Valerie Maida
Sustainable agriculture practices are becoming increasingly prevalent, with more and more farmers each year implementing environmentally-friendly strategies to conserve water, promote healthy soil, and reduce their impact on surrounding natural spaces.
Practices like watering with drip hoses and using drought-tolerant ground cover crops are becoming the norm in the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys.
Some growers are furthering their commitment to sustainability by participating in the Wildlife Habitat Steward program with Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship (OSS).
Wildlife Habitat Stewards work to care for natural areas in and around their farms, promoting biodiversity and helping conserve important wildlife habitats. In return, they receive recognition, advice, and technical support from OSS for this commitment.
Being a Wildlife Habitat Steward does not mean that these growers must make drastic changes to their production.
Over 50 orchardists and viticulturists currently work with OSS to implement best management practices for wildlife while maintaining all land use rights and decisions, and often these practices benefit the farm as well. Just like every farm is different, stewardship practices on each farm will also be different, ranging from planting native trees and shrubs, to encouraging nesting birds, to retaining untouched habitat.
Restoring natural areas is one way that OSS often helps stewards improve habitats around their farm. Many times planting happens around creeks and sloughs, as restoring these riparian habitats (the strips of land along streams, rivers, lakes and ponds) has a host of benefits for humans, farms, and animals.
A healthy replanted riparian area filters fertilizers and sediment from ground runoff, keeping water cleaner. Plant roots in the habitat also hold the soil together to reduce erosion and high stream flows during spring runoff. Natural areas provide habitat for efficient native pollinators like mason bees and predatory insects such as praying mantids.
Sometimes, restoring habitat can have additional positive effects, like at Ranbir and Shinder Kambo’s cherry orchard in Osoyoos. In 2009, they partnered with OSS to help re-excavate and restore a wetland in their orchard that had been filled by previous owners. A few removed cherry trees later (and many replanted native trees and shrubs), the pond was complete and is now home to many species, including threatened Painted Turtles and Great Basin Spadefoots.
This is obviously a huge benefit to wildlife, but the Kambos found that their cherry yield actually increased despite the removed cherry trees because the large amount of water in the orchard helped regulate the surrounding air temperature and reduced the impact from late season frosts.
Consciously caring for wildlife habitat around a farm nearly always has positive effects.
LEED-certified Tantalus Vineyards in Kelowna has a significant Integrated Pest Management program. They strive to be insecticide-free and have numerous bird boxes scattered throughout the vineyards for insect-eating birds like bluebirds and swallows.
The abundance of insect-eating birds almost certainly provides a level of insect control that would be difficult to achieve otherwise; a single family of swallows will eat up 2,000 insects per day. In addition, several tall roosting posts are installed in the vineyards to provide vantage points from which birds-of-prey can hunt for rodents.
Tantalus Vineyards also preserves a 10-acre section of low-elevation forest habitat that provides a corridor through which wildlife can move safely, instead of coming into conflict with vineyard workers.
Leaving a natural area untouched is a simple and highly effective way to care for wildlife habitat.
The Venables and Brindamours of Forbidden Fruit Winery in Cawston do just this. They have one of the healthiest remaining Black Cottonwood forests in the Similkameen Valley, in addition to a large tract of beautiful sagebrush-steppe grassland. Recognizing the value of these areas, they have left them intact, providing habitat to all matter of local wildlife from rattlesnakes to the endangered Yellow-breasted Chat and Western Screech-owl.
As sustainable agriculture practices continue to grow in popularity and importance, so too does the importance of caring for natural habitats.
Initiatives like Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship’s Wildlife Habitat Steward program can help farmers implement wildlife-friendly practices while still maintaining all land use rights and decisions. For more information about OSS, or to inquire about becoming a Wildlife Habitat Steward, contact them at info@osstewardship.ca or 2507701467. ν
Valerie Maida works for the Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship Society. Learn more at www.osstewardship.ca