometric survey station on Beaver Creek right next to my place. It’s easy for me to monitor. The provincial bodies don’t have any flow data of their own that’s been developed or looked at in the length of the creek. We have one flow monitoring station that’s monitored by a Canadian government that’s in the last third of the length of the creek. It doesn’t give a full scope of what’s going on in the whole watershed, we have to be careful how we look at that. But as far as the water usage in those off-storage places, it’s registered water in a lot of cases, but it’s not licensed water. There’s no monitoring of what goes in and out of those other little storage facilities. In a lot of cases where we’ve developed springs, we’ve taken water out of a spring and put it into a water trough and then overflowed it back to its main course, which gets the water a little bit closer to its stream destination. It’s not the idea to get the water to race to the creek, but if we can get a little bit further down each riparian area, each riparian zone a little further with the water, then I figure that’s a good way to make sure that the biodiversity stays in good shape.
Jenny:
Yeah, for sure. We talked a little bit earlier, and I hope you can expand Dixon on. One of the things we try to talk about in these conversations is – who are the key players? You had all the stakeholders in place and then you talked about working with the producers. I think that’s a sort of broader term to use just in general, but I get why you’re using it from a producer standpoint where you’re producing. Can you describe where you faced some challenges earlier today? You were talking about some of the projects that you had done, and if you can just walk through the first one where you had a challenge and then I have another one where we can talk about some success around it afterwards.
Dixon:
The most recent one that comes to mind has to do with the drought of the last three years. Everybody starts to panic when there’s no water. A neighbour downstream from me is usually the first person to run out of water. Being that she’s closer to the mouth of the river, it becomes a panic that there’s no water in the creek, “It Dixon’s fault, or it’s the neighbour above him’s fault. It’s pretty easy to point fingers when there’s no water coming down. There was an old adage that a lot of the producers, ranchers, and old folks used to say that any water that went under the fence was wasted. And that was a lesson for most of us to learn that any water that goes under the fence is not wasted and it’s going off to maintain aquatic life and all of the biodiversity that revolves around water below that so that’s good.
But the reason for the panic and the upset is that we do have two licensed water users on our creek that are allowed to take a certain amount of water out of the creek for irrigation purposes, for croplands to grow feed for cattle or food for humans. And there’s a place for that. There certainly is, and the water licensing system is built to allow people to do that, but there are rules that they have to follow. In 2020, 22 was the worst dry spell in the summer that we had up until this summer, and it was where there were two irrigators using water, but the water licenses dictate how much they’re allowed to take, but it also dictates how much they’re supposed to leave in the stream. It became my task for the next few days to try and figure out where the water was disappearing from.
There is a reporting system for this, and it’s a good way to not get neighbours fighting with each other because there’s this reporting system and it’s private and then there’s an enforcement officer that can take over and look into things. It’s just something that you phone in and you leave a message and state your problem and then enforcement goes and takes a look. Well, in this case, enforcement had come out to look at the problem and they drove up the creek as far as they could or as far as they wanted to and determined that the creek had dried up climatically. The funny part about it was that he missed the first diversion point by about nine kilometers. In my mind, that wasn’t a full investigation of the problem. That’s problem number one.
Alex:
Is that enforced? I know exactly where he set up camp.
Dixon:
Yeah, the enforcement isn’t doing their job fully. And then the water licensing, when I started looking at that, every time a water license doesn’t expire, but when a landowner changes, they update and amend the license. And there used to be, on Beaver Creek, water licenses issued before 1983. Diversion dates from April 30th to July 31st to specific dates they were allowed to divert water. There wasn’t as much waiting on how much was left in the creek below the pump sites. The next problem with the water licensing was that there was a person in the water licensing office, these water licenses, without having been on the ground, there is no provincial water data to show how much water is at those irrigation sites. We had a flow station for our water quality monitoring on that creek just above the stream. I knew how much water was there and our watershed group knew how much water was there, but it just became an educational thing that we had to talk to the landowners and educate them about their water licence. And they’re required by law to leave two cubic feet per second to go past their pump. But nowhere in their licence does it say how they have to measure that if they have to prove any of that. And they don’t offer any tools or suggestions as to how to measure that. It becomes pretty subjective.
