Will Alberta’s real conservationists please stand up?

The field is fast filling with those who call themselves conservationists and swear they have a deep and abiding love of Alberta’s environment, especially that of the Eastern Slopes.

This includes the Alberta Fish and Game Association, a venerable organization representing some of Alberta’s hunters and anglers. They have representatives on the politically motivated Recreation Advisory Group for the Castle and Living stone Porcupine Hills areas.

As background, the AFGA prohibits motorized access on lands owned, or controlled by the organization. However, for our public lands they want more motorized hunting access, ostensibly for “game retrieval.” It would seem, as soon as the “game” catch onto this they will move to greener and less-roaded pastures. It isn’t clear how this demand squares with conservation, unless the AFGA care less about wildlife and more about access to it.

The Alberta Off Highway Vehicle Association, also on the Castle and Livingstone-Porcupine Hills RAG, claim to represent motorized recreation.

Theirs is a simple want — they just want to be able to drive everywhere, anytime, all the time. The AOHVA and OHV users love the environment and just want to drive over it.

There are also fringe groups, coalitions, who also just want to love Alberta’s public lands to death, with unconstrained access, random camping, target practice, partying, mud-bogging and other equally sensitive treatments.

And then there is our current minister of Environment and Parks. He is a sensitive hunter, with mantras like “if it flies, it dies” and, “if it’s brown, it’s down” indicating his environmental tendencies. His vastly misunderstood parks clearance sale ran afoul of some ill-informed Albertans who had the audacity to ask for the data showing parks were “under-utilized.”

He also brought us a bevy of Australian coal companies coming to cash in on the coal rush created by the rescinding of the Coal Policy. Now, to be fair, the assertion is these companies will dig holes in our critical watersheds, wildlife habitat and treasured recreational areas in the most sensitive of ways.

Did I mention the miniscule royalty payments, inadequate reclamation bonds and inevitable costs to the taxpayer? He is also busy with a “vision” for Crown lands that will put more of them to “work,” instead of just sitting there producing clean water, biodiversity and sustainable forms of recreation.

Once we get past these “real” conservationists we have the crowd of allegedly foreign-funded environmental groups who Jason Kenney’s “Energy War Room” has been diligently investigating. Of course, there are no results yet (or likely to be), despite a year of digging and the expenditure of a pile of cash. It is rumored that the CEO will shortly be tasked with the question of whether sasquatches exist, based on the definitive results of his current investigation.

Lastly, we have two ranch families and four native bands who have the nerve to challenge the legality of the UCP government’s move to rescind the Coal Policy without public consultation. How can this be true, when indeed the Coal Association was fully consulted and their concerns taken into account? This was so unlike the years of messy public consultations resulting in overwhelming public support for the Castle parks and the land use plans for the LivingstonePorcupine Hills.

Could it be there is a disjunct in aspirations for the Eastern Slopes? There is a tendency for “real” conservationists to be fact-resistant, prone to conspiracy theories and dismissive of sciencebased facts. This creates distrust of the tools of landscape planning, like cumulative effects assessments, linear and spatial footprint thresholds, parks and protected areas and controls over random camping.

Stewardship doesn’t work, is ineffective, when there is a reluctance to understand and accept the underpinnings of ecological science. That knowledge provides the map needed to navigate to an appropriate destination. One cannot be a steward of shared resources unless the essential pieces of ecological knowledge are agreed upon and then implemented.

If you are still skeptical of cumulative effects and the concept of ecological thresholds, try this simple, at home experiment: invite more and more people to live in your house, until the refrigerator is empty, the toilets are plugged and the air reeks of sweat and old socks. Add a kid with a drum set to the mix. Then, ask yourself, was there a line, beyond which it just wasn’t a good living arrangement?

The Eastern Slopes aren’t a blank page anymore. There is a considerable human footprint that overlaps, competes and grows. By any number of metrics this should concern all Albertans since the cumulative effect of our activities has and will continue to diminish the purpose of these public lands— watershed protection.

For you “real” conservationists, maybe it’s time to stop agitating for what you think is your share and stand up and start to do your part to protect and maintain the jewel that is the Eastern Slopes.

Lorne Fitch is a professional biologist, a retired provincial Fish and Wildlife biologist and a former adjunct professor with the University of Calgary.