🌎  Celebrate Earth Day by giving back to nature!  🌿

This month, help us celebrate Earth Day and join us in protecting the wild places and creatures that make our corner of the world so special. From April 11–28, keep an eye out for our donation boxes at your favourite local hangouts. A small contribution at the till helps support Wildsight Invermere in our mission to safeguard the wetlands, forests, and mountain ecosystems we all depend on.

Your donation supports clean air, clear water, and thriving wildlife. Every dollar makes a difference — and helps keep the wild, wild.

💚  Give a little extra — for nature, for wildlife, for the future.

Imagine a world without waste, where everyone has access to the items they need or want, and yet nothing gets thrown out or left to deteriorate ‘in storage’. This world is based on a circular economy, where items are repaired, reused, repurposed or recycled, and a sharing economy, where items are used to their maximum potential and everyone can benefit from them. 

Brought to you by the Columbia Valley Cycling Society in partnership with Wildsight Invermere and the Summit Trail Makers Society, the summer gear swap is a little taste of that world. This Saturday April 12th at the Columbia Valley Centre, you can sell your surplus summer sports gear and hunt for a bargain at the same time, getting ready for another season of adventures and recreation.

Each year in April, people around the world celebrate our home planet, Earth. It really is a remarkable place. The diversity of life that Earth supports is something we are beyond lucky to be a part of. We know that many people in the Columbia Valley communities truly appreciate this planet and show that in many ways. 

On Saturday April 26th, for ‘Earth Week’, let’s all take a moment together to clean up the little part of Earth that we call home. From 10:30-12:30pm we’ll be at Kinsmen Beach, Invermere with a cleanup station, gloves and buckets/bags. You can pick up litter around Lake Windermere or in your neighbourhood streets, parks or favourite outdoor spaces and drop it off at the cleanup station for a chance to win some great eco-friendly spot prizes donated by local businesses. The grand draw prize is a 2-night stay at Radius Retreat!

Local organizations will have informational booths on how we can stand up for Mother Nature by making positive environmental impacts. Come and learn about protecting our waterways, saving food from going to waste, Invermere’s new compost collection program, and more, while enjoying some Kicking Horse coffee and tasty treats (till they’re gone!).

If you’re outside of Invermere, send us a photo with the garbage you pick up in your area and you’ll also be entered into the Radius Retreat prize draw. Email invermere@wildsight.ca or post a photo on the Facebook event page before 1pm on April 26th.

If you would like to volunteer at the cleanup station or at the Wildsight booth for this event, please contact invermere@wildsight.ca.

It’s election season again. And this time, it feels more consequential than ever.

With threats of tariffs and even annexation coming from the U.S., there’s no shortage of political commotion. But beneath those headlines lie deeper, longer-lasting challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, and the steady erosion of our environment.

These aren’t passing issues. They’re the defining struggles of our time, and they demand our full attention. As you weigh the platforms and promises of each political party, we urge you to prioritize the health of our planet. We can’t afford to pause on cutting emissions, protecting wild spaces, or securing a livable future built on sustainability and ecological respect. These are not luxuries — they're survival strategies.

At Wildsight Invermere, we’re calling on everyone in our community to get involved. Ask candidates tough questions about their climate and environmental policies. Learn where they stand on biodiversity and green economic solutions. And most importantly: VOTE.

• Attend the All Candidates Forum on Tuesday April 15th, 6:30-8:30pm at David Thompson Secondary School, and submit your questions for candidates HERE
• Keep track of all party promises with Global News's Promise Tracker HERE
• The Liberals' current climate platform can be found HERE
• Check out pages 19-21 of the Conservatives' policy declaration HERE
• The NDP releases information about their climate plan HERE.
• The Green Party's climate action plan is HERE

Let’s make sure nature has a voice at the ballot box.

British Columbia has over 600,000 kilometres of resource roads — enough to cross Canada 100 times — built over a century of forestry, oil and gas, and mining activities. Each year, an additional 10,000 kilometres are added. We often access the areas we love via these resource roads but seldom think of their impact. 

Increased road density and recreational use can alter natural landscapes, disturb wildlife with noise, introduce invasive species, and cause soil erosion that degrades streams. These cumulative effects can harm wildlife and their habitats. 

Motorized and non-motorized outdoor activities can disrupt wildlife, leading to population declines and behavioural changes such as displacement from preferred habitats, disrupted feeding and parental care, and long-term effects on reproductive success and population stability. To mitigate these impacts, provincial legislation allows for access restrictions in areas requiring wildlife protection. 

The Province is working to balance backcountry access with environmental conservation. You can help shape how resource roads are managed after resource extraction ends by taking this 10-minute survey before April 27th. 

Before you fill out the survey, we encourage you to read through this short summary we’ve pulled together of what the science tells us about the impacts of resource roads, as well as the various tools at our disposal to manage resource road use into the future.

Thank you to everyone who came out and filled the Wilmer Community Hall for our AGM. It’s always a nice surprise to have to put out more chairs!

It was a short and sweet meeting, culminating in the election of our 2025 Board, including two new Directors: let's give a warm welcome to Kate Bennett and Carla Bitz. With plenty of time to chat and connect afterwards, we reflected on the presentation of 2024 highlights and all that was achieved in one busy year! Our Annual Report is now available to read all about it.

Wildsight Invermere is proud to have over 560 lifetime members; thank you for supporting our work throughout the past 36 years. If you're not sure whether you're officially a member of Wildsight, check the footer of this email; if it says 'Thanks for being a member', then you are! If not, we encourage you to click the 'Become a Member' link to sign up for lifetime membership, or support our work through the 'Donate' link, both at the bottom of the email. We appreciate the ongoing, regular support we receive from members and non-members alike, to help us continue delivering the work in the Columbia Valley highlighted in our Annual Report.

Did you miss the Flowing it Forward event in March? You can read highlights of the presentations and the engaging discussion that followed on water-based recreation, protecting our waterways and aquatic health. Thank you to everyone who attended and participated, sharing your questions, concerns and suggestions.