Alex:
How do you measure that?
Dixon:
The proper way to measure it is a measurement of a cross-section of the stream. You drop a tape measure down from a level every four inches across the stream and get a topography of the bottom of that creek in-depth and a one-inch wide section. You’ve got this little volume of water in the shape of a boomerang with a dish, I guess it looked like a little dish. And then we drop a little flow meter there to measure the speed of the water travelling. Then that becomes a point of measure of cubic feet per second cubic meters per second. It could be gallons per minute, whatever the metric you want to use. That’s how the proper way to measure it is, is to have a tool. When we do our water quality monitoring, we need to know the flow at each station.
We put in what we call a data logger, and that’s dug into the side of the stream and it measures the height of the water at pre-engineered formation through the creek. And then we measure the speed of the water that is going by with the data logger. We have stream flow built right below a pump site, and it’s expensive, but irrigation is expensive, and I think the bigger cost is not knowing what our downstream flow is from these pumps. If we don’t know what’s going beyond a pump and they’re taking more than they’re allowed to, then that can be a problem. Most part, people are just a little bit ignorant of their water license, not knowing fully what that entailed, but for the most part, they want to comply and they want to do the right job. And yeah, I do believe that the creek probably does dry up climatically. It’s just a matter of let’s not make it worse. In these drought years, the government should be involved to the point that “we know that the stream flow is only this, we want you to only remove this much water”, or “we need you to let this much water go by”. That would either determine if somebody has to shut their pump on or off and leave some water in the creek.
How Do We Share Water Going Forward, When the First-In-Time-First-In-Right (FITFIR) System Fails?
Jenny:
Right. Well, and what this showed me when we talked about this a while back, Dixon, is that I’m picturing this process. I’d love you to talk about after I tee this up, what you think is a vision going forward in terms of trying to help understand this drought time that we’re in. What we discussed is I can’t imagine these inspectors going out to look at all of these creeks and all of the watersheds. Number one, I don’t think that that process is potentially, and again, I’m happy to be wrong, you can help me understand, but I’m imagining that that is going to break down pretty quickly if it’s expected to happen on a widespread basis. I imagine there are not many inspectors available to do that. Then what you and I talked about is, well, what is the process we need? We’ve heard this government say that they’re expecting the process that is used to manage water licenses, which is the First In Time, First In Right process to fail this spring if we don’t get enough precipitation. To me, the question then is, how do we make sure we’re sharing water well going forward? Dixon, do you mind just expanding on what your thoughts are on what a good process like that looks like?
Dixon:
Yeah, I think the biggest process is to get these three governing bodies that revolve around water licensing to sit at the same table and not necessarily just around licensing, but around water and creek health and all the things. But the ones that need to get involved at the start here before we head into another drought is to speak with the people who are writing the licenses and make sure they’re at the table. We need to make sure that the Water Survey of Canada people are at the table so that they can relay the actual flow data. Then we need to have the enforcement team that is out there enforcing irrigation use. And then we also need the environmental side of things to be at that table to talk about what the needs of the downstream users are and the fish and the wildlife and all the things.
We’ve got so many facets that have to be covered, but none of these offices, they’re three of these offices are all in the Ag Research Centre in Lethbridge, and they’re all in the same building and they don’t speak to each other. And if they do speak to each other, the paths don’t cross, the lines don’t cross and the information is getting lost in paperwork. We need to loosen that up and I hope that I can be a bit of a catalyst in that, that I become the common ground of, look, we all need to use the water, but we’re the ones that are in the watershed that have the greatest power to hold that water there and keep it there. And if we can just work with those groups to have them help us help ourselves, just have to keep it in check so that things don’t fall apart so quickly. I hope that kind of covers it.
Alex:
Well, if you can deputize me as an inspector, I’ll go out there and take my measurements myself.
Dixon:
I love that.
