No aircraft in protected areas
Many British Columbians will instantly recognize something is inherently wrong with the actions behind this statement: “Helicopters use protected area for training grounds.”
The place in trouble is the Snowy Protected Area southwest of Penticton. An application for a 10-year renewal of helicopter exploitation is the aggravation.
There are at least two ways to look at the failure by government and the public Service to value and protect landscapes like the Snowy Protected area.
First, it should offend every taxpayer and citizen in B.C. that a Pentictonbased helicopter operation pays a pittance – $2500 annually – to regularly invade the ecological space and security of the SPA.
Should they pay more? That’s not the pertinent question! The security of a protected airspace, and its value to wildlife and human users expecting a protected area to be free of offensive disturbance from helicopters and aircraft, should not be a matter of price.
What protected areas have to offer is priceless and the value of solitude and recreation and reinforcement of mental and physical wellness, gained by taking time away from todays crowded and industrialized world only goes up daily.
Second, at stake are the immediate, short- and long-time impacts of helicopter flights on wildlife, all well-known. Harassment, intentional and incidental, leading to immediate flight, sometimes panic flight, the stress linked to frightening, invasive sound, displacement from preferred sites and habitats, mid- to long-term alienation from feeding and bedding areas, separation of young from mothers, increased predation risks and elevated energy costs
I’ve always found it offensive and insulting to have hiked a day – or days – into a special place only to have what you’ve earned destroyed by a helicopter that buzzes your head and shatters the soundscape.
That bighorn or elk you’ve been watching? Hell bent for somewhere else! The recuperative and mental power of quiet, your restorative frame of mind, the sounds of a natural world – all destroyed because of failure to protect and failure to govern.
Most British Columbians are savvy enough to know why we, in particular an earlier generation, have legally designated at least some landscapes as protected areas.
We are, of course, nowhere near the necessary threshold of functional protected landscapes – that would amount to three to four times the area we now have designated – but citizens have fought, and re-fought, long battles to protect remnant ecological landscapes from industrial, agricultural and mechanized recreational assault. And yet, here we go again. It matters not what public interest or protection measure is at the decision making stage; someone, some corporation of commercial hustler, or some special interest organization, will object; they’ll claim it will cost them more money, it’s the “best place” (no kidding), prevent them from making some fairy tale unsubstantiated greater amount of money, curb their self-declared “freedom”, or, and this is the favorite of industrialists, corporate bosses, developers and promoters, “lock up the land.”
These are people who place their personal gain above value to the public; the same people who have dug us into a deep conservation deficit.
The solution to keeping protected areas intact is simple: No aircraft!
The best interests of today’s citizens, and equally so, tomorrow’s citizens, is no aircraft in-flights and no landings. The protection of PAs should be topped off with regulations enforcing a 1,000metre ceiling for overflights.
It’s time now for Snowy Protected Area to serve its real purpose – a land fully protected from airborne invasion and degradation.
Dr. Brian L. Horejsi is a wildlife and forest ecologist. He writes about environmental affairs, public resource management and governance and their entrenched legal and social bias.