Okanagan Mountain Park will expand thanks to $4 million in donations

It took two extra weeks but the entire $4 million has now been raised to buy 151.7 acres of private land and add it to Okanagan Mountain Park.

“The purchase helps support and kick off a larger campaign by the Okanagan Nation Alliance and the Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program to create a wildlife corridor that runs 65 kilometres to Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park,” the BC Parks Foundation website says. “That is part of a larger vision to continue a corridor down into Washington State.”

The public fundraising campaign was launched in early July with a July 15 deadline to raise the final $650,000 to buy the waterfront land north of Rattlesnake Island.

The deadline was extended and the campaign reached its goal yesterday, July 31.

READ MORE: Here’s your chance to help expand Okanagan Mountain Park

“I wanted to give special thanks to Colin Pritchard for his passion and active involvement in contributing and raising funds, the Wilson 5 Foundation, and to special donors Cynthia and Paul Rodgers, who helped carry it across the finish line,”  Andy Day, CEO of BC Parks Foundation, said on the website. “We also want to thank our partners at the Central Okanagan Land Trust, Southern Interior Land Trust, Okanagan Nation Alliance, BC Parks, and Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program.”

"This property is one of the key remaining private properties left along Okanagan Lake,” Scott Boswell, Program manager at Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program said on the website. “Studies over the last 16 years have shown a steady decline of natural areas around the lake. With continued development, we would see the loss of all natural areas around the lake within a generation or two.

“Protecting this property is so important for the entire region because it is one of the large fragments that we need to include into the park and to the connectivity to the other parks in the region as well."

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