Jenny:
Yeah, Dixon, that was awesome. To be clear, this is something that we’re trying to support Dixon in doing because as we discussed earlier today, and we had such a great pre-meeting for this discussion, is that we need to give the power to the producers in this case because they are the ones that are not only responsible for our watersheds, but in also the food that we eat and the food that the world eats as Alex was alluding to. There’s a massive responsibility and we need to empower the people with that responsibility and also stay out of the way. And that’s what you’ve said not only just now but earlier today this isn’t an exercise of us trying to take more from this region. This is us trying to give back and make sure that we give you the voice that you need in this province.
Specifically, Dixon and I are planning on reconvening in his community center there in Spring Point in June to try and make sure that I’m supporting his efforts to bring this to three levels of government together and make sure that his community is the blueprint for how we restore health.
How Does the Public Help Protect the Headwaters?
Jenny:
I am going to offer one more potentially thoughtful question, Dixon, and then I do want to return to a positive story you offered today, but one that we talked about in that room. Harley Bastien offered a great question like you said, the environmental groups. I love that you said you want the environmental groups there because I’ve been representing the Calgary Climate Hub in these instances, which is that we have to make sure that upstream is also being looked after for you. This balance is required. In my view, what we’re seeking is to make sure we’re restoring our headwaters, and that we have not only a strong canopy that can store water for you guys but also no contaminants. We need to start making sure that we’re taking coal mines and coal roads out of the watershed so that we’re helping set up your area for success long-term. Your thoughts around the stuff that is potentially outside of your control that you’re hoping to at least help educate others and help make sure that others are being thoughtful in how it’s more of a big picture problem.
Dixon:
Sure. The first thing that comes to mind is the random camping and off-highway vehicle use in our forest reserve, especially in drought times, we discourage people from coming out with a high-powered machine that can get hot, possibly start fires, do all of the damage that can do to a stream that already has low flow and already hurt more fish habitat thing, go for a walk, go fishing, do some of the simple things. Foot traffic is a lot less damaging, and a little more educational when you’re out touching the things, feeling the things. Well, if you dare drink the water.
Alex:
Just boil it first.
Dixon:
Fires can certainly cause some serious damage. We have a good section of our creek that was burned up in a ground fire in 1997 and it still hasn’t recovered fully. And yeah, it’ll be a long time yet before we see some full mature trees, full ponds of water again next to the creeks, fire being a big thing. And then the tree harvesting that could happen up there. There are allotments of forest up there that in the past have been scheduled for clear-cut logging, we would prefer selective logging and we wouldn’t encourage it there, but we do need to thin that forest to some degree so that fire load isn’t there.
Alex:
Clearing up thatch and ethical logging and removing dead wood because then you don’t end up with crown fires. Crown fires cause significant damage and forced maintenance.
Dixon:
We’re not going to go rake the forest floor like Donald Trump wants us to. Our stock loading in our forest reserves are carrying capacity of what the creek can handle, and what the pastures can handle in the forest. That’s where a lot of the headwaters are. Huge springs feed the creek, so the cattle aren’t all mingling and hanging out at the creek. Most of the water in the pastures up there is drunk from off-stream sources. We’ve got cattle walking around, keeping that patch down, working, disturbing the ground enough to work the biomass into the microbes to break it down in the soil. We end up with strong healthy soils that can grow new and healthy plants. It’s not science that we look at blindly, we take it very seriously. We look at sequestering carbon is a big deal and we need to do that. It goes against everything that we’re trying to do by producing more food on fewer acres all the time. If we sequester this carbon back into the ground, that healthy soil is a quick result and over time we’re going to have those good news stories coming out of the forestry. I hope that alludes to some of the things you wanted to touch on there, Jenny.
Jenny:
And it looks like Janet might join us for some questions too. I’ll just quickly reflect on what I just heard from you. Yes, I’m hearing that we need to make sure that forest management is done on an evidence-based approach and it follows through with what you’ve been saying about the riparian health of your landscapes and why you’ve been able to not only have early stakeholder but to maintain that is because you’ve looked to the evidence and you’ve helped producers, in this case, understand the information and be able to make thoughtful decisions. I’ll stop there and Janet, go ahead and unmute, introduce yourself and then go ahead and ask a question or whatever you want to do.
