RIPARIAN HEALTH ACTION PLAN – PHASE 2
In September of 2021, the NSWA’s Riparian Conservation and Restoration Strategy was approved by the Steering Committees of the Headwaters Alliance and Sturgeon River Alliance. In this strategy, the NSWA worked with the committees to set an interim Riparian Health Target of a minimum of 65% High Intactness and no more than 25% low intactness. These targets are scalable and apply at multiple levels: watershed, subwatershed, waterbody and political jurisdiction (e.g. municipal boundary).
In 2021, we partnered with other Alberta Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils to develop Riparian Condition Municipal Summaries, which integrate data from multiple subwatersheds to deliver municipal-specific report cards. These reports are being presented to municipal councils from January to June 2022.
Coming Soon: The NSWA is currently working on a few tools that can be used to guide riparian management:
- Recommendations for riparian policy and by-laws for municipalities
- Identification of landowner types (e.g. agriculture, industry, municipal, urban) of riparian areas assessed which will help focus programs and resources for riparian conservation and restoration
- Guidance on appropriate setbacks from water bodies to protect riparian areas based on the Government of Alberta’s Stepping Back from the Water: A beneficial management practices guide for new development near water bodies in Alberta’s settled regions (2012)
- Riparian restoration scenarios through modelling
Funding Acknowledgements:
Funding for Phase 2 of the Riparian Health Action Plan has been provided through the Alberta Government’s Watershed Resiliency and Restoration Program.
RESOURCES
- A Jurisdictional Review of Riparian Targets by the Environmental Law Centre: Riparian Targets in Law and Policy: A jurisdictional review (2021)
- Legal Foundations for Municipal Riparian Management by the Environmental Law Centre (2023)
- North Saskatchewan River Watershed Riparian Conservation and Restoration Strategy (2021)
- Riparian Condition Municipal Summary Reports
NEXT STEPS – PHASE 3
What did we do in Phase 1?
