Sustainable trails would help B.C.’s parks

P arks now comprise 14 million hectares of British Columbia, about the size of Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland put together. We have some of the most beautiful natural areas in the world, but their trails are badly in need of help.

Regular maintenance of trails is necessary to the protection of natural conditions in parks. Little or no maintenance of trails is the rule in British Columbia.

To reduce the environmental footprint in parks, leading conservation agencies such as the U.S. National Park Service place emphasis on sustainable trails. A sustainable trail has minimal impact on natural conditions and sensitive sites. It is free from erosion, and provides a safe walking surface, as well as views and points of interest to motivate hikers to remain on the trail.

Some parks in the Victoria area with rare wildflower sites can be examined from the Mount Work parking lot on the Ross Durrance Road just off the Willis Point Road. The most popular hike from the parking lot is to the summit of Mount Work Park, managed by the Capital Regional District.

You do not have to go too far before you reach some excessively steep sections of unsustainable trail that are suffering erosion. There is also considerable incursion and trampling of rare, sensitive sites near the trail.

Another hike is available from the same parking lot on the Timberman Trail of Gowlland Tod Provincial Park. The first one and a half kilometres of the trail is sustainable and in good, safe condition. Then you reach a long section of very steep trail that is suffering egregious erosion.

Eroding trails are unsafe because water action leaves projecting rocks and roots and loose rocks. The only sustainable solution to a steep severely eroding trail is permanent deactivation that includes drainage and rehabilitation. The unsustainable trail is replaced with a sustainable trail with maximum gradient of 12 to 15 per cent.

Jocelyn Hill, the high point at the centre of Gowlland Tod Park, has a large area of open, sensitive moss and wildflower sites. The main trail takes an excessively long and roundabout route through these sensitive sites. The routing encourages hikers to trample across sensitive sites to reduce distance, and a considerable area is degraded.

A sustainable, more direct route of half a kilometre is available, and it would enable the removal and rehabilitation of approximately three kilometres of unsustainable trails from the hill and save the sensitive sites.

The District of Highlands has a third protected area in the vicinity. The local government is trying to do the right thing by protecting the sensitive area as a complete nature reserve that forbids human access. This objective is being compromised by an unnecessary trail in Gowlland Tod Provincial Park that runs near its boundary. The provincial park has several kilometres of unnecessary trails that are suffering erosion, mostly in the part of the park zoned for heightened conservation.

In John Dean Provincial Park on the Saanich Peninsula, regular maintenance of trails, signs and invasive species and litter removal has been provided for more than two decades by Jarrett Teague, a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. His volunteer effort, assisted occasionally by other volunteers, is sustaining the natural legacy of the park. The trails are sustainable and safe.

Victoria has sufficient population to furnish volunteers to bring the stewardship of local parks to sustainable standards.

Most recent additions to parks have been public forests saved from timber production, where forest roads are located by forest and engineering professionals and there has been decades of progress in standards and methods to reduce erosion.

When forests are saved as parks, trail location, construction and maintenance are controlled by conservation agencies with little or no professional forest engineering capacity, and few if any engineering specifications are applied.

Given these deficiencies, a portion of the 6,000 kilometres of trails in our parks is unsustainable and unsafe. The Mount Finlayson trail is a disgraceful example.

B.C. Parks does an adequate job of stewardship of parking lots, campgrounds and facilities to maintain a public façade. Recently announced plans to protect the natural legacy of our provincial parks also seems to place the emphasis on these desired facilities.

If we aim to protect our natural legacy, we need to do a better job of trail access in our parks. Our nonengineered trails, with erosion and unsafe trail surfaces, belong in the early part of the 18th century, and they need to be upgraded to current sustainable standards.

Regional and provincial conservation agencies need more professional forest and engineering capacity, and the role of the Forest Practices Board should be expanded to provide independent scrutiny of parks. Andrew Mitchell is a retired professional forester with a background in forest engineering. He lives in North Saanich.