The Nicola Watershed Community Round Table is urging Nicola Valley residents to venture to the Laurie Guichon Memorial Grasslands Interpretive Site so they can better understand and appreciate their surroundings.
“The grasslands site has been our project right from the start,” said Jill Sanford, one of the non-profit organization’s directors. “It was opened in memory of Laurie Guichon, a local rancher who was very involved and was the original chairman of the round table. The Guichon family, they’re very involved with holistic ranch management, they’re very involved with care for the environment.”
The purpose of the memorial site “is to educate residents of the watershed and visitors about the significance of the interior grasslands,” according to the organization’s website.
“We want people to learn about the grasslands, and that’s what this is all about. [The signs] show the importance of the grasslands to the ecosystem and how it is an integral part of the economic fabric of the Nicola watershed,” she said.
Sanford said the group wants to encourage locals to visit the site to learn about and appreciate the grasslands they live in and around.
“There’s about 300 people who visit there [each year], and nearly everybody who signs the visitor log is from out of country (Europe, the U.S.) or the Lower Mainland,” Sanford said, noting it’s possible locals visit but don’t sign the guest book. “Very few people from Merritt sign it. I don’t know if they don’t go there, but very few Nicola Valley people sign it.”
The Nicola Watershed Community Round Table is urging Merrittonians and residents of the Nicola Valley to visit the site to sign the guest book. Emily Wessel/Herald
The site opened in 2001 and is maintained by volunteers.
“We have volunteers who go there and make sure there’s paper in the outhouses and that they’re clean and that the garbage is picked up and that kind of thing. We weed — constantly,” Sanford said.
The group recently put new gravel on the path from Lundbom Lake Road up to the interpretive site, thanks in part to the subcontractors working in the area, who donated some gravel and did the work to lay it on the path.
“We’ve got new pathways now and the weeding’s been done, and we just thought it was about time we remind the citizens of Merritt that it’s there,” she said.
Laurie Guichon was a fourth-generation rancher in the Nicola Valley of the historic Gerard Guichon Ranch and husband of Lt.-Gov. Judy Guichon. He was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1999.
The round table derives its name from hosting community forums on issues impacting the Nicola watershed, a 720,000-hectare area that runs east from Spences Bridge to Pennask Lake and south from Logan Lake and Stump Lake to Brookmere. The area includes the Nicola and Coldwater Rivers, and Nicola, Pennask, Douglas and Stump Lakes.
“The general idea of the round table was set up so people in the Nicola Valley could get educated, listen to different points of view and make informed decisions,” Sanford said.
The site is located off of Lundbom Lake Road, about 11 kilometres southeast of Merritt on Highway 5A/97C.
