Should visitors be capped for stressed Banff National Park?
For the teenage Japanese visitor, the liquid candy-like turquoise waters of Moraine Lake framed by saw-toothed crags was entrancing.
“I want to live here,” said Junpei Sato of Tokyo after jostling for a spot to capture an image of the stunning view from atop a boulder pile teeming with tourists.
But recently arriving at the lake that once graced Canada’s $20 bill wasn’t quick, even mid-week.
By 8:30 a.m., parking at nearby Lake Louise was full and travelling by private vehicle to Moraine Lake had long been out of the question.
A paid shuttle bus to Moraine was available at an overflow lot 30 minutes away, a space that itself was nearly overflowing a few hours later.
For Harvey Locke, conservationist and Banff townsite resident, it’s a typical junket telling the tale of a park being loved to death.
“I was up at Moraine Lake last summer and it was an appalling sight,” said Locke. “It was like watching an anthill.
“Banff National Park has a problem as a whole in that it’s bursting at the seams, mostly at Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and Johnston Canyon.”
It’s time, he said, to seriously consider tightly controlling and even capping the number of visitors to certain popular sites.
Locke made the remarks as a review done every 10 years of the parks management plan, including public access, approaches with a prime focus sure to be on Banff National Park.
The park that was a Canadian first is also far and away No. 1 among visitors, with 4.18 million people enjoying its pine-scented vistas in 2017-18.
That’s about 75 per cent more than second-busiest Jasper, and no other national park comes within a million of the more northerly park’s numbers.
Last year’s visitor figures for Banff are a full one-third greater than the 3.15 million that showed up in 2010-11, the last year a management plan was crafted.
That’s the product of being close to a city of 1.3 million and scenery as majestic as it is globally renowned, said Lee Smith, Parks Canada’s acting manager of visitor experience for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay parks.
“Banff and Jasper are our most iconic parks that are major draws for Canadian and international visitors,” Smith said.
How many people visiting the park is too many is “a question we’re constantly assessing,” he said, though there’s certainly no notion of any cap on the horizon.
Last year, in response to larger throngs attracted by the Canada 150 free entry pass, Parks Canada launched a free shuttle service to Lake Louise from the overflow lot five kilometres east of the town.
With the relentless tourist onslaught, it’s a service that’s been continued this year and will likely be expanded, Smith said.
“We’re working with our private sector partners for transit solutions,” he said, adding that includes existing and additional bus service from Calgary.
Reducing the number of private vehicles in the park and at attractions is fine, Locke said, but it doesn’t lessen the number of visitors and the strain they place on its infrastructure and environment.
“We’ve reached the carrying capacity not only from an ecological point of view but from a pleasure of experience standpoint,” he said.
In its state of the national parks report released in 2016, Parks Canada lists the ecological integrity of Banff ’s forests, tundra and freshwater as fair, all unchanged from five years earlier.
Across the country, by contrast, 54 per cent of other national parks’ ecological criteria were rated good, an improvement from 42 per cent in 2011.
Environmentalists contend growing human traffic disturbs and kills wildlife, brings more trash and stresses wastewater systems.
A side trail at Johnston Canyon has been closed to protect a bird species, Locke said.
In a 2000 paper published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences journal Ambio, Alberta ecologist David Schindler says glaciers supplying downstream users contain enough organic material “to contaminate fisheries to levels that in some cases approach guidelines for human consumption.”
He added that “nutrients and road salt have changed the chemical nature of the Bow River and its tributaries.”
Results of a study conducted for Parks Canada released in 2013 say “the ecological integrity of Healy Creek downstream of Sunshine Village has been impaired, citing elevated nitrogen content and anomalies in mayfly and invertebrate populations.”
On its website, Sunshine Village said improvements to its water conservation, filtration and sewage treatment have been occurring since 2002, improving the quality of its effluent.
More recently, Sunshine’s bid to expand its parking capacity has come up against a Parks Canada draft guideline and critics like Peter Zimmerman of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
“Building more parking lots is not the answer,” said Zimmerman, adding that that applies to the entire park.
He agrees with Locke that access to some hard-pressed areas should be limited, similarly to Yoho’s Lake O’Hara, which requires visitors to pre-book and travel to the site by bus. Lawmakers in British Columbia are pondering a reservation system for some heavily used hiking trails near Vancouver.
“When you go, it’s a much better experience,” Zimmerman said.
A revised parks-management plan following public consultation should be complete in 2020.
“We’re looking at all of our options,” Smith said.
Visitors are already being encouraged to check out less crowded parts of Banff or even neighbouring parks like Kootenay when their plans are frustrated by overcrowding, he said.
“We’re asking people to have a Plan B,” Smith said. “We have lots of lesser-known places to explore.”
Parks Canada says the management plan reviews were once performed every five years.
Now that decade between them is too long, said Zimmerman, and Parks Canada’s ecological ratings system is inadequate.
“Some of those parameters aren’t monitored like they should be because of resources,” he said.
Park businesses don’t want to see any reduction in visitor numbers but do support measures that will preserve the environment, said Angela Anderson, spokeswoman for Banff Lake Louise Tourism.
“Our members are very conscious they’re in a national park, and we want people to have the best experience possible, but done responsibly,” she said.
She wouldn’t comment on the desirability of limiting the number of visitors to popular sites but said her organization is in favour of more public transit to them.
“Our strategy really focuses on encouraging people in the less busy fall, spring and winter when it’s still absolutely beautiful,” Anderson said.