What Contaminants Were Found and What Improvements Were Made by the Cattle Ranchers?
Janet:
Thanks. Oh, what a fantastic session. I do have so many questions, but I may have to ask them another time because I am interested, I am impressed as well, Dixon, I am considering the early buy-in and what pressures were identified. And you mentioned cattle. I’m wondering yes, if there are feedlots, what the stocking rate for a lot of the ranches around the creek would’ve been, and then what types of pollutants were determined to be part of the poor quality or polluted water? And then what if any improvements were made by the cattlemen? I’m thinking with waste management other than the access that you talked about with Cows and Fish and bridges and such and grazing differently determining seasonal grazing areas in the last few minutes. If you could just touch on that, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Dixon:
Sure. Those are all great questions. The first thing is the number of cattle and the stocking rates that we have up there. Again, in a less than 35-kilometre length of the creek, our stocking rates can vary very quickly from one end to the other up in the Forest Reserve and towards the more alpine type setting where the grasses are more tame type species, we can have a heavier stocking rate. I don’t know the exact stocking rate for the forest reserve right now off the top of my head, but down where I am, we use it usually gauge them by animal unit months. There are spots on my ranch where an animal unit month is enough to feed one cow for one month and then times that by the number of cattle that we would put in a field. Well, a quarter section is 160 acres, and I have some fields that I live in this little area called Summer View, which is a semi-arid desert.
And the stocking rate there on a quarter section is less than 15 animals for that full month. That’s just on old native grass that has been abused for a long period. The healthier land that has good soil and better foliage, you can get that number up to 60 or 70 animal units on a quarter section for one month. If we start getting into rainfall years, those numbers can double again. And the missing component is rainfall. That dictates that the water quality that’s in the stream, we were testing for sulphates, phosphates, and bacteria be like fecal coliforms. The bact-T breakdown was quite finite. We had it broken down into five or six different things, but there were suspended solids in there as well. But when there are cattle in and around our creeks, they do create some disturbance and they do create some poor water quality.
The one thing we did notice in our water quality is that the May long weekend was the opening day for camping. Basically in Forest Reserve, we would see a greater spike in water quality and suspended solids. And believe it or not, fecal matter in that timeframe of that weekend, usually by the end of May, we would start to see it decrease again. And then the cattle don’t go into the forest reserve until August. And we used to compare those two samples against each other and the human-disturbed samples were always greater and it was eye-opening for us. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. But especially when you look at, say there’s 1400 cows up in the forest and there’s maybe two or 300 people for a weekend, that’s a pretty big impact. There was the water quality and there was one more point that you wanted me to make. What was the last?
Janet:
Oh, any infrastructure or changes that decreased the drainage or improvement.
Dixon:
Up in forestry? We had exposure projects that were more around the education side of things, but there have been bridges built since we made our footprint up there. There have been some quad associations and some off-highway vehicle user groups that got involved as well and started putting in their own trails and bridges. And they’re quite active in the castle area out in all these public land use zones in our area. And those are the groups that we want to be involved in. Those are the ones that we want to come out and work with. Those are the good news stories out there for forest reserves as far as the cattle moving them from the creek and the feedlots that you were mentioning, those are what we call the intensive livestock operations. It’s a little over 1400 head of intensive feeding operations that were moved out of the Creek Valley itself and moved to upland pastures.
One of them was an old feedlot that was relocated. That one was on our [land]. We have a feedlot that’s on the upland with a proper lagoon built, built with NRCB rules. Spring Point Colony was able to remove a good portion of its dairy operation from the creek. The biggest thing we learned over time is Winter Creek bottom use being it’s windy where we are, it’s pretty important to have some wind protection, but we try to minimize how much the cattle are in the creek bottom. Say there’s a storm, we let them into the creek bottom during a storm and then put them back up onto upland pasture to get them back out away from the creek. We’re not destroying what’s down in the creek valleys. And certainly that nutrient loading that’s down in the creek, that goes away fairly quickly. We’ve seen great repair from that just in nature doing its thing. And I think we’ll continue to see that as sheep farms are moved and our upland pastures are gaining carbon and soil building. I think we’re on the right path. I just hope we can continue to get that forward momentum and hold it there.
