The title doesn’t give it away, but the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan has significant implications for residents of the Bow Valley, as well as the entire southern portion of the province of Alberta.
The title doesn’t give it away, but the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan has significant implications for residents of the Bow Valley, as well as the entire southern portion of the province of Alberta.
The draft regional land use plan is currently out for public consultation and government officials stopped in Canmore last Thursday (Nov. 7) for feedback.
But the 163-page piece of legislation is being met with concerns it does very little in terms of land stewardship and conservation, as well as skepticism that the plan will even attain objectives it sets out.
Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative President Karsten Heuer told groups in Canmore and Banff earlier this month the plan fails to do the one thing it was meant to - solve the problem of increasing land use conflicts on the landscape.
With 1.6 million people in the South Saskatchewan River basin, all 13 provincial irrigation districts, 34 per cent of annual tourism expenditures and 80 per cent of the species at risk in the province - Heuer said the region is under the intense pressure of conflicting land uses.
“This plan was supposed to resolve those conflicts, ” he said.
Ensuring ecosystems are connected and protected and headwaters protection in particular, were areas Heuer said the plan falls short of meeting expectations.
“What happens in our headwaters happens to all of us and that was the big lesson here at the beginning of June, ” he said.
The eastern slopes is the source of 75 per cent of the water in the region and is critical habitat for multiple species at risk.
Earlier this year, the Wildlife Conservation Society released a detailed analysis of the headwaters for the entire region, including the eastern slopes. Using Government of Alberta scientific data, the report’s author, John Weaver, recommended protection of a 2,570 square kilometer area to protect water sources and habitat for vulnerable wildlife.
Weaver said the recommended area captures the most important places for six species at risk (grizzly bear, wolverine, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout) on a relatively small percentage of the land base.
“So we came up with recommended headwater haven areas, which was again about 40 per cent of the land base on that map, but it captured two-thirds of the important values, ” he said. “Whereas the government proposal for new or expanded parks only adds about another 10 per cent of that total area to protected status and it really falls short on protecting areas for native fish and also for grizzly bears.
“It does a better job for species that are up in the rocks like bighorn sheep or mountain goats and wolverines. ”
When she presented the plan for the first time in October, Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development Minister Diana McQueen indicated the plan attempts to give all interests what they want - which Canmore-resident Gareth Thompson questioned as appropriate for a land use plan at the public consultation session last week.
“I was flabbergasted, ” Thompson said with respect to McQueen’s comments. “That was so misplaced and in fact there needs to be trade offs, there needs to be push and pull and there needs to be leadership.
“This is a document that lacks courage, this is a document that tiptoes around attempting to please everyone. ”
Connectivity and wildlife corridor movement were also issues left out in Thompson’s mind. The work proposed by the regional advisory committee that worked on the plan identified movement corridors throughout the South Saskatchewan area.
“That map has disappeared, ” Thompson said of the draft plan. “ Apart from one slim paragraph, the whole concept has disappeared and that is anathema to land use, to real proper land use conservation in this day and age. ”
With the Wild Rose party being against the regional planning process to begin with, Thompson said the Conservatives are spending a lot of time and effort looking over their shoulders.
“In my view, this government should ignore the hell out of the Wild Rose and get on with the business of good governance and in this case they are missing the mark widely, ” he said.
Politics were also something conservationist Pat Kamenka said he thinks is influencing the process. While the draft plan is full of good intentions, Kamenka said it lacks details of thresholds to be used to manage land use.
“Intentions are always good, what it comes down to is the real proof will be in the pudding, ” he said. “I believe there exists today enough legislative direction to allow them to achieve the goals they have stated, it comes down to a political will to do it that way and we will have to see if they will have that or not. ”
Executive director of WildCanada Conservation Alliance
Jim Pissot isn’t holding his breath that the government will follow through on the process, or even change the plan as the result of public feedback.
“There may be some reason to be optimistic, this is the boldest thing this province has ever done, but its track record of betraying every participant in every public process looms so large that it is hard to sit down and read 50 pages or 100 pages and spend the days and hours it takes, ” Pissot said.
