Two-day Ripple Effect conference delves into deep connection to rivers, environment and community

Karen McKinley
May 5, 2025

A two-day forum in Grand Forks aimed to convey that nature isn’t a separate entity, it’s all around us and communities, agencies and even industry have to relearn their relationship to it.

The Ripple Effect: Connecting Land, Water and Communities, brought together nearly 100 people from various agencies, advocacy groups, resource management professionals, scholars from several areas of study and even artists to May 1 and 2 talk about the Kettle River Watershed and the many facets that make up the ecosystems, with a focus on water.

The idea was to bring all the watershed’s stewards together and have open and collaborative conversations, said co-organizer Kristine Anderson, watershed planner for Boundary Integrated Watershed Services.

The conference focused on showing how important all components of managing the watershed come together, from wildfire management to riparian area protection, wildlife studies and community outreach.

“We need to have all the different components of economics, the environment, social and cultural aspects to have a healthy and sustainable watershed,” she said. “We are showing the importance of this watershed for everybody.”

Those who attended were interested in the watershed, but it’s rare for so many seemingly unrelated disciplines to come together to collaborate and learn from each other, Anderson said.

She added that the hope is people will continue to connect and collaborate.

“It’s a new look at the watershed and the idea of taking a small action for a big effect,” she said. “It’s also knowing that a community is more than its people, it’s all living things and being able to expand on that and build a more resilient watershed.”

The topics were wide-ranging, from analyzing streamflow, riparian area stewardship, irrigation, quantifying natural asset value, grizzly recovery, work on recovering the speckled dace and Lewis Woodpecker, and the history of wildfire and climate change. Also discussed were habitat connectivity, human connection through biology, nature-based solutions that work for the area’s environment, economics of natural assets and highlights of the work already being done.

One overall theme shared by many was that the colonialist mindset views nature as separate. Almost everyone agreed and discussed how not only were these subjects linked, but humanity and society are nature, from the streets and urban parks to the farms, rangelands and changes humans make to manage and/or exploit resources, which all have an effect.

Marc Steynen, program lead for the Okanagan Nation Alliance, exemplified this while presenting Kasey Moran’s presentation on nature-based solutions by pointing out that in many Indigenous languages, there is no word for nature because it’s not considered a separate entity in their cultures.

With several large wildfires in the region over the last 10 years, as well as record fire seasons in the province over the past three years, Lisa Tedesco, biologist and land and resource specialist with the BC Wildfire Service's Cultural and Prescribed Fire program led a talk on the history of wildfire in B.C. and the Boundary, starting with nearly 500 years ago. Fires were more frequent, of course, but looking at historical records and evidence from the land, they were also far less intense. Indigenous people also used fire to lower the risk of intense burns.

“This surprises a lot of people, but this helped reduce fuels and promoted replacement of certain vegetation,” she said. “These fires would’ve burned into each other, creating a mosaic, helping keep the size of burns in check and creating a stabilizing force in the ecosystem in both the valleys and boreal areas.”

In 1874, B.C. introduced the Bush Fire Act, she said, when suppression and banning setting fires on the land became government policy. Since then – until recently – fires were less frequent, but have become more intense and severe for a number of reasons, including more fuel, as well as factoring in drier, hotter summers and less winter and spring moisture due to climate change.

Policies are turning to how to create more resilience, including humans. Definitions of resilience for people and communities will be different, she said, which is why people need to talk to each other more about this.

Beyond science and government management, there was a call from local artist Rocio Graham to have more accessible outreach for the public through projects like artistic expression. Art is a more universal platform for people to interpret data on big-picture topics for people who may not grasp complex scientific topics, she said. In addition, Graham invited many of the experts in attendance to reach out to herself and others to help them understand and interpret these topics so they can take them to the public.

The event also included free tours on April 30 of several Boundary area water management and protection initiatives, including the solar aquatics system in Christina Lake, flood management in Grand Forks and crop irrigation in Midway.

https://www.grandforksgazette.ca/local-news/grand-forks-forum-on-watershed-brings-many-voices-7984943?mc_cid=d394dc765c&mc_eid=30488675cb