How Did the Beaver Creek Watershed Group Gain Public Momentum?
Jenny:
Awesome. I want to go to takeaways, but if you’re not in a rush Dixon, the one thing I just wanted to touch on quickly is you told us this story earlier about how when you started, the floodgates started to open, and the reason why I want you to highlight it is because there are these kind of sweet indicators when you’re making progress with things. And to me, that’s one of those big shows you that you’ve got. You talked earlier about, if I remember right, you were talking about when you got Prairie Farm Rehab Association involved, suddenly it was, well, I want to get involved, Cows and Fish wants to get involved. I just want you to sort of describe this moment where you felt like everything was sort of flooding together, if you know what I’m saying. Thanks.
Dixon:
Yeah, I think you’re alluding to the money.
Jenny:
The money, absolutely, I mean, that is the best indicator.
Dixon:
All this stuff doesn’t happen for free, that’s for sure. And our biggest contributor to the group was the in-kind contribution from our great group of landowners. We had a great pool of labour, a great pool of expertise. There are engineers and construction people that live on the creek. There’s all this information that is just good to have with all those people out there. That’s one thing. But then to get money, you need to apply for grants and try to get these things to happen. Well, with our working group, when we sat down with all these groups and started asking questions as to how we build things and how we do it right, they’re like, well, if you’re going to do it right, you’re going to need some money to do it. And the first one to come along was Cows and Fish.
They could see what we were doing, and they offered some help in getting those benchmark polygons done and then reassessing them as time went on. And that was a pretty big chunk of change, and that was nice. And then ACA came along and they were like, well, we think that this fits our bill a little bit, that we want to try and encourage ranchers to build riparian pastures rather than stalking cattle in a whole field and hammering out the creek when it’s a hot day. They all want to hang by the water. They threw $10,000 at us, and then as soon as they threw $10,000 at us. Then, PFRA said, “Well, we need to get involved” and “we’ll throw in some money”. And then the same with fisheries and oceans. That was the biggest one was $85,000 from them for a stream bank stabilization program.
Then there was a program in the early two thousand called the Community or Riparian program. It was government-funded we applied for coordination fees for myself, for getting all of this stuff to happen and coordinate it. It ended up being a full-time job for me for a little while. That helped big time. And once the floodgates opened for the money to start flowing, it just never seemed to end for a little while it certainly wasn’t hard to spend at all because it was important work to happen. The water quality used up a good chunk of that change, especially doing that for five years. That was a good portion of the success of our group, but I still take it back to that original working group where the ideas came from landowners and the producers and the ranchers and the people that lived out there, and it built up from there. And as soon as there was a need, these groups could see very quickly that it was going to go to a good place.
Key Takeaways
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you. I do think it’s really important to highlight the realities of what it takes to get projects like this off the ground, and then those moments where you do feel like it’s coming together, I think it’s important to acknowledge how that looks. Thank you very much. I’m just going to offer some of my takeaways and then I’ll let Alex and Janet the same and then we’ll let you have the closing word. Dixon, if there’s anything you missed that you want to offer this time is having the right people, the people that are not only the people in place but the people responsible for the watershed in the process from the beginning, understanding that they’re the ones being empowered to make the decisions is just seems key to how you’ve had so much success. Making sure that you follow through with evidence that you’ve done not only the work to get the data that you needed, but you keep working at that and you keep acknowledging the data that are missing and what you need to get more to make sure that we’re thinking of this problem holistically enough.
The fact that you want to get communication across to all of the governments you’ve already thought about in this next phase that you see in bridge building to who you think already needs to be in the room. It’s just tremendous. Dixon, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from you and work with you in action. One, excuse me, the real thing, the real-life thing that we’re working towards is there is a watershed council meeting in Blair’s home on April 15th. I’m intending to be there. I think Dixon is trying to be there as well. That’s a real-life opportunity for anyone who wants to see what’s happening in conversation around our watersheds around this drought and around this ongoing crisis that we’re in and trying to navigate. I’ll stop there. And like I said, we’ll skip you for a second. Alex, or sorry Dixon, you’re next on my screen. We’ll go to Alex and then Janet and then we’ll let Dixon close off. Go ahead, Alex.
