In support of national park

The costs associated with the tourism building will be enormous and ongoing coming out of the taxpayer’s pocket.

Now Bibby is telling us there will be new bathrooms in this glass palace he wants. He obviously has overlooked the fact that we the taxpayer have already paid a million dollars for a seethrough outhouse not 1,000 feet away, and, get this, it’s closed for two-thirds of the year.

Come on people, get into the real world. These 400,000 visitors you talk about are a figment of your collective minds. They already have all the most up-to-date electronic equipment necessary to find their way around.

I suggest Tourism Kelowna should be satisfied with what it has and build from it. Don’t keep coming back thinking Kelowna taxpayers are a bottomless pit filled with money. They are not. Ian MacLean

Kelowna Dear Editor: The national park system is mandated to represent all of Canada’s diversity, but our important ecoregion has no national park. The OkanaganSimilkameen region has unique geography, and is home to the highest biodiversity in Canada. Our region also contains the highest concentration of endangered species in Canada. These rare plants and animals are in need of greater protection.

Parks Canada actually proposed an Okanagan-Similkameen national park concept, all the way back in 2002. Several years of detailed federal-provincial negotiations followed, but in 2011, the B.C. provincial government unilaterally opted out of the process, closing the door on any further negotiations.

There are several urgent reasons why the BC Government must get back to the negotiating table:

• In a recent, professionally administered opinion poll, 70 per cent of local residents support the creation of a national park (McAllister Opinion Research, 2015).

• The B.C. government’s own 2015 Public Consultation process also revealed strong support for the creation of the park.

• A national park will offer a boost to regional tourism and tourist-related amenities, such as hotels, motels, restaurants, sporting goods stores. Typical national park visitors tend to stay longer, and have a lighter impact on the land, than the average tourist.

• A national park will directly create local, well-paid permanent and seasonal jobs. Parks Canada hires far more staff for their national parks than B.C. does for their provincial parks. For example Grasslands, a small national park in Saskatchewan, has 40 permanent staff, 12 of whom work year around. In contrast, B.C. Parks only has six full-time park rangers for the entire province!

• Local First Nations would have the opportunity to co-manage aspects of the park, and to highlight their deep historical connections to the landscape.

• Local wineries would experience a boost in visits and sales, as visitors combine park adventures with wine tourism.

• Parks Canada has offered to accommodate existing economic uses in the proposed park area, notably helicopter training and cattle ranching.

• Time is running out. After 15 years of patient waiting, Parks Canada could easily give up and turn their attentions (and federal tax dollars) elsewhere. In addition, suburban housing developments continue to pop up throughout the Okanagan, further fragmenting an already fragmented landscape.

In getting back to the negotiating table, the Province can leverage certain services in exchange for granting the park. One key service would be for Parks Canada to enhance wildlife and livestock habitat in appropriate locations outside the new park, to offset any potential losses of hunting and grazing opportunities inside.

We are proud of our OkanaganSimilkameen, its history, and its biodiversity. We need to preserve a portion of it. There is no question that creating our park will be a complex process, fraught with the difficulties of existing use, fragmentation and a host of other issues, but I am confident of our collective ability to sort them out.

Premier Christy Clark, you need to honour the outcome of your own government’s public consultation process, and get your officials to get back to the bargaining table. Let’s make this park happen, for our own good, and for the good of our land. Don Gayton Summerland

To submit a letter to the editor, email: letters@pentictonherald.ca. Include a daytime phone number for verification.

The Herald does not publish unsigned letters.The Herald reserves the right to edit any letter for space, clarity, libel or overall good taste. While we attempt to run as many letters as possible, there is no guarantee a letter will be published or as to what date it will run.

For any additional information, please phone editor James Miller at 250-490-0880, ext. 300.