Are radical environmentalists shutting down Canada's national parks?
Contacts:
Barry Cooper, Senior Fellow
The Fraser Institute
Telephone: (403) 220-5764
Email: barryc@fraserinstitute.caaLydia Miljan, Director, Alberta Initiative
The Fraser Institute
Telephone: (403) 216-7175
Email: lydiam@fraserinstitute.caRelease Date: 4 December 2000
CALGARY, ALBERTA — The original mandate of Canada's parks is gradually being replaced by a narrow preservationist agenda that distorts common sense understandings of environmental protection and ecological integrity, says a new study, Off Limits: How Radical Environmentalists are Shutting Down Canada's National Parks, released today by The Fraser Institute.
"There is good reason to be concerned that ideology as much as science is inspiring current and proposed regulatory and land management regimes in our national parks," says Barry Cooper, Senior Fellow at The Fraser Institute and co-author of the study.
Canada's mountain parks were created to serve a dual purpose, namely protection and use. The logic was obvious: in order to be enjoyed by future generations, the land had to be protected, and the land was protected in order to be enjoyed.
However, wilderness conservation has been replaced by an increasingly narrow emphasis on restoration. Parks Canada has commissioned policy review studies that have debated such questionable projects as the extermination of all non-native species of wildlife and vegetation; raising or burying the Trans-Canada Highway, and having downhill skiing declared an inappropriate activity. Current Parks policy has tended towards ever-greater restriction on enjoyment in order to promote ever-greater preservation.
Cooper's study focuses specifically on the policy debate underway over Banff National Park. Recreational facilities and capital investment were originally undertaken to ensure that recreation, use, and enjoyment would be possible: that's why the famous CP hotels were built, and the ski hills and back country trails were created. "Because of contemporary revision of the initial purposes of national parks, it is important to recall that multiple use strategy is not an anomaly, but what inspired the creation of Banff National Park in the first place," says Cooper.
The policy debate continues to centre on the commercial and recreational activities in the Banff townsite despite the fact that less than four percent of the park has ever been open to them. "This crisis rhetoric does not reflect the positive increase in Canada's protected areas network (38 million hectares); what it does reflect is the moving targets of environmentalist campaigns," he continues.
In order to be able to afford sustaining a national park system guided by sound science and management, new revenue generation mechanisms are going to be needed. User fees and environmental stewardship both allow market mechanisms naturally to protect the scarcity of Canada's parks and wildernesses.
"Banff has the potential to become a model of balance in conservation policy, but in order to plan for a healthy and sustainable future, a strategy that reconciles human needs with environmental protection is an obvious necessity. Serious discussion of a balanced public policy regarding Canada's national parks is rendered difficult, not to say impossible, so long as wilderness protection and human enjoyment are assumed to be mutually exclusive," says Cooper.
The mounting restrictions on access to, and activities within, Banff National Park, are testament to the growing influence that special interest groups have had on Parks Canada policy. As the focus in environmental circles has moved away from saving species to saving spaces, the scientific discourse and moralizing that is invoked in support of radical 'rewilding' schemes forms the basis of a new environmental orthodoxy. The current centralized approach to policy-making provides an inviting target for small highly aggrieved groups.
Visitors and commercial activity provide the opportunity to balance human needs with environmental protection in a single park management strategy. This can only be done by local decision-making, positive incentives, and the responsible stewardship associated with secure, enforceable, transferable property rights.
"Canadians must be presented with some sensible alternatives to the heavy-handed and ideologically-driven regulatory approach to wilderness conservation," concludes Cooper.
Established in 1974, The Fraser Institute is an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver, with offices in Calgary and Toronto.
For further information or for a copy of Off Limits: How Radical Environmentalists are Shutting Down Canada's National Parks contact:
Suzanne Walters, Director of Communications,
The Fraser Institute, (604) 714-4582,
Email suzannew@fraserinstitute.ca
The media release and study can be viewed on the web site at www.fraserinstitute.ca.
info@fraserinstitute.ca
4th Floor, 1770 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6J 3G7
Tel: (604) 688-0221 Fax: (604) 688-8539 Book Orders: 1-800-665-3558
You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.