Increasing the park’s visitation and maintaining its ecological integrity were at the forefront of Parks Canada’s message during its 14th annual public forum Oct. 15.
Parks billed the forum as an opportunity to share information on its priorities and results from the past year. But it was also a chance for the public to give input on the general state of Jasper National Park, and Parks’ proposed actions for the Maligne Valley, as outlined in the discussion paper it released Oct. 5.
About 40 members of the public took that opportunity in Jasper, along with a handful who were present via video conference from Prince George.
And while Parks officials hammered home the importance of increasing visitation to Jasper, a significant number of participants at the forum seemed most passionate about the proposed changes to Parks Canada’s backcountry wilderness offerings.
Those people voiced their opinions loudly and clearly during the group discussion phase at the end of the night, but before that happened, both Park Supt. Greg Fenton and Executive Director for Mountain Parks Pam Thompson gave speeches to the crowd.
Both officials spoke at length, returning several times to ways to bring more people to Jasper, and balancing that goal with maintaining the park’s ecological integrity.
Thompson, who has been in her position for about a year, spoke passionately about protection and suggested that to keep the parks safe, it is vitally important that Parks do everything it can to physically bring people to national parks. This is because first-hand experience is key to making people care.
Thompson cited a survey that found 86 per cent of Canadians who had visited national parks or historic sites would miss them if they were gone. This compared to just 39 per cent of people who had never visited a park.
Thompson said these numbers show that making people care about preserving national parks “needs to start with physical connection; an actual visit and a personal experience.”
Parks is taking the idea seriously, and Thompson laid out several initiatives it has undertaken to draw more people in.
She said that through a focused visitor experience strategy, Parks identified markets with the most long-term potential, and is “renewing visitor experience activities” to try and attract those folks.
Those cohorts—new immigrants, young families, young adults and school-aged children—come primarily from urban centres, so Parks has targeted more of its visitor experiences to attract them. She cited Learn to Camp (a program that brings new immigrants to Jasper for a weekend to learn basic camping skills), oTENTiks (soft-roofed cabins in certain campgrounds) and the Red Chair Program as examples of these.
She said these programs fulfill Parks’ mandate to attract more people to the park, but in a relatively low-impact way that protects ecological integrity.
“To state it plainly: to endure, national parks cannot be wildlife preserves kept separate from the public. They are meant to be explored and enjoyed. Parks Canada protects these places for Canadians, not from Canadians,” she said.
Fenton echoed this sentiment.
“Our role as land managers is to thoughtfully integrate our responsibilities for protection, learning and providing experiences, which is the very heart of Parks Canada’s mandate,” he said.
But some of these integrations, most notably the proposed Maligne Lake developments and Brewster Skywalk, have raised red flags amongst the public, which feels Parks’ mandate has taken a significant shift.
Fenton himself acknowledged this, but only in an attempt to dispel the notion.
“Many feel that Parks Canada’s decision regarding ongoing proposals such as [Maligne Lake], and the Brewster Glacier Skywalk before it, represent a policy shift by Parks Canada, and that these decisions are the thin edge of the wedge to allowing mass commercialization and privatization of national parks.
“To be very clear, our consideration of, or decisions, related to redevelopment proposals presented to us by our commercial lessees do not represent a policy shift. We carefully look at each proposal within the context of our legislative and policy framework.”
Like Thompson, Fenton stressed the importance of bringing people to the park. He pointed out that projects -5
Despite Fenton and Thompson’s positive outlook on increased visitation, community members at the forum were quick to raise concerns about the push for more people.
During the open question and answer period after the speeches, local resident Jack Templeton pressed the officials, asking how they planned to protect ecological integrity while encouraging more people to visit.
“You talk about conservation and protection of national parks, and in the same sentence you talk about increased visitations to the park. Somehow that’s kind of a scary concept,” Templeton said. “I wonder if there’s any recognition that there’s a limit to the number of visitors a national park can have?”
Later, born and raised Jasperite Gord Ruddy echoed Templeton’s concerns.
Answering the questions, Thompson pointed out that visitation numbers are still far below JNP’s “watermark year” of 2003.
Later, Fenton also addressed the question, saying that Parks does not have any specific load limit. He said the organization recognizes that infrastructure is over capacity at specific times during the summer, but that shoulder seasons and winter provide plenty of opportunities for growth, while still protecting the park’s ecological integrity and infrastructure.
And while visitation and ecological integrity seemed to be at the forefront of the minds of park officials, those notions clashed with the prevailing concerns during the group discussion. That discussion revealed that Jasperites are passionate about the changes Parks is proposing for its backcountry wilderness areas in the Maligne Valley.
In its discussion paper, Parks proposed it decommission several of the Maligne Valley’s lesser-used backcountry campgrounds, in order to focus more of its funding and efforts on the Skyline and Jacques Lake trails.
In a presentation at the forum, Parks representative Amber Stewart said that since many of the lesser-used backcountry campgrounds have less than a 15 per cent occupancy, it makes sense to decommission them and focus on more popular offerings.
The table for that discussion overflowed. Many spoke to the Parks representatives in raised voices. Sometimes they spoke over one another.
Ursula Winkler pointed out that if Parks hopes to engage people with the parks, the backcountry is the perfect place to do that.
“That’s where you start connecting people. When you lay there in the wilderness, and listen to the rustle of the wind,” she said, adding that decommissioning wilderness campgrounds will make that much harder.
She and others weren’t happy with Parks’ logic that the decommissioned sites will allow more travel on more popular trails like the Skyline.
“Are we trying to connect people to other people in a campground, or are we trying to connect them to the wilderness?” someone asked.
Many were concerned that the changes would mean the loss of an aspect of the park they hold most dear.
“You’re going to take away most of the opportunity for us to enjoy the backcountry—which is where we want to be,” another person commented.
“It’s really a perk if you’re going to a campground where you might be the only one there,” Monika Schaefer piped in.
Other aspects of the proposed Maligne Valley Implementation Strategy were also touched on during the group discussion, and Parks collected pages of feedback from participants. It will take that feedback into account when making its final decisions about the strategy in the spring of 2015.
According to Parks’ website, finalization of the implementation strategy is anticipated to start in the winter of this year. Parks will review the feedback it receives through its public engagement initiatives and aboriginal engagement consultations and prepare a final strategy for approval by the superintendent.
Trevor Nichols
[email protected]
