Off-roaders fight for access to Castle park
Experts say bridges and trails don’t do enough to stop damage to fragile habitats
Hundreds of off-roading enthusiasts rallied in Calgary on Saturday, protesting the Alberta government’s proposal to ban the vehicles in Castle Provincial Park.
Many off-highway vehicle (OHV) users were outraged after the government’s announcement January that off-road vehicles wouldn’t be allowed within the boundaries of the newly established Castle Provincial Park, just west of Pincher Creek.
John DeWeerd, an avid dirt biker, was one of some 300 protesters who gathered alongside the Eastern Slopes ATV Society at McDougall Centre in opposition to the proposal, even though earlier this week the province pushed back its timeline for a potential ban in the sensitive environmental reserve to allow for more public consultation.
“You go out riding one weekend, and the next there’s a sign up saying you can’t ride. It’s unacceptable,” he said.
But wildlife experts say the decision is necessary to protect the fragile land.
Biologist Kevin Van Tighem said action needs to be taken to preserve the Castle parks. They’re in a dire state due to logging, development and off-highway vehicles, he said at a news conference Saturday at the Alberta Wilderness Association.
“When it comes to OHV use, the cumulative effect is immense,” Van Tighem said. “We’re well beyond the threshold where you start to see serious impacts on the ecosystem. Every year the damage gets worse.”
Aquatic ecologist Dave Mayhood said one of his biggest concerns is the declining population of Westslope Cutthroat Trout, which has been officially designated as a threatened species.
Working since the 1970s in the Castle area, the only known spawning location for the endangered trout, Mayhood said his most recent studies show up to a 60-percent mortality rate for trout eggs and larvae being either crushed or disturbed by OHV use in the area.
“At the time we did our study, we got near lethal to lethal effects,” he said. “We measured this as a direct result of OHV and trails, which have degraded the habitat.”
OHV user Matt Coonfer, however, argued that many off-roaders are responsible users, and by doing things such as building bridges over creeks, damage to the environment can be minimized.
“We don’t want to lose areas we grew up in,” he said. “The environment is just as important to us. We’re actively building bridges and using trails that already exist — we’re not cutting down trees and making new trails.”
Van Tighem said while bridges are a step in the right direction, they don’t address problems of soil compaction, trail widening, erosion and water capture.
“Bridges do not solve compaction and drainage problems. These users don’t see a lot of the problems they’re creating,” he said. “For a park to be a park, it can’t have inherently land-disturbing processes that are allowed to continue there.”