The Alberta Emerald Foundation showcases those who are working at the top of their game to address environmental challenges. In June 2026, the 35th Annual Emerald Awards recognized another round of excellent award recipients, which included some friends of OWC—read on to find out who!
The Oldman watershed is a big place, and our staff of 12 work hard to have the biggest positive effect on as many places as possible. We sometimes focus our work on specific areas, begging the question: how does OWC make a tangible difference to the drinking water in communities many kilometres away?
What is nature worth? It’s a question that’s impossible to answer. But we can put a price tag on the services provided by nature (think things like filtering water, reducing the effects of floods and droughts, providing wildlife habitat, and giving us humans spaces for recreation). Here’s how.
We’re excited to announce that the Oldman Watershed Council's (OWC) Ecosystem Services Value Calculator is live and ready to use! This innovative tool, built with the help of Green Analytics, makes it possible to estimate the annual dollar value of the services provided by a piece of land in Alberta.
Like a river with many tributaries that join to form a larger body of water, the OWC is made up of many pieces. Maybe you’ve seen OWC planting willows or taking water samples from a creek, or spoken to us at events throughout the watershed—but what makes all this work possible? As a charitable non-profit organization, where does our funding come from, and how do we make decisions? What do we do to help communities and ecosystems in the watershed? To answer these questions, we’re taking a peek behind the curtains at OWC.
