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Penticton  

Purchase protects wetlands

A parcel of land in a birder's paradise near Oliver has been secured by the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

The 36.4-hectare property is located in an expanse of wetland near the Okanagan River and is an important acquisition because so much of the valley bottom has been lost to development and agriculture, said Barb Pryce, the Southern Interior program director with the conservancy.

"Finding a parcel that's 90 acres in size is quite a rarity in the south Okanagan and that's why it's so important," she said.

Less than 15 per cent of the valley bottom remains wetlands.

The long-billed curlew, yellow-breasted chat and bobolink, all designated as species at risk in Canada, are found in the area.

Pryce said part of the farmland will remain in hay production because the dapper-looking bobolink songbird uses the grassland as a breeding ground. Grasslands are rare and cover less than one per cent in the province, she noted.

Pryce said the conservancy and Ducks Unlimited Canada, which co-owns the land, will start a restoration program on the property soon.

The land is criss-crossed with old oxbows, or wetland channels, that have been cut off from the Okanagan River since the river was straightened in the 1950s to control flooding.

"You can see them from Google imagery. We'll likely be excavating those parts of the land," she said, adding that they will plant vegetation natural to the area, such as cottonwood, dogwood and willow trees.

The groups don't plan to link the oxbows back to the Okanagan River itself. Pryce said they dug out the channels on a similar restoration project just south of the property and within minutes water was rising out of the oxbows and the next day they were full.

"A day or two after that we had waterfowl swimming on these places. It's really amazing how nature wants to revert back to its natural condition."



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