60 Years Defending Wild Alberta

March 31, 2025

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It was time to take action.

By Vivian Pharis, with the help of Sameer Dossa and Melissa Tierney.

Read the PDF version here.

 

It all started around a kitchen table.

It was 1965 and a group of folks gathered to discuss how Alberta’s land policy was destroying, not preserving, the province’s public wild spaces. It was time to take action. Floyd and Karen Stromstedt, Marian and Bill Michalsky, and Steve and Helen Dixon started speaking out, gaining support from local farmers, teachers and community leaders interested in conserving Alberta’s wildlife and its habitat. In 1968, during a meeting in Lundbreck, local outfitter and rancher William (Willie) Michalsky became AWA’s first president. The presidency and board of directors was then, as it is now – voluntary.

In 1969 AWA incorporated and began seeking new, broader ways to raise awareness about the state of Alberta’s wilderness, and to spread a message through the media and its own publications and through participation in community and government meetings and programs. AWA’s goals are today what they were in 1965: protection of Alberta’s wild lands, wildlife and watersheds. Its work is to communicate these goals with the public, sister conservation groups, government and industry, as well as through education programs that connect Albertans to wild spaces and encourage increasing numbers of people to speak out in their defence. Passion, integrity and participation are seen as key to this advocacy work.

Relationships allow AWA to assume what may be ambitious projects requiring local support, partnership cooperation and a committed volunteer base for success.

Mirroring the past

It seems ironic that, as AWA steps into its 60th year of conservation efforts, the organization faces the same major challenge it started with: defending the Eastern Slopes. When AWA first got going, the organization prepared for the Eastern Slopes hearings that would set a framework to conserve the Rockies and their foothills. Work began in 1970 – volunteers talked directly with community members to learn what people thought best for the future of the region.

AWA found the means to hire a writer to consolidate people’s collected ideas into two books to present at the formal Eastern Slopes hearings in 1973. The hearings were well attended, and their recommendations strongly favoured conservation of wildlife habitats, watersheds and aesthetic values. They led to many areas being zoned for protection in the ensuing 1977 Eastern Slopes Policy. The hearings were a significant success for a fledgling group’s first undertaking. AWA’s forward thinking approach based on vision, communication, sound science and determination, became the organization’s modus operandi since proving its worth in this first major public undertaking — one we are determined to repeat in the current fight to defend the Eastern Slopes.