Trees illegally cut down by Lake Louise workers a ‘keystone’ species
The whitebark pines cut down by Lake Louise ski area workers is the only endangered tree species in Banff National Park, a court exhibit shows.
An agreed statement of facts was filed Thursday to support guilty pleas entered earlier this week by the resort.
Lawyer Alain Hepner entered guilty pleas on behalf of the ski area to charges under the Species at Risk Act and the Canada National Parks Act.
Under those two acts, the combined maximum fine, per tree, that Lake Louise is facing is $550,000.
Outside court, Hepner said the main issue when sentencing submissions are made next July is the exact number of trees felled.
According to the agreed facts, whitebark pines are one of three species listed as endangered in the national park, the others being the Banff Springs snail and little brown myotis bat.
“The species is in serious decline due to four primary factors,” says the court exhibit, drafted by Hepner and Crown prosecutor Erin Eacott.
Those factors are white pine blister rust, an introduced invasive species, mountain pine beetle, reduced wildfire and climate change. The regeneration of the trees is dependent on avalanches and fires, which clear space for the shade-intolerant whitebark pines, the exhibit says.
The decline rate of the trees, which are found in the Rockies in Alberta and B.C. in Canada, is estimated to be about one per cent annually. That would see the estimated 200 million whitebark pines in Canada reduced by 78 per cent in the next century.
“Whitebark pine is a keystone species at the centre of a highelevation network of plants and animals, enabling increased biodiversity,” the agreed statement says.
Keystone species are species “so closely involved with other organisms that if it becomes extinct, or even seriously depleted, the effects will ramify throughout the ecosystem,” says a report by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
“Whitebark pine provides food and habitat for numerous birds and mammals, including bears.
“It facilitates the establishment and growth of other plants in harsh, upper subalpine environment, and helps regulate snowpack and runoff, providing watershed stability.”
The agreed facts say workers at the ski area removed some trees as part of their annual maintenance in the summer of 2013. On Sept. 24, 2013, trail crew employees attended Ptarmigan Ridge and cut down flora, including whitebark pines. The resort did not have either a Restricted Activity Permit, which would allow them to cut down any trees, or a Species at Risk Act permit.
Evidence as part of the sentencing hearing before provincial court Judge Heather Lamoureux will commence July 9.