Ask Ron Hooper what left the greatest impression on him during a summer trip to Kamchatka, and his answer is immediate.

“It’s such a dynamic geological environment,” the Superintendent of Jasper National Park says. Hooper and his hosts climbed Bezimianny, an active volcano in the heart of Klyuchevskoy Natural Park. As they stood on the rim of the summit crater, a tremor passed through the mountain.

“I had the unnerving impression that the entire knife edge that I was standing on was going to crumble down into the crater,” Hooper later wrote in a report to his JNP colleagues. 

Hooper survived that nervous moment on the Kamchatkan summit in August, but less than two months later, Bezimianny erupted, forcing the evacuation of nearby villages and leaving a 400 kilometre long ash plume that was visible from space. 

“It’s quite incredible to think about standing on part of a mountain that isn’t even there any more,” Hooper says now.

If the mountains Hooper climbed and travelled through can be described as young and unpredictable, so can Klyuchevskoy Natural Park. 

Located on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east, the park was designated as a World Heritage Site in 2001. Spanning 376,000 hectares, the park is home to 12 major volcanoes. Much of the park territory is above treeline, dominated by recent lava flows and the fragile taiga ecosystem. Despite this desolation, the park is home to a wide variety of megafauna, such as snow sheep, moose, caribou and the Kamchatka brown bear.

The regional government has provided only two employees and a budget of $70,000 Canadian to administer and protect this substantial tract of land. Hooper discovered an asset base consisting of just two outhouses and four signs.

“Without some support they’re really setting themselves up for a bad situation,” Hooper says. The park is administered by the Kamchatkan Department of Natural Resources, and Hooper discovered that Russian planners had an unrealistic vision of where funding for the nascent park might come from.

Authorities had hoped that international funding might be available, but Hooper says that only limited amounts are to be expected from international organizations.

The Kamchatkans are also counting on tourist dollars, but Hooper’s own experiences indicate that this is unlikely to happen in the absence of better facilities.

“They’re really not in a position to host visitors right now,” he says.

Hooper spent 12 days hiking across the park during his visit. There are no defined trails and the park staff have no training or capacity to deal with public safety issues for hikers and climbers. The park director and his deputy do not even have basic first-aid, according to Hooper.

There are other issues stemming from the low level of management and non-existent policing of the region. Poaching is a serious concern, particularly in the case of brown bears and caribou. Illegal salmon fishing is also a problem.

“The role of the park is not well understood in Kamchatka,” Hooper says. The local government has not had the money or opportunity to promote their new project and explain its purpose. In fact, Hooper found that there was greater support and understanding for the park in cities far removed from the preserve itself.

Locals and visitors alike will have to develop better practices in simple areas like garbage disposal, as far as Hooper is concerned.

“I feel that they are going to have some serious problems in the future with the habituation of brown bears,” he says. People can easily bury garbage in the soft volcanic soil of the park, and the bears can dig it up just as simply.

While these and other recommendations were part of a report that Hooper was asked to present to regional officials, Hooper was not in Russia as a formal representative of Parks Canada. The journey occurred during his own vacation time and only came about because of a personal connection Hooper had made two years previously.

In 2003, Hooper met Klyuchevskoy Natural Park Director Anatoly Kargopoltsev at a meeting in Kaliningrad about managing World Heritage Sites. The Russian invited Hooper to visit Kamchatka. 

The two men planned the trip by exchanging e-mails, including one requesting that Hooper bring “adventure power bars - type best on head.” Hooper eventually deciphered this message and brought several head lamps.

Any further exchanges between Jasper and Klyuchevskoy will continue on this informal basis, Hooper says.

Kargopoltsev and his staff could come to Jasper if they secured funding, but for the time being, the Director has more pressing concerns. The fall eruption of Bezimianny forced the evacuation of his home village and Hooper has received only brief e-mails since.

Other Jasper National Park staff could go over to provide assistance if they take holiday time like Hooper did.

“What we can do is let them know the lessons we’ve learned,” Hooper says.

“We work for this amazing system of parks and what many people are needing is practical knowledge about signage, emergency protocols and so on.”

Hooper’s experience in Kamchatka emphasized the enviable situation Parks Canada is in when compared to other parks systems in certain parts of the world.

“It makes me realize how fortunate we are in Canada,” he says. “We don’t have all the answers so we need to approach situations like this with some humility, but it is a fantastic opportunity to share our knowledge.”