Rivers West Red River Corridor will shut down for good after celebrating Canada's 150th birthday this July. Rivers West was incorporated back in 1999 to facilitate and encourage sustainable tourism, culture, economic development and conservation in communities north and south of Winnipeg along the Red River Corridor.

Just over ten years ago Rivers West prompted the Canadian Heritage Rivers designation of the Red River by the federal government. Since than it has developed curriculum guides, tourism brochures, interpretive guides, and has helped and encouraged its communities with development ideas and plans.

President of Rivers West, Wayne Arseny, said it's very unfortunate; all the towns and communities along the Red River have been involved for years.

"We've been faced with the reality that there is no provincial funding coming our way, we attempted to sustain operations last year with contributing membership from all the towns and Municipalities. That basically was a stop cap situation, we need core funding to continue the mission of Rivers West.

Arseny added that many current projects like floating docks and enhancing tourism opportunities will be left uncompleted, noting programs like The Amazing Tree Quest will be missed as well.

"We gave up our office after funding continued to decrease year after year. so we were basically running with a executive director with a pay as needed basis. We did have summer staff that worked on our projects, those students will not be able to come back this year and the Executive Director will basically doing housekeeping now."

Arseny continued by saying the organization has some grant money they will use to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday on the river and that will be the end of operations. Elements of the organizations strategic plan and mandate will be given to any Rivers West members and promotional materials will be distributed to agencies and organizations.