| The Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition (BCEC) is fighting a proposed logging plan that would see clearcutting in a popular recreation area of Kananaskis Country near Bragg Creek.
"West Bragg Creek is phenomenally popular with hikers and mountain bikers and runners and skiers and snowshoers," says BCEC president Ralph Cartar. "It’s really obscene because they’re really taking a resource that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy and they’re liquidating it for a handful of jobs in Cochrane."
Spray Lake Sawmills has had a forest management agreement with the province since 2001, which gives the company logging rights for a 2,800-square-kilometre area of the southeastern slopes of the Rockies, including near Bragg Creek. The company has just released its logging plans for the area, which would include logging around popular hiking and cross country ski trails in West Bragg Creek such as Telephone Loop and Moose Loop. Cartar says people would also be able to see logging cutblocks while hiking up the popular Moose Mountain fire look-out trail. The public has until June 23 to submit feedback on the plans to the provincial government.
Cartar says the province never should have handed out logging rights to the company and should have, instead, protected all of Kananaskis Country from industrial use.
Currently, some parts of Kananaskis Country are protected as provincial parks or wildland parks, but other chunks are deemed multi-use, which means forestry, oil and gas and agricultural uses are allowed.
"They tend to view each user as a legitimate one with equal value here, but the logging use is by far the biggest impact because it’s the one that transforms the landscape in the largest way," says Cartar.
He says the provincial government should have shown more vision, instead of turning Kananaskis Country into one big "tree farm."
But he’s also opposed to oil and gas and agricultural activity in Kananaskis Country.
"I’d like to see all of these industrial users out and make it a park," he says. "We’ve got a city of a million people and this is the closest forest to that million people. Why remove that forest for forestry purposes? It has far more value for recreation. Why do we take these incredibly valuable resources, valuable to many, many people, and liquidate them for a few board feet of lumber?
"It boggles my mind and I think at some point the local people have to stand up and say, ‘this is an inappropriate use of our public resource.’"
Ed Kulcsar, forestry manager with Spray Lake Sawmills, says the company uses sustainable forestry practices and adds that logging in the area helps prevent future forest fires as well as mountain pine beetle infestations. However, Cartar argues that clearcut logging shouldn’t be considered the only solution to combat the two problems.
Kulcsar says the company will take into account existing trails. "There’s different things we can do in terms of keeping that trail available," he says.
He adds that there’s been forestry activity going on in Kananaskis Country for decades and "people still think those are good areas to go and recreate in despite the multiple uses that are going on," which he says proves the multiple-use strategy is working. |
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