Working within Environment Canada’s Species at Risk, Emergency Protection Orders and Critical Habitat designations can be a challenge for farmers and ranchers, but it can be done to everyone’s satisfaction.

The dry conditions last year left a number of people looking for additional water sources for their livestock.

The same was true for the Claydon Grazing Co-op in Southwest Saskatchewan.

The challenge on one of their sites was it had an Emergency Protection Order and was considered critical habitat for Species at Risk.

Craig Dumontel is one of the patrons in the Co-op and says they had a couple of working agreements with SODCAP (the South of the Divide Conservation Action Program) and asked them to help work through the Environment Canada restrictions to create a water source on that parcel of land.

“For one water project, we were six months on the phone. Thank goodness again for Christa and their outfit SODCAP because they did a lot of the legwork back and forth between us and Environment Canada. If we had to correspond directly with Environment Canada, I think while I know we would have had to give the project up, we would have quit because it was hard enough to get anywhere with the project.”

He says SODCAP was able to work with Environment Canada freeing up producers in the Co-op to continue with their everyday tasks.

He notes they ended up putting in a narrow trench for a 3200-foot pipeline from a spring in another area of the pasture and moving water to the site which has worked out great.