| The province gave conservationists reasons to celebrate and mourn last week when it announced the creation of three new protected areas in Kananaskis Country at the same time it turned over the forests of the unprotected areas to a private company.
Of the five new provincial parks designated last week to wrap up the Special Places program, three are in the Kananaskis area – Sheep River, Bluerock Wildland and Don Getty Wildland, which total 817 square kilometres. Dave Poulton of the Calgary/Banff chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness says the move was a good one, and long overdue.
"The new protected lands lying in the foothills are particularly valuable. The foothills natural region has been highly impacted by industrial activity, especially forestry and oil and gas," says Poulton. "It is also woefully under-represented in the province’s protected areas network, with only about two per cent of it protected. That means every new acre protected is important. It’s just too bad the areas aren’t bigger."
However, the greater disappointment is the fact that the province also announced it has signed a Forest Management Agreement that hands over responsibility for all of the unprotected portions of Kananaskis Country, and surrounding lands north to the Red Deer River, to Spray Lakes Sawmills. The FMA has raised criticism due to concerns that the private interests of the company may take priority over the public good, and because there was no public consultation.
"This means that the decades-old commitment to keep these as public forests for watershed protection, wildlife and recreation will now take a back seat to logging. It will complicate and frustrate attempts to do sound land management and proper environmental protection in K-Country for years to come," Poulton warns.
He says that the combined announcement leads CPAWS to believe that the Alberta government lacks a plan for Kananaskis Country, despite its own statement in May 1999 that a science-based Regional Sustainable Development Policy was needed to guide land use decisions in the Kananaskis.
For more information, visit CPAWS on the Web at www.cpawscalgary.org, or the Government of Alberta’s Web site at www.gov.ab.ca. |
