October 8, 1996
By Alanna Mitchell
Alberta Bureau: Globe and Mail
BANFF, Alta. - Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, acting on a blistering study showing that Banff National Park is in crisis, has ordered far-reaching changes including demolition of some developed sites and implementation of visitor quotas in some wilderness areas.
Ms. Copps made public the Banff-Bow Valley Study report yesterday and implemented a handful of its 500 recommendations. She struck a committee to prepare a plan to consider implementation of others.
The federal government commissioned the $2-million study 27 months ago to investigate the environmental health of Canada's oldest and most popular national park. Last year, the 111-year-old park drew five million visitors.
The report says the study, under the chairmanship of Robert Page, dean of environmental design at the University of Calgary, found a park in such serious trouble that it is in danger of failing to retain its status as a national park.
Ms. Copps apparently took this to heart. "Make no mistake, the time for decision is now," she said at a news conference. "The time for action is now."
She announced that no new parcels of land will be made available for commercial development in the park. She ordered closure of the Banff airstrip and removal of the buffalo paddock and cadet camp, all of which block a crucial wildlife corridor.
She vowed to consider more wildlife overpasses on the Trans-Canada Highway, which runs through the heart of the park's sensitive montane area. She pledged to restore aquatic diversity in the park and clean up some of the sewage that pollutes the waters.
Ms. Copps also announced that Parks Canada will implement quotas and reservation systems on some trails in the park, a common practice in other Canadian parks but new to Banff.
In addition, she said she would limit the population of the town of Banff to 10,000. It now is 7,600.
Ms. Copps also said she was ordering a feasibility study on the use of more public transportation in the park. As well, she will order a clear and open development-review process to be in place by the end of the year.
The report and Ms. Copps's swift response amounted to a public acknowledgment that the parks system, whose mandate is to preserve the environmental integrity of the parks for the enjoyment of future generations, has failed in that goal at Banff.
But yesterday, she declined to assign blame.
"I can't do a post mortem about what went on in the past," she said, although she referred later to the "unfettered development" that had gone on in the park for the past two decades.
Dr. Page, however, said that while no one person is responsible for the park's grave state, his task force's historical research showed that "what failed to protect the park is a whole series of ad hoc decisions."
While the battle in Banff, which has attracted international attention in recent years, has often been painted as a fight between environmentalists and the businesses that bring in more than $700-million a year, the task-force report portrays it as a failure of policy.
"While Parks Canada has clear and comprehensive legislation and policies, Banff National Park suffers from inconsistent application of the National Parks Act and Parks Canada's policy," the report says. "Some of the explanation lies in the evolution of Banff National Park, some in ad hoc decision making and some in weak political will in the face of a range of interest-based lobbying."
The report also identifies these reasons for Banff's state: the absence of a consistent process and a predictable outcome; the lack of a formal means to appeal decisions, except to the minister; political or ministerial interference in local decisions; and a lack of criteria and policies to guide superintendents in the use of their discretionary powers.
And the result of that stew of problems is a park in such poor environmental shape, the report says, that it will not be able to remain a national park unless Parks Canada takes steps to correct some of those problems.
"There is no doubt of the urgency for action--work should begin immediately; delay can lead to an irreversible impact," the report says. "There is no doubt about the need--simply put, it is saving the park for future generations."
The report also says: "The days of unrestrained growth in human use and development in the valley are at an end. In the future, use and development must be managed."
Among the evidence of vast erosion of the park's environmental integrity is the fact that the grizzly bear, which is at the top of the food chain and is therefore an indicator of the health of many other species, is dying out rapidly. Wolves die in the protected park at only slightly lower rates than in the rest of the province, where they are hunted.
The aquatic ecosystems in the park are ravaged, partly because non-native fish have been introduced into nearly all the major lakes and tributaries and because more than 40 per cent of the flowing water in the Bow River watershed is controlled by dams.
Suzanne Bayley, a biologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and a member of the task force, said the saving grace is that while the park's environmental integrity is seriously impaired, it is not damaged beyond repair.
"It is in crisis, but it's restorable," she said. "If we keep this up, it's not restorable."
Along with the recommendations Ms. Copps accepted yesterday are others even more controversial that go beyond what many environmentalists had asked for. The minister said she is examining them. They include removal of the new Timberline Hotel and possibly the posh Rimrock Hotel and the Rocky Mountain Resort.
Dr. Page said, however, that no one is considering expropriating the properties: the current leases will remain in effect until they run out.
Jim Abbott, the Reform Party's heritage critic, denounced the report, calling it "just silly" and saying it catered to "environmental elitists."
But Harvey Locke, past president of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and one of the most impassioned of those lobbying to restore the park, said the report will prove to be a blueprint not only for Banff, but for parks across Canada.
A mark of the growing consensus about Banff's problems is that Ms. Copps also announced yesterday that Canadian Pacific, which has the most business interests in the park, has withdrawn a batch of plans for further development in Banff. Among the most contentious of these was a proposal to increase the size of the golf course at the Banff Springs Hotel.
Yesterday's announcements were made a matter of days before a world congress in Montreal of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/World Conservation Union, which is linked to the United Nations body overseeing world heritage sites, of which Banff is one.
The IUCN put Canada on notice last year that it was carefully watching the situation in Banff. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is slated to address the congress, and the government is eager to tell the world body that it has a plan to deal with the problems in Banff.
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