Editor: Last week, Three Sisters Mountain Village (TSMV) and their developer, QuantumPlace, officially submitted their amendment for the Resort Centre ASP to the Town of Canmore.
While waiting for the full proposal to be made available to the public, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) would like to provide some broad context on the proposed development and its potential impact on wildlife.
Canmore is blessed to be at the heart of the Yellowstone to Yukon region, the largest mountain ecosystem in the world that remains home to a full complement of native wildlife species. This community, along with Y2Y and our collaborators, have worked hard for the past 20 years to protect and connect the lands along this region’s 3,200 kilometre length so that wildlife populations remain connected, healthy and genetically diverse.
The Bow Valley is only 10-km wide, and of this, only about four km is usable by most wildlife and people because of steep slopes and rocky terrain. This tiny area is criss-crossed by highways, roads, trails, a railway and many pockets of dense development. Animals moving through the valley from Banff or Kananaskis Country have very few options.
From Banff, for example, animals have to navigate the Nordic Centre, the Rundle forebay and Peaks of Grassi before moving onto TSMV lands and the wildlife corridor that is now under discussion. The proposed TSMV developments would shrink the area available to wildlife to just a few hundred meters in places.
As we work through these final big decisions about future developments in the Bow Valley – including the Resort Centre, Smith Creek, and Dead Man’s Flats – we must recognize that there is real potential to sever a continental-scale flow of animals and the genetic diversity that these dispersing populations provide. If we get this wrong, our error could have continental scale consequences.
The approved 2004 Resort Centre Area Structure Plan (ASP) recognized, as did the 2002 report submitted by Golder Associates, that a golf course would act to buffer the impact on wildlife movement of any development to the north of it.
This contrasts sharply with the current amendment, which proposes to build well into the buffer zone approved in 2004, while adding up to 8,300 people to the town and significantly reducing the effective corridor width. TSMV’s focus on a fence that would run for kilometres between the proposed development and the remaining wildlife corridor is a distraction; the real problem is that the proposed width of the wildlife corridor is so narrow that it’s questionable whether it will support wildlife over the long-term.
Contrary to what QuantumPlace says, corridor science does not support the need for hard edges if the corridor is wide enough, flat enough and straight enough. The fence is a red herring; the real conversation we in Canmore need to have is, can we ensure the corridor through TSMV supports the long-term movement of wildlife? If there is a risk it won’t, we should go back to the drawing board.
Canmore residents love that we live in a valley with abundant wildlife. If we want to ensure that those wild creatures persist into the future, we should let both our provincial elected representatives and Canmore council know what is important to us.
Stephen Legault
Program Director (Crown, Alberta and NWT)
Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
