January 2001
The Bureaucratic Potential of Ecological Integrity
Banff is frequently described as "the Crown Jewel" of Canada's national park system—and with good reason. Situated in the splendour of the Canadian Rockies, Banff became Canada's first national park when the entrepreneurial vision of the CPR prompted the Dominion government to reserve the 26 square kilometres around the area's natural hot springs. What made this wilderness conservation feasible for the government of the day was the idea the park reserve could be self-supporting. The vision necessarily involves sustaining a balance between human use and environmental protection—a balance enshrined in the dual mandate of Canada's original National Parks Act.
This link between private entrepreneurship and conservation flies in the face of the findings of a recent federally-commissioned panel that reviewed the "ecological integrity" (EI) of Canada's national parks. The Panel's final report, Unimpaired for Future Generations? (released March 2000), declares that "a proper reading of the National Parks Act of 1930 reveals that… there was no dual mandate," but rather, that "ecological integrity" was the only goal. This single-minded focus is reflected in the amendments to the National Parks Act that were passed in October 2000, which transform ecological integrity from a principle of conservation and good stewardship into a proactive mandate for restoration, and ultimately for the "rewilding," of areas brought under the jurisdiction of a committed minister and crusading officials within a reinvigorated Parks Canada Agency.
This radical reinterpretation of the mandate for Canada's national parks has been dictated by a new environmental orthodoxy. Relying on a philosophy of "ecosystem management," this new orthodoxy supports a highly centralized, bureaucratic approach to the management of parks and protected areas. Calling for a high level of professionalism within the Parks Canada organization, the approach in its design favours a particular constituency: conservation scientists and environmental activists, who more often than not, profess at least an implicit "bias." As Stephen Herrero, a prominent local wildlife biologist intimately involved in fashioning new ecological benchmarks for Banff park has asserted, "I know my biases and values have significantly influenced even the scientific or factual data that I have collected" (Herrero). This "scientific or factual data" has been used to justify a big list of interventionist measures to restrict or eliminate commercial, recreational (or even community development) in Banff.
In Banff National Park, one example of this new environmental orthodoxy asserts that "charismatic megavertabrates" such as grizzly bears and wolves are keystone species, or "indicators" of ecological health. Subsequently, "ecological integrity" involves the elimination of "alien" species that may contaminate the integrity of the "natural" ecosystem. In this new state of nature, commercial, recreational, and economic opportunities such as alpine skiing, golf, or any number of other tourist activities can be phased out on the basis of being "non-conforming" to the spiritual and ethical values that our parks and wilderness areas are supposed to promote.
The almost wholesale acceptance of this scientific moralism by the minister responsible for national parks and the new Parks Canada Agency that has been created to oversee them is not due to the grassroots lobbying efforts of environmentalists, nor the research efforts of independent scientists. Rather, it owes its authority to the increasingly symbiotic relationship between select activists, scientists, and senior bureaucrats in the national parks policy community. This relationship was resoundingly evident in the EI Panel review. Three out of the nine members are affiliated with one of Canada's most vocal environmental groups, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS); legal advice was provided by another prominent advocacy group, the Sierra Legal Defence Fund (SLDF). In the workshops put on by the Panel, park professionals, environmentalists, and scientists clearly outnumbered other interested stakeholders.
The relationship between government and advocacy, interest, or pressure groups is nothing new in Canadian society. The rise of big government in the 1970s drew attention to this often paradoxical relationship, as the growth of the state provided expanded opportunity for strategically placed individuals and groups to influence public policy. Then, the Citizenship Branch of the Secretary of State initiated a "social animation" program to provide financial support to particular advocacy groups. This program channelled public funds into private lobbying efforts in support of government-sponsored initiatives such as official bilingualism and more liberal social policy. In 1995, a similar funding and "community animation" program was launched by then Environment Minister Sheila Copps, under the auspices of "Action21." Environmental groups such as CPAWS, the Alberta Wilderness Association, and the Bow Valley Naturalists have been frequent recipients of these funds.
The involvement of scientists in this policy making matrix, however, is rather new. The same dynamics that saw environmental activists unite with scientists around the spotted owl in order to protect the "old growth forests" of the American Northwest in the 1980s have made the grizzly bear the symbolic figurehead in the campaign to ease development out of Banff National Park. This is particularly evident in the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project, a joint research venture between scientists, Parks Canada, business, and environmental groups. While presenting themselves as an independent research venture, the majority of this group's funding comes from government sources, and a Project Steering Committee uses strategic targeting to determine its research agenda and even frame its goals. The fatal flaw of this integrated approach to policy making is that while politics necessitates compromise, sound science must not be compromised by such political (or ideological) motivations.
Before the end of March 2001, a ministerial Round Table will be assembled to address the future of our parks in the context of the EI Panel report. If the dedication of our parks to both protection and use is to be honoured, it is important that existing environmental orthodoxies be held up to independent, critical scrutiny.
Reference
Stephen Herrero, "Man and the Grizzly Bear (Past, Present, but Future?)" Bioscience 20, no. 20 (November 1970), p. 1,148.
[To order copies of Off Limits at a cost of $7.49 each (includes shipping, handling, & GST), call 1-800-665-3558, ext. 580.]
Sylvia LeRoy is co-author, with Barry Cooper, of the recent Fraser Institute Public Policy Source, Off Limits: How Radical Environmentalists are Shutting Down Canada’s National Parks.
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 ext. 580
You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.