A local rancher and business owner has recently been awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
The Canadian government had established the King Charles III Coronation Medal in honour of the King's recent Coronation and is awarded to those who have made significant contributions to Canada, their community, or fellow citizen.
Thane Hurlburt co-owns Hurlburt Rock Products and is the GM, Owner/Director of Hurlburt Ranch, and is a recent medal recipient.
When Hurlburt first heard that he was being presented with the Coronation Medal, he wasn't initially sure why he was selected.
"I had no idea. I had no idea what it was for. There's a few things I've done, so your mind, kind of, starts going a little bit crazy in so far as what was this for? Was it for this? Was it for that?" Hurlburt explains.
The email he received from the Alberta government's Environment and Protected Areas ministry in January stated that his exemplary citizenship and stewardship was being recognized with the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
"So, it didn't tell me anything."
When he thought about why he was awarded the medal, a few thoughts came into his mind.
"There'd been a couple things, environmentally, that I was thinking they might be interested in."
The first was that he had developed, built, and operated a biogas cogeneration plant in Lethbridge, which opened in 2012.
The plant creates electricity from manure and other organic wastes.
Hurlburt's partnership group, which was involved with that biogas cogeneration plant, sold it in 2022, but the plant is still producing electricity.
The second idea that came to his mind involved his ranch.
"We ranch also here, west of Fort Macleod, and about ten years ago, I was getting fed up with all the herbicides that we were using for weed control. Because, number one, we're right along the Oldman River. Number 2, there is an old railway line running through our property, and number three we're in the sand and gravel business, always disturbing the earth. All of these pointing to weeds and everything else."
About ten years ago, they got goats to help take care of the weeds, and now they have roughly 700 goats to eat the weeds, so they don't have to spray as many herbicides.
"That's been very effective."
The third option that Hurlburt thought could have gotten him the Coronation Medal involved his work as the chair of the Oldman Dam Downstream Stakeholders Guild.
The Guild was formed in 2013 to help improve the communication between the government and landowners downstream of the Oldman River Dam about high water and floods along the Oldman River.
"We did a lot of work with Alberta Environment, and it ended up getting to the point that we were the first non-governmental organization that was on all of the safety-call lists and notification lists and everything else, and then we would notify our members and keep them abreast of high water and what was going on."
The Guild's main key was about high water and communication, so people along the river could have a warning if high water was heading their way.
But, over the past several years when the conversations turned to drought instead of flooding, the Guild set up a group that worked along Willow Creek and started monitoring how much water was flowing, and how much water was being let out of the Pine Coulee reservoir, because it was low.
After getting contacted by Alberta Environment, they ran a Plan Diversion Tracking Program for the irrigators along Willow Creek.
As part of the Tracking Program, irrigators along Willow Creek voluntarily report to the Guild's representatives that they are going to turn on their irrigation pumps, three days prior to actually turning on the pumps, and call in again three days prior to them turning off their irrigation pumps.
"Then, every night, we put that information on a spreadsheet and give it to Alberta Environment, and they use this information to make some proactive decisions on how much water to let out of Pine Coulee Dam, instead of reactive decisions that they were doing before that."
That program ran in 2023 and 2024, and Hurlburt is hoping they will do it again this year.
With the information that is being gathered, they have a rough idea of how much water is needed in Willow Creek when irrigators turn on their pumps.
Because they open Pine Coulee dam to let more water out of the reservoir and into Willow Creek when water is needed, having a better understanding of just how much water they need to release is beneficial.
Especially because the Pine Coulee Reservoir also supplies several communities, such as Claresholm, with water.
Hurlburt says that because of this program, in 2022, when water was getting precious in the reservoir, they were able to be precise enough with their water to still be able to irrigate several weeks later into the season before the irrigation had to get shut down.
It was for his work with the Guild and the Plan Diversion Tracking Program that Hurlburt was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
He was nominated for the medal by people that he worked with.
"For me, anyways, it wasn't a matter of making money off of it or doing anything, it was just a matter of helping all of my neighbours up along Willow Creek," Hurlburt explains. "It just seemed like the natural and correct thing to do, so you don't ever anticipate that you're going to be recognized for doing this work. It just comes natural."
Hurlburt says that he is extremely humbled by this medal, and he feels like it should have gone to the whole Oldman Dam Downstream Stakeholders Guild.
"I'm not an extreme, radical environmentalist. I'm just a regular guy who loves the land and wants to take care of it."