First off, we’d like to point out that newsroom experience has generally shown that when a plan is put in place that tries to keep everyone happy by embracing the wants and needs of everyone – it rarely works out.
In trying to develop some kind of plan that ensures all sides are satisfied and happy with said plan, usually what happens is that nobody is happy because of diverse stances on given plan items.
Take the newly-minted draft South Saskatchewan Regional Plan (SSRP), a wide-ranging, complex plan dealing with a massive swath of Southern Alberta; its lands, parks, recreation areas, water bodies, the 1.6 million humans that inhabit it, wildlife, species at risk, etc., etc…
Not surprisingly, those of an environmental bent are disappointed with the plan, particularly an apparent lack of land stewardship and conservation. That’s because many viewed the SSRP as an opportunity to address problems related to the increasing pressure of land use conflicts.
Maintaining motorized vehicle access into the backcountry doesn’t really mesh with those who want the headwaters of an entire watershed protected. Industrial activities like oil and gas wells, logging and mineral extraction isn’t particularly conducive to protecting species at risk like grizzly bears, bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout.
The eastern slopes are vital for both purposes: headwaters protection and wildlife conservation. However, despite the push to see these areas protected in provincial parks, the government has chosen only areas of high elevation to add to parks.
Critics are right, these moves are low hanging fruit. The opportunity to march a plan out to the public proposing 32 new or expanded provincial parks is a feather in a province that has shown little interest in conservation’s cap.
Defenders of the plan argue there is a range of management tools that can be used to maintain the goal of land stewardship in these areas. Obviously these tools are not prescribed in the plan, but are meant to be developed in the future with stakeholders.
Since these areas are not in parks, those tools will likely be entirely discretionary and up to the minister. This type of discretion is so willfully wide you could drive a Mack truck right through it.
There is only one sure way to protect the Castle and the eastern slopes and that is as a provincial park. That is the highest and best management tool the province has, but it is the one that would have to remove mineral, oil and gas and logging rights from the industrial sector of this province. It can be done, legislation allows for that now, but politically it is anathema to the Conservative mandate of putting those economic interests first and foremost all the time. A province known for the oilsands is also a province that would allow logging in grizzly bear habitat.
This government should stop trying to give everyone what they want. Those moves are weak and ineffectual. Conflicts on our landscape need to be resolved now, before it is too late.
Albertans truly value watershed protection and wildlife heritage and the draft South Saskatchewan Regional Land Use Plan should be doing a better job at safeguarding those resources into the future.
Otherwise, they can file the 163-page plan on the shelf to gather dust and fail to achieve outcomes with their other plans, like the grizzly bear management plan.
