Parks Canada has finally opened up about its plans to develop an RV campground at the airfield.
Rumours have been circulating about the project since it was briefly mentioned at Park’s annual public forum in October last year, but until recently Parks had publicly said virtually nothing about it.
In a recent interview, Visitor Experience Manager Pam Clark confirmed that Parks is currently working on a proposal to allow overnight camping at the existing day-use facility at the airfield.
For decades Parks has been issuing 24-hour permits for groups to use the area—often for weddings or parties—but it has never allowed anyone to stay overnight.
The day-use capacity of the site is about 100 people, and Parks' proposal would allow for eight to 12 recreational vehicles, and however many people can occupy those vehicles, to park at the site overnight.
“This is really addressing a demand that we get any time people book that area,” Clark said, explaining that often functions at the airfield go well into the evening, but since no overnight camping is allowed, groups have to return to the site the next day to clean up before their permits expire.
“That is often why we get the question ‘can we stay overnight?’ Sometimes it’s just a couple people wanting to overnight so they can do the cleanup, and other times it’s a family reunion or a small wedding and they’d like to overnight there.”
Clark said that the proposal doesn’t include any major expansion to the site, and that the only major changes will be “those from an ecological perspective to protect the grasslands” near it.
She explained that Parks will install fencing along the length of the road and signage to make the actual site more clear. It will also install interpretative signage, discussing the ecological importance of the grasslands, install a solar powered water system similar to the one used at Snaring Campground and add benches to the wedding site.
Clark said that while the project is still in the conceptual stage, there are no plans for any more significant changes to the site.
“We’re not proposing any expansion there. We’re just going to allow people to overnight,” she said. “I know there have been concerns about putting in utilities and hookups or things like that, but that is in no way in the plan.”
But concerns about the proposed campground go further than utilities and hookups. Environmental advocate Jill Seaton said she is concerned about the impact the project will have on the sensitive grasslands around the area.
She explained that about 15 years ago Parks did extensive work on the area to create more grassland. Large areas of mature and over-mature trees were burned and, to the south of the airfield, the “Jackladder” waterfront site was closed, after its access road was seeded.
Seaton said from her perspective the project is “going back” on all the environmental reclamation work that was done in the area.
Shawn Cardiff oversees Parks Canada’s environmental impact analysis process in Jasper, and said that he understands Seaton’s concerns.
He confirmed that about 15 years ago Parks took a comprehensive environmental look at the whole Three Valley Confluence, and put together a number of initiatives it hoped would contribute to reducing its overall footprint there.
“Considering overnight use to an existing, actively used area doesn’t contradict the other things we’ve been trying to achieve for ecological restoration. But of course assessing that is part of the process we’re going through,” he said.
“Our starting point for this process was to look at repurposing or adding overnight use to one of our existing developed areas. In principle we’re looking for where we have a disturbed patch of landscape that we’re using now, or that we’ve used in the past, that has the range of qualities that would interact well with all the areas of our mandate.”
Those areas, he said, include aesthetic beauty, the best possible visitor experience, ecological issues that Parks already understands, and the least ecological impact possible.
“We looked through the full use of our mandate, and ultimately the airstrip site was thought to be the best site to move forward with.”
He said once its draft proposal is finished, Parks will be happy to hear public feedback.
But some Jasperites believe at that point it will be too late. Art Jackson said that he feels like the public has already been kept in the dark for far too long, and that by the time the public gets to give any feedback on the proposal it will already be decided on by Parks.
Cardiff disagreed with that characterization.
“Certainly there’s a change of use involved, but we see it as relatively routine business and we’re still relatively early in the process, and looking forward to having that open discussion about what the project is going to look like.”
Trevor Nichols
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