By Jessica Alford

Over 500 Canadians attended the Leading Edge Stewardship and Conservation conference in Victoria on July 5, 6 & 7, 2003.

Dozens of seminars covered everything from environmental conservation success stories to the business of land trust organizations to the environmental activities of resource industry, farmers and ranchers. On top of the education, dialogue and celebration, there was an ambitious 10 year goal to articulate and plan the advancement of environmental stewardship in Canada.

Conservationists brought hundreds of examples ofhabitat protection and restoration. Dulcie House came from the Limestone Barrens, a harsh, fragile landscape at the north-western tip of Newfoundland, where delicate grasses struggle to survive amid sand andbedrock.
http://legacynaturetrust.ca

Graham Buck came from the Chatham area of southern Ontario where Nature Conservancy Canada is restoring Clear Creek forest, a rare intact remnant of Carolinian forest.
http://www.natureconservancy.ca

The Pacific Salmon Foundation presented local community stewardshipsalmon recovery initiatives and requested more volunteers come forward to save wild salmon stocks.
http://www.psf.ca/

Farmers, ranchers, fur trappers, agrichemical, forestryand seafood processors also came with presentations of their environmental stewardship success stories. Their view of stewardship has a financial bottom-line; their desire to steward the land is limited by their ability to pay for it.

This lack of money was echoedby the conservationist groups and government departments. The need for long-term core funding of stewardship was the top recommendation presented at the conclusion of the conference from bothresourceusers and conservationists.

The conference delegates used ‘dotmocracy’ to prioritize recommendations byplacing sticky dots on a huge whiteboard beside the issues they thought were most important for the future of stewardship and conservation in Canada. The resource industry sessions also gathered recommendations from participants.

In his address to the delegates, Environment Minister David Anderson promised therecommendationswill beconsidered by the federal government in September, 2003 when they flesh out the draft "Canada’s Stewardship Agenda".

The agenda will also build on recommendations from the report "Securing Canada’s Natural Capital: A Vision for Nature Conservation in the 21st Century" released June 16, 2003 by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE).
http://www.nrtee-trnee.ca

The need for stewardship projects to be driven from the grassroots was a finding in the NRTEE report andwas echoed by resource users and conservationists at the conference. The grassroots common thread ran through the hundreds of successful stewardship stories at the conference. Local land owners, land users and conservationists talk to each other about their conflicting needs and issues. Through dialogue, solutions are found that work for everyone. Government and non-profit organization funding and expertise usually play a critical role, but it is the local grassroots team that gets the job done.

Grassroots success won The Land Conservancy of B.C. (TLC)a Countryside Canada award at the conference. TLC’s "Conservation Partners" program promotes organic produce from farms that protect biodiversity on their land. "There is mentorship between farmers who talk to each other and show each other examples", says Nichola Walkden, program coordinator, "The energy comes from the farming community itself!"

Conservation Partner produce from the Okanagan will soon be found in select organic food stores in Vancouver and at Thrifty Foods on Vancouver Island. The distinctive blue and white label with a viceroy butterflywillalso mark produce from southern Vancouver Island starting next year.

http://www.conservancy.bc.ca/conservationlabels/website/

Conference examples like the Conservation Partners program keenly interested Jordy Pietx, from the Land Stewardship Network in the Catalonian region of Spain. Heritage and cultural sites, many centuries-old small farms and towns, are the focus of stewardship there. Human-modified landscapes, not original wilderness, are the focus for stewardship in Europe. Increasingly human-modified landscapes- farms, ranches and restored habitats in urban settings- arebeing conserved in Canada as well.

Great strides were made in environmental stewardship in Victoria, andby 2006, when the next stewardship conference is held in Newfoundland-Labrador,even greater achievements will be made. The proceedings of the Leading Edge conference will be made available on CD-ROM and an online library of resource materials is already available at the website.

http://www.stewardship2003.ca