B.C. gets $10-million windfall to protect Flathead River Valley

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Photo courtesy wikipedia.org

The Globe and Mail is reporting that, “Two leading conservation groups have come up with $10 million in funding to help protect a wilderness valley in British Columbia that President Barack Obama has long urged Canada to save.

Mr. Obama first called for the protection of the Flathead River Valley, in southeast B.C., in 2008, when he was seeking the Democratic nomination and wanted to garner support in Montana, where the governor was lobbying the province to ban coal mining in the watershed. The Flathead River flows south into a protected area in Montana.

The president’s interest helped prompt B.C. and Montana, on the eve of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) outlining plans to protect the valley. But it wasn’t until Friday that the final piece of that agreement fell into place, with an announcement that Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Nature Conservancy (a separate U.S. group with a similar name) had secured $10 million in funding for the Flathead project.

Although mining and petroleum developments are banned from the area, other sustainable activities will be allowed, including hunting, fishing and forestry.

Bill Bennett, community minister for B.C. and MLA for the region, said he is pleased that “human use will continue to be part of the sustainable future of the Flathead.”

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