by Writer & Content Specialist Sarah Moore.
June 2025 was a big month for the Oldman Watershed Council! In addition to taking part in willow planting days, connecting with families at Nature Play Fest, and hosting our Annual General Meeting, we were honoured to receive an Emerald Legacy Award for our proven record of environmental excellence. We are deeply grateful for this recognition of OWC’s work at the forefront of watershed protection. From OWC’s formation in the early 2000s, to our role now as a source of trusted information and a place for collective action, we’ve accomplished a lot! Read on for some of the highlights from the last 20+ years.
OWC’s Emerald Award, as displayed at our 2025 AGM. Photo by Jon Martin.
A Reliable Source of Knowledge
As a watershed planning and advisory council (what’s that?), OWC has a unique role. In a world that’s more and more polarized, we strive to find common ground and seek watershed solutions that work for all of us. This is essential work, and it's how we’ve earned the trust of our community, from agriculture producers and industry to First Nations and municipalities. We don’t take those relationships lightly, and are committed to bringing relevant, timely watershed information to all our partners and stakeholders.
In response to pressing drought concerns in 2023 and 2024, we launched ABwater.ca. The drought-centric website provides news, updates, and comprehensive resources about the situation. Coal mining is another big topic that affects the Oldman watershed; we identified a need for more education and shared detailed, neutral information on our blog (check out our most recent FAQ here). The value of this information is reflected in the number of people following OWC’s work. We have over 700 members, hundreds of partnerships, and thousands of people who follow us on social media, visit our website, and read our blog (like you!). We’re really proud to have built up this community over two decades as we provide leadership rooted in deep engagement.
The OWC at Building Resiliency to Multi-Year Drought workshop in 2024. Photo by Maria Albuquerque.
Listening to Community
In our early days, OWC led several multiyear engagement processes to develop a vision for the watershed and eight priority goals as part of our Integrated Watershed Management Plan and, later, our Headwaters Action Plan. Listening and being responsive to local needs has led to two large and successful education and literacy projects: Engaging Recreationists and Uniting Rural Producers and Urban Consumers.
We started Engaging Recreationists in 2015, with the goal of encouraging and facilitating responsible motorized recreation on public land. This work continues a decade later and has led to the Headwaters Restoration Project; in the last year alone, we talked to 1,330 recreationists at seven public events and targeted backcountry programs. Uniting Rural Producers and Urban Consumers, on the other hand, connects those who are not involved in food production systems, with those who are. It was born out of engagement in 2016–17 with about 150 agricultural producers who identified a need to educate urban consumers about where their food comes from and how it is grown. The OWC’s subsequent nine-episode web series, “OWC: Eats!” amassed over 110,000 views; we also hosted in-person events, like farm-to-table dinners and watershed photography tours. The result was 91% of participants said they had a stronger sense of connection with food growers, 87% said they had more knowledge of food production, and 89% acknowledged the importance of watershed health. This work continues in our Connecting People, Solutions, and Innovations project, which is funded by the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership. These are big wins!
Collaboration with agricultural producers also shows up in OWC’s Watershed Legacy Program, which invests in better management practices so that our watershed can continue to have some of the most productive farmland and ranchland in the world — while improving water quality, storage and biodiversity. Urgent challenges including severe drought, climate extremes, and water security issues have made this project a priority for OWC, particularly since 2023.
Pitching in for Watershed Health
Another way OWC combats drought and boosts water security is with hard work out on the land to restore the watershed using natural infrastructure and nature-based solutions. In 2024 alone, we planted more than 5,000 willows and trees to restore zones around water sources! And in OWC’s entire lifetime, staff and volunteers have stabilized over 80 kilometres of streambank, planted tens of thousands of native trees and shrubs, and installed structures that mimic beaver dams to slow runoff, recharge aquifers, and create habitat. This work protects and restores wetlands and prevents erosion. However, an additional challenge lies in gathering information about the state of the watershed.
Working on the land: taking CABIN samples, planting pollinator-friendly gardens, measuring stream bank depth, and restoring shorelines with willows.
The reality is that the Oldman watershed is lacking in timely monitoring to present a clear picture of the health and state of our water sources and ecosystems. That’s why OWC has stepped up to lead the development of a Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) reference model to monitor aquatic health for the entire eastern slopes of Alberta. This network, overseen federally, is the first of its kind in Alberta and the only one in Canada that is led by a non-profit (us) rather than government. We’re training other organizations and Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils to take field samples to contribute to CABIN (In fact, OWC’s Education Program Manager, Sofie Forsström, is one of the only certified CABIN trainers in the province!). In addition to building capacity, the data from the program shows the impact that OWC’s restoration activities are having over time.
Through a partnership with Living Lakes Canada starting in 2024, OWC also helps monitor groundwater. Multi-year droughts have heightened the need for reliable water sources, particularly in rural communities where dugouts, creeks, and springs have been drying up. How else to get water? Drilling wells. However, there is little information to know where to drill and how much water you might find. By using underground mapping, partners have located potential water sources beneath a community pasture in collaboration with Piikani Nation Land Management. Partners will soon be set up to monitor these nine new wells across three regions — almost doubling the amount of groundwater data monitoring in the Oldman watershed.
To the Next 20 Years!
From engaging with our community and providing trusted information to putting in the work on restoration and monitoring programs, over OWC’s 20+ year history we have punched above our weight. We’re continuing to build partnerships and find solutions to the challenges facing the Oldman watershed, and while we’re proud to have these accomplishments recognized with an Emerald Legacy Award, OWC is just getting started: we are committed to working toward a healthy, resilient watershed where people, wildlife, and habitat thrive.
Photo by Kallie Desruisseaux.
Like all OWC’s blogs, this post was written by a real live human, without the use of generative AI.
