Warden service still changing a year laterBut former Parks staff warn holes opening up in back-country

Parks Canada is still making adjustments to the wardens service a year after massive changes revamped their role in the park. Yet former wardens are still warning the changes are putting the park – especially the back-country – in jeopardy.

Speaking from a training facility in Ottawa where 20 new wardens are being educated, Jasper National Park warden Jim Mamalis said there are several small changes coming to the warden’s service in response to the first year roll-out.

“There’s no big changes from the roll out until now. We’re working on refining things,” Mamalis said.

That includes potential changes to uniforms, vehicles and duties, including who should be responsible for training the wardens.

“Are we going to have all of the courses done in-house or use expertise of other agencies like the RCMP or Fish and Wildlife?” said Mamalis.

Sixty-two wardens were dispatched across the National Parks last summer – six in Jasper. Twenty-four new wardens are expected to be ready for this summer season, however most of those wardens will be stationed in Eastern Ontario. It will be another year until all 100 wardens are dispatched across the park system. Mamalis said it may be another year before Jasper receives any new wardens, mentioning it’s possible the biggest park in the Canadian Rockies could receive another one or two wardens.

“That comes at the recommendation of the field unit superintendent. We’ll run another year and look at the numbers,” he said.

This was also the first year wardens have been issued handguns. No shots were fired in Jasper National Park by wardens this year. Banff had one occurrence, when a warden pulled his gun on a pit bull, but again no shots were fired. All wardens must file incident reports if they remove their sidearm from their holster.

Mamalis said the split between resource conservation officers and wardens has been an adjustment. Resource conservation officers are not allowed to respond to law enforcement issues, and vice versa, and that’s a new way of thinking for many of the staff members. Resource conservation officers must request back-up in law enforcement situations, so that means two employees must be dispatched to one accident on occasion, which can be difficult in remote locations.

“It’s been a little bit of an issue, working out our respective roles,” Mamalis said.

That requires more juggling with schedules, as well as extra duties for other Parks Canada staff members.

“We have a quarter of the wardens we used to have,” Mamalis said.

While response numbers were down in 2009, changes were made to help lessen the burden on the warden service. Campground staff are now expected to handle a larger number of issues.

There are 1,500 campsites in Jasper National Park. Last year, there were 1,700 campground incidents reported in JNP where staff had to intervene, between May 19 and Sept. 5. The bulk of those were for noise (445 incidents) and wildlife attractants (450 incidents). Wardens didn’t respond to each of those incidents.

Visitor Experience Manager Pam Clark said the park has launched a new quality visitor experience prevention program to help campground staff respond effectively to problems. The new program is supposed to empower campground staff with the ability to handle more difficult complaints. No new campground staff have been added this year.

Wapiti and Whistlers Campground together can have up to 5,000 campers at a time – the same population as Jasper, Clark said.

However there are still concerns about the level of coverage the wardens are able to offer.

Retired warden Gord Antoniuk said the changes have left a big hole in the backcountry. After working for the warden service for 30 years, since there are so few wardens, he’s concerned poaching and other illegal activity could begin creeping in at the borders.

“The level of service has dropped. Any time you fractionalize an organization, there’s a decrease in response,” Antoniuk said.

There is very little enforcement taking place along the boundaries, Antoniuk said, and that is putting the area in danger. With only six wardens who must spend most of their time addressing campground issues, there is little presence at back-country sites, he said.

He also anticipates a drop in incident reports, simply because the wardens won’t have the ability to get to the same number of problems. Coupled with a focus on attracting more visitors to the park, Antoniuk said there is a recipe for trouble.

“There’s less opportunity to pick up on occurrences,” Antoniuk said.

The warden’s alumni have expressed their concern over changes to the warden service, and alumni president Dale Portman recently said back-country law enforcement has been ‘effectively eliminated’ from National Parks because of the changes.

Mamalis said wardens aren’t in the back country as much as they used to be, but both resource conservation officers and wardens patrol the backcountry.

One hybrid warden still exists, as Warden Darian Sillence responds to both incidents because he is trained with his search and rescue dog. He responds to law enforcement and search and rescue assignments.

He said the program will be evaluated again next year, as Parks will look at gaps and attempt to address them. Those decisions will fall on senior management in Parks Canada.