| Re: "Small-town growing pains," by Adrian Morrow, News, June 21-27, 2007.
Just a couple of corrections to prevent readers from being misled.
1. The town of Canmore is not growing by 25 per cent every year. That would be close to the rate of growth of second homes (homes owned by non-permanent residents), but the growth rate of permanent residents has been close to zero over the past few years.
2. While it is true that some of the earlier wildlife corridors do have golf courses on them, the wildlife corridors that have been designated in the past decade can not have golf courses or any developments on them. (In fact, one wildlife corridor that contains some of the Stewart Creek golf fairways, was approved when those lands belonged to the Municipal District of Bighorn; the town of Canmore annexed the lands with the approved golf course).
3. Canmore has been recognized internationally for its pioneering work in designating wildlife corridors, and tracking studies show that the corridors indeed are functioning to allow species survival, by preventing wildlife populations in surrounding parks from becoming inbred. While it remains a challenge to keep the corridors functioning, the town and the province work together in various ways to achieve this goal. For example, trails are either routed outside the corridors, or are set up to cross the corridors in a perpendicular orientation every kilometre or two, to reduce the impact on migrating wildlife.
Andre Gareau,
councillor, town of Canmore
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