Huankwa Lake to be at the centre of B.C.’s newest provincial park
By Robert Koopmans
Kamloops Daily News July 10, 2000

In the afternoon sun, Hunakwa Lake glistens like a blue jewel, the light dancing off the tips of waves as the wind pushes the surface into gently breaking swells.

Jim Cooperman sits on the shore beneath the tight cover of trees and glances down the lake’s three-kilometre length, soaking in the tranquility of the wilderness surrounding the pristine body of water.

Trees line the shores to the waterline on all sides. And they will stay there forever, something that a few years ago might have been difficult to guarantee. It’s expected the government will confirm Hunakwa Lake as the centre of one of B.C.’s newest provincial parks. The borders have been drawn, Cooperman says, and barring some obscure act of political intervention, the area will likely get park status by late November.

The proposed park encompasses roughly 7,000 hectares of land around Hunakwa and Wright lakes, located to the north of Anstey Arm. It will also embrace the shoreline of Anstey Arm, surrounding the sound in a horsehoe-shaped parcel of land extending at some places only 300 metres up from the shore. Cooperman says the proposed park will sufficiently protect the view so clearcuts won’t be visible from the water. “It’s wonderful to know it will all be protected,” he says. Cooperman is the president of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society and a long time proponent of a park on the Anstey peninsula. He says the struggle to get the park was long, at times bitter, but worth the effort.

The Anstey peninsula – a point of land that juts into the north side of Shuswap Lake and surrounds Hunakwa and Wright lakes- has long been the centre of a divisive battle between foresters and environmentalists. For years debate raged as loggers tried to access the thousands of hectares of prime forest on the peninsula. Federated Co-Operative Ltd. of Salmon Arm, a logging company, held the timber rights to the area.

The land battle reached a fevered pitch in 1998 after the company proposed a logging road up the middle of Anstey Arm to get to prime pockets of timber near the peninsula’s tip. Environmentalists threatened civil disobedience to keep the road from being built. In the end, forest district managers ruled the company could log selected areas, but must move the logs by water, not land. As the arguments raged, environmentalists tabled the Anstey provincial park proposal at Okanagan Land Resource Management Plan meetings.

In 1999, the forest district manager said Federated would be allowed to build a logging road on the Anstey peninsula, but it would not be allowed to threaten the proposed park. The road had to skirt Hunakwa and Wright lakes, leaving the adjacent areas untouched. And just weeks ago, a tentative deal outlining a complete Okanagan LRMP was reached. The Anstey park was part of the deal. “I’m very relieved,” Cooperman says. Cooperman almost floats down the trail from the north end of Anstey Arm as he leads a small group of people to the lake. He points to moss hanging from the branches of towering cedar trees and ferns growing thick on each said of the narrow path. He stops and pulls huckleberries from short shrubs and scampers over the deadfalls that hinder passage.

The Anstey peninsula is a rainforest. The park will protect an area typical of much of the flora and fauna of the region, he says. Deer, bears and martin roam the hills while 500-year-old hemlock and cedar trees stand silent sentry.

The proposed park is unique in that it is the only low-elevation body of water in North America that has not been developed in some way. “That’s the really unique thing about this, we’re protecting an ecosystem not found anywhere else,” he says. “The ecosystem is at the same elevation as Salmon Arm.” Many people can take credit for seeing the Anstey peninsula become a park, Cooperman says – from concerned citizens in the 1960s who identified the environ as unique, to the logging company and forest district managers.

“The fact that the area is still there now – we’re thankful to the forest district – they helped maintain the wild character of the area by postponing logging. And we’re thankful to the forest company as well. This is in their operating area. They recognized the value and allowed the park to happen,” he says. Federated will likely get some form of compensation in lieu of the timber it could have logged in the park.

Cooperman says the process of raising a park from the wilderness has just begun. After official designation, a park management plan must be established. That could take years to complete, as there is precious little government money for planning and development these days. He envisions a minimalist kind of park that will preserve the wild character. Perhaps a half dozen campsites around the lake reached only by water and a few interpretative trails. He also thinks it may be possible to cut a trail across the Anstey peninsula past Wright Lake to the Seymour Arm. In the interim, the area will stay as it is – wild, with little access. There are no roads to the lake and Cooperman says that won’t change. Access is via a three-kilometre trail from the shores of Shuswap Lake. Cooperman says the park could become an important draw for tourists, a regional crown jewel. “Anstey Arm itself has quite a wild feel to it,” he says. “I can see the park becoming an important destination for campers and canoeists, much like Myrtle Lake, only smaller.”