The Dumont Creek Watershed, recognized as a provincial Class 2 watershed, is under serious threat due to Slocan Integral Forestry Cooperative’s (SIFCo) proposed commercial logging and road building activities. Over 40 households get their water from Dumont Creek. Wildlife depends on it, including the species-at-risk Western Painted Turtle.

Vital to our community, these landscapes are often vulnerable to industrial forestry operations, road construction and heavy equipment use, causing destructive soil compaction, rutting, creek silting, sediment deposits, and dangerous landslides.

The consequent removal of forest cover and vegetation adversely impacts the ecological balance, crucial to both the flora and fauna who call this place home. The construction of haul roads, bladed trails, culverts, ditching, landings, and gravel beds laid across marsh and wetlands providing access for logging trucks, and the use of equipment skidding, feller-bunchers, grapplers, and loaders, can be harmful to watersheds and affect the quality, quantity, and flow of its water.

The quality and availability of fresh water, a precious resource, depend on the health of these Slocan Valley watersheds. We must take immediate action to prevent further harm to our watershed’s environment and sustain the Dumont Creek Watershed for future generations.

Act now, please sign this petition to protect the Dumont Creek Watershed from SIFCo’s proposed commercial logging activities.

Sifco recently received a MoF Section 52 permit for logging and road building activities within the Dumont Creek Watershed by the District Manager for the Selkirk Forest District. This permit would allow Sifco to access approximately 100 hectares of primary forest which creates a natural buffer zone for the watershed. It encircles the Paradise Valley sub-basin and includes access to Paradise Valley Ridge. This important buffer zone is the only Crown Land left standing that is not being actively and commercially harvested for wood. It must be protected.

Sifco’s proposed logging and road building activities will cause further impacts and degradation to a watershed that is already seriously challenged by climate change stressors, a reduced snowpack, and creeks, springs, ponds, seeps, marsh, and wetlands that have been drying up earlier each year.

Any further disturbance to the watershed is a concern for local residents, and over 40 downstream households who get their water directly from Dumont Creek which drains the entire watershed. This creek has been reduced to a trickle in the later summer and fall months. (See photo above)

Living Lakes Canada, a watershed advocacy group, has been monitoring Dumont Creek and their data reports very low flows and is a cause of concern.

In 2019 a previous petition was sent to SIFCo opposing their commercial logging and road building plans that garnered 37 signatures from local residents, but it was ignored.

A “Cease and Desist” order was drafted by our lawyer. It was also ignored.

Since 2016 SIFCo has received a total of 2.2 million dollars from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC for conducting ‘wildfire mitigation’ work within their Community Forest Agreement tenure. 

In 2023 SIFCo received $500,000 from the BC Government through the FESBC for ‘wildfire mitigation’ treatments for the Dumont Creek Watershed. 

Since 2017 SIFCo received $1,178,056 dollars in public money from the Columbia Basin Trust.

SIFCo recently received another grant for $593,000 from the BC Government for ‘wildfire mitigation’. 

However, no funding has been made available to protect our Slocan Valley communities access to clean and abundant drinking water. Maintaining healthy watersheds play an important role in “fire mitigation”. 

The petitioners don’t believe that public monies should also be used to subsidize SIFCo’s proposed commercial logging and road building activities within public, consumptive watersheds.

Building additional roads within the watershed will encourage activities such as access for hunting, firewood poaching, ATV’s, snowmobiling, skiing, and other recreational use.

The undersigned landowners, residents, and the Slocan Valley general community are concerned about protecting our watersheds. They are adamantly opposed to Sifco’s commercial logging and road building activities carried out within the Dumont Creek Watershed.

P.S. ALL donations go to Change.org, not the petition organizers.