Alex:
Well, first off, I just want to say thank you, Dixon. There’s a lot to take in from our previous conversation and the conversation we’ve just had. I’ll just throw the offer out there, deputize me, give me a truck, and cover my costs. I’ll go out there, and take the measurements myself. I know how to read a tape and I’m not opposed to gold weather. Also, I think it would be really interesting to get together at some point. Between, Jenny and I and yourself, and maybe we can meet in Longview halfway, go up to Indian Graves, eat some beef jerky and have a chat. Keep it open.
Jenny:
Before I move forward. Oh, go ahead, Dixon.
Dixon:
No, that’s all good. I just was laughing to myself that we have community halls and things, but Longview’s certainly a good option. But I have a pretty cool old barn in my yard that I fixed up as a bit of a venue, maybe a smoked brisket and a couple of beers. Maybe that would be a better option. Anyway, there was something else you were going to say there, Jenny.
Jenny:
Yeah, well, I was just going to offer, I mean now I feel like I shouldn’t offer, but yes, please, to that. But also Alex and I are planning an Aloha event, we want it to be a “welcoming and thank you” event for people, in Calgary. It’s not going to be as cool as that sounds, but we’re going to pick a park and try to make sure we’ve invited people that have participated in this, people that we want to participate, and people that are wanting to just learn more about what we’re working on and what this project entails. I guess, stay tuned for that. We’ll send you an invite for that as well. Okay. Janet, you next, and then we’ll let Dixon finish.
Janet:
I’m inspired by the power of cooperation. In this scenario you’re describing, it’s not only important to the landholders in the area and the environment, but I think it also, as Jenny’s pointing out that this can be a template for other projects and successes. I’ve always firmly believed that our farmers and ranchers are stewards at heart. And I know that as land changes hands, the reeducation process is important as well as the changing climate. These challenges we’re going to face are going to be unprecedented in my opinion. And I think these relationships better enable you all to maintain your lives on the land and provide ecological health and stability as well. Thank you for doing what you’re doing and sharing it with us tonight.
Dixon:
Well, thank you, Janet. I don’t think I need to close. I think you just hit it all on the head right there. That was pretty well-encompassed, I think. But yeah, it’s a pretty passionate thing to be talking about water all the time. It’s close to everybody’s heart. I think it’s good that we continue to talk about it. One of the biggest things we need to stay focused on is reeducating. Just like Janet said, as landowners change, as things change, reeducating those people, the biggest reed educator that we need to work on is our youth. We’ve got our replacements coming up as our successors on our farms, and I think they’re in a better situation than even my generation was, is that they’re a little more in tune with their climate environment around them, certainly in the agriculture world. I hope that can continue, and I hope to start seeing the youth start showing up at some of these events so that the chain can get passed over.
Going along with the climate. Certainly, the climate is changing and we’re going to see more extremes. It is going to rain again, I guarantee it. We’re going to see floods again. We’re going to see droughts again. It’s just a way of learning how to mitigate the outcomes and the severity of both of those. As long as our creek is in good shape and in good health, I hope that we can continue that. But our tagline for our group is driven by nature and powered by producers. There’s a lot to that. Nature wins in the end, and all we can do is kind of control what we can control and let nature do the rest. With that, I think pretty much wraps up anything I need to talk about. Thank you very much for the time today.
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you, Dixon. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. We’re taking a break next week. This is, like I said, the end of round one of these conversations. Alex and I are going to be busy writing up our blogs for each of these and in fact, we probably will let you have some eyes on it before we post. That’s our next week. That being said, I am doing an interview next Thursday with Nate Pike on, I’m not sure if it’s live or not, but to talk about water as well, we’re keeping the water conversation alive and making sure that we’re also regenerating ourselves here. Take a little breather so that we can regroup for the next round, and we hope to have you on here again, as I mentioned, Dixon in June. Okay, thank you so much, everyone. Have an excellent night.
Dixon:
Thank you very much and enjoy your evening.