Watershed Management

The Goal of the BRWA’s Watershed Management Planning (WMP) process is to work with watershed residents, stakeholders, and decision-makers to develop recommendations for the management of land, water, and biodiversity in our watersheds. The BRWA will then support collaborative efforts to put these recommendations into practice.

Our watershed management work is guided by the Land & Water Committee, and includes three main focus areas:

Reporting on the State of the Watershed,
Creating a Watershed Management Plan, divided into 12 Planning Components, and
Implementing the recommendations of the plan.

State of the Watershed

The first step in watershed management is knowing and reporting on the state of our watersheds. “Our Battle: State of the Battle River and Sounding Creek Watersheds” was published in 2011. More recently, we’ve developed an updated “Health in the Watershed” Atlas that incorporates various indicators of ecological, community, and public health.

By monitoring changes in our watersheds over time, we can determine if watershed management actions are achieving the desired outcomes set out in our recommendations.

See our State of the Watershed Page for more information.

Planning Components

Once we know where we are, we can see where we want to go. The BRWA’s vision to build a healthy and resilient watershed can be achieved by following recommendations in our Watershed Management Plan. Our plan is broken into 12 planning components, which fall under the 4 broad categories of water quality, water quantity, land management, and biodiversity.

See our Planning Components Page for more information.

Implementation

Our plans are not meant to sit on a shelf; they are designed to be implemented. Our 12 planning components all have suggestions for actions to improve the health of our watersheds. We are committed to working with the people who live, work, and play in our watersheds to put these plans into action.

See our Implementation page for more information.

Land & Water Committee

The purpose of the Committee is to be a collaboration that will braid Indigenous culture, traditional ecological knowledge, science, and technical and local expertise to guide stewardship of land, water and biodiversity in the Battle River and Sounding Creek watersheds.

The outcome will be to support the establishment of shared priorities and ensure broad stakeholder and community involvement to inform BRWA’s work in state of the watershed monitoring & reporting and watershed management planning & implementation.

Current funding: Alberta Ecotrust Foundation | Funding announcement

We are grateful for new grant funding from the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, which will help advance Indigenous co-leadership in watershed management across the Battle River and Sounding Creek watersheds. The grant will also support further development of the biodiversity and land management components of the BRWA’s watershed management plan. By bringing together Indigenous Nations and other watershed partners we are strengthening relationships, sharing knowledge, and working toward a more resilient and sustainable watershed for future generations.

Three Layers of Sustainability Diagram. Showing the environment as the base, then society, then economy.

A Social-Ecological Approach

Watershed resiliency recognizes three key building blocks of our watershed: our environment, our society, and our economy. Our environment — this watershed, the place we call home — is the foundation upon which our communities and economy rest. A healthy natural environment supports vibrant communities and a viable economy over the long term. Our use of resources must be compatible with the capacity of ecosystems to provide ecological goods and services. In this way, we support the social-ecological resilience of our watersheds.