Listen to the broadcast version of this story, which aired on Kootenay Morning on July 17, 2026:
By Jaime Frederick, Local Journalism Initiative
Anyone who lived in the East or West Kootenays in the 2010s will remember the rallies and calls to “Keep Jumbo Wild” that echoed through communities, in opposition to the development of a proposed ski resort in critical grizzly bear habitat in the Purcell Mountains.
Now, those efforts to protect the environmentally sensitive and culturally important area, known as Qat’muk to the local Ktunaxa First Nations, may finally be formalized by the province. Earlier this month, the government of BC announced that conservation planning processes are currently underway to preserve 70,000 hectares of land northeast of Kootenay Lake and west of Invermere.
The president of the Ktunaxa Nation Council, Kathryn Teneese, says the government’s announcement is the result of many years of pressure from the Ktunaxa and allies who are interested in protecting the area from development.
“This is a culmination of decades of work on the part of the Ktunaxa and like-minded neighbours who helped us do the work to ensure that we do keep that area preserved as close to pristine as we can,” said Teneese. “We realize that things have occurred there, but at the same time we know that we don’t want to have any permanent development there, and want to leave the place as a legacy for future generations.”
If approved, a Qat’muk conservation area could connect Bugaboo Provincial Park in the north with the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy in the south. It would also support species at risk, healthy watersheds, grizzly bear habitat and stands of whitebark pine.
The planning process will commence with public engagements this fall, and Teneese says she’s cautiously optimistic that the government is finally serious about establishing a protected cultural area in the Qat’muk.
“We know that politics sometimes doesn’t behave the way that we would like it to, but we’re hopeful, and I think the fact that it has been said out loud… to me, that will allow us and our like-minded supporters to be able to hold the government accountable to what it is that they’re saying.”
Robyn Duncan, executive director of Wildsight, an environmental organization that has been working alongside the Ktunaxa for years in the movement to protect the Qat’muk, agrees.
“You know, sometimes good things take a long time and of course, many of us would have loved to have seen this come to conclusion at an earlier timeline,” said Duncan. “And many people have devoted countless hours and months and years working towards the protection of this area. But if, in the end, we get permanent protection of this incredible place, I think we’ll all have cause to celebrate.”
For their part, the government says the engagement process is necessary to gather information from First Nations and other stakeholders. BC’s Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, Randene Neill, says consulting with the public will allow stakeholders to determine exactly what sort of protections might be required in the area.
“There’s lots of people in the area where they want to make sure they don’t lose access to this area, and that’s a big part of it,” said Neill “We want people to continue to enjoy the outdoors, get out into those areas. We know when people spend a lot of time outdoors, they fall in love with it. And when you fall in love with something, you want to take care of it. So that engagement is really important to do. And the eventual protection, or types of protection, we don’t know yet. But we have parks, we can do conservancies. There’s different options. So really all of that is part of the discussion and engagement as well.”
Asked if the timing of the news, on the heels of a pipeline deal between the Government of Canada and the Governments of Alberta and British Columbia, was in any way intended to rehabilitate her government’s environmental image, Neill said the conservation planning in the Qat’muk, along with similar initiatives announced for the Skagit Headwaters and the Raush Valley, is simply a step toward meeting the government’s stated goal of protecting 30 per cent of provincial landmass by 2030.
“We are going to reach that goal,” she said. “We may even reach it ahead of time. So… the announcement about the Qat’muk and the other two areas, Raush and Skagit, are things that we’ve been working on for a long time as we move through the process of getting ready for engagement. So this is work that I take incredibly seriously. We know that we need to protect at least 30 per cent of our province to maintain the current biodiversity levels that we have.”
All parties have encouraged the public to take part in the engagement process when it opens later this year.
