The public comment period for the Lower Kootenay Band and Retallack partnership adventure tourism proposal closes on Sunday, July 15,
The proposal involves a 45 year license of occupation in the Purcell Mountains, encompassing some 71,000 hectares, for the purpose of conducting various guided adventure tourism activities year round.
The proposed location is on the east side of Kootenay Lake, south of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy.
The yaqan nu?kiy is one of six bands that make up the Ktunaxa Nation. Historically and since time immemorial, the yaqan nu?kiy were the original inhabitants of the Lower Kootenay area.
Retallack is based in Nelson, BC and provides backcountry catskiing, snowboarding, and mountain biking adventures in the Selkirk Mountains. They also operate an 11,000-square-foot lodge north of Nelson.
yaqan nuʔkiy and Retallack have issued a press release saying that based on public feedback to the proposal to date, several amendments to it have been identified, however they will not be making those amendments public until the comment period closes.
“After the conclusion of the public and government comment period, the proponents have committed to review all directly received public comments or summary comments that are made available to the proponents by the Province,” the release says. “From there, the proponents are committed to identifying and proposing future project amendments. In particular, the amendments will reflect usage statistics and additional proposals to further reduce potential helicopter impacts to wildlife and local residents in surrounding communities. This had been one of the concerns voiced by Wildsight and others at public meetings earlier this spring.
“When the review has been completed, any resulting new amendments (including new high resolution maps) will be published alongside the project’s currently proposed management plan and maps located at https://arfd.gov.bc.ca/ApplicationPosting/viewpost.jsp?PostID=54966.”