He pointed to the grizzly bear recovery plan that was passed more than five years ago and calls for land use management reform, none of which has been implemented.
“So I struggle to have any faith this process will result in any substantial changes for wildlife and wild country in this province, ” Pissot said.
Heuer said it is important to think about land use planning on a broad scale, which is what a regional land use plan should do. He said when it comes to connectivity, the draft SSRP falls short.
“It’s not just thinking about protected areas, but how things move and flow in between them, ” he said. “You can rest assured that we and others really pushed hard to see this in the draft somehow expressed.
“There is absolutely nothing in terms of promotion of connectivity. There is no geographic or spatial commitment to try and achieve connection. ”
Adam Driedzic with the Environmental Law Centre said by definition a regional land use plan should recognize there is a finite land base that is under increasing pressure from competing uses, conflict between users and the cumulative effect of multiple activities on the landscape.
“It is also a concession that the old rules don’t work and by that I mean our policies were created at a time when the population was less and we were not facing the pressures we are today and one of the major results of that are countless uncoordinated decisions on activities authorized by different decision makers and agencies, ” Driedzic said.
“It proposes a new approach and it is a classic sustainable development platform. It proposes to manage cumulative effects on air land and water at a regional level and proposes new approaches to conservation and stewardship for public land and private land. ”
Assistant Deputy Minister Bev Yee said last week she is hearing support from Albertans for the approach of trying to balance all interests in the plan, but concern with whether all interests can be addressed.
“I think people are recognizing the complexity of the issues and how challenging they are actually to resolve and try to carve out a path that makes sense for the future, ” Yee said, adding the level of detail needed to achieve outcomes will take time. “I certainly hear from some people looking for a level of detail and a level of resolution on some of the issues that actually will in fact take us some time to do. ”
One of those issues is off-highway vehicle use, and Yee said the plan proposes the province start developing a system of designated trails along the eastern slopes. Once approved, the four areas to have that process begin immediately will be the north Castle, Porcupine Hills, Livingston and Willow Creek.
“We have identified those because they are busy areas, they are popular areas, they are areas where we know we have sensitive ecosystems that we want to protect so that is why we chose those, ” she said.
The draft SSRP proposes 32 new and expanded recreation areas, as well as an increase in conservation areas in the southern part of province from 22 to 33 per cent. That includes 80 square kilometres added to Bow Valley Wildland Park and 279 square kilometres to Don Getty Wildland Park.
Heuer was critical of the park expansions proposed, calling them low hanging fruit and pointed out virtually all the remaining new areas proposed are already protected by policy and are alpine and rock areas at high elevations.
As for the Castle area, the proposed Wildland Provincial Park would be 445 square kilometres of high elevation terrain, while the valley bottoms, 107 square kilometres, would be inside a conservation area where forestry is permitted but the management priority is for maintaining biodiversity and headwaters protection.
Heuer and others said it is concerning that the government has not defined what these best management practices are in the draft plan and appear to be discretionary.
“A new kind of forestry is going to be happening with certain restrictions, but there’s woefully inadequate information on that, ” he said.
Yee countered, saying the government is proposing to use a full range of tools for protection and achieving management priorities.
“There may not be the level of protection afforded in some of the ecosystems, and in particular the eastern slopes, that people are looking for and I would encourage people… to think about the outcome and think about there are many ways to achieve the outcome and that is exactly what we are trying to do promote a better understanding of the kinds of tools we have to do that, ” she said.
The provincial plan for management of the linear footprint on Crown land in the region is set out on a timeline for 2017, with an initial focus on grizzly bear habitat, key native prairie, and species at risk habitats in grasslands. But Heuer said there is no point waiting when the draft plan can address these things now.
“Let’s have some courage and bravery to actually resolve some of these conflicts, ” he said. “We are not hunkering down and saying we have to make some hard decisions and we can’t do everything for everybody. ”
