‘More work to be done’ on proposed Castle parks: conservationists
One year after the province announced two parks in the Castle wilderness area, there are still several unresolved issues around their development.
Last September, the NDP government announced the expansion of an existing wildland provincial park and the addition of a new provincial park to protect wildlife habitat and important headwaters.
It shut out logging, mining and future oil and gas surface development in the 1,040-square-kilometre area, which borders Waterton Lakes National Park in southwestern Alberta.
Conservationists said it’s been a roller-coaster year after decades of fighting for the protection of the Castle wilderness area.
“It’s been a year of incredible highs — great celebration of one of the great crown jewels in this province’s biodiversity was finally protected,” said Stephen Legault, program director for Alberta and the Northwest Territories with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. “Then there have been some lows when we realized there was so much more work to be done.”
He and other environmental groups, including Castle-Crown Wilderness Coalition, Alberta Wilderness Association and Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, said there’s still a suite of issues that need to be resolved by the province.
Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said they have recently established an ecology working group and a land-use working group to deal with the development of the parks management plan for the area.
“They’ve had their first meeting,” she said, explaining they have gathered all of the latest scientific studies to help guide those groups.
Phillips said they are also in the midst of consultations with several First Nations in the area.
“We expect that the parks management plan will be delivered by the end of the year,” she said, noting it’s a complicated process.
The parks will also still require an order in council to amend the boundaries in the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan, which guides land-use decisions in the area.
Phillips said the land is already being managed under the terms laid out by the province last year.
Some of the outstanding concerns by environmental groups, however, are related to existing grazing leases on the front ranges, facility development and off-road vehicle use in the provincial park.
“Albertans want parks for quiet recreation so that wildlife and wilderness can thrive,” said Katie Morrison, conservation director for the southern Alberta chapter of CPAWS. “Off-highway vehicle use is incompatible with those values.”
Groups representing off-highway vehicle users have maintained it’s possible to have both a provincial park and continue responsible use of the existing trails, noting they’ve built bridges to cross waterways.
Environmental groups, however, said there’s ongoing damage to the watershed and sensitive wildlife habitat.
Water from the Rockies serves not only southern Alberta, but also parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In Alberta, it comprises 30 per cent of the water in the Oldman River basin and features rivers, lakes, wetlands and groundwater systems.
There are also concerns for wildlife.
The Castle, which is sacred to First Nations people, is home to more than 200 rare or at-risk species including whitebark pine, wolverine, grizzly bear, bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout.
It also provides wildlife corridors that allow for the movement of large animals and keep populations connected.