Ed Struzik, Journal Staff Writer
Edmonton, The Edmonton Journal, February 19, 1999
Susan Aris isn't quite sure why so many people are upset about the recommendations she and other members of a local committee in the Pincher Creek area made for the Castle Wilderness to be included in Alberta's Special Places program.
If the province accepts the committee's findings, she notes, parts of the 90,000-hectare-area will be off-limits to all-terrain vehicles wild oil and gas development will be phased out in some of the area. Two native spiritual sites, and the Castle Wetlands will be designated as ecological reserves.
""I think we did a pretty good job," says Aris who ranches nearby with her husband.
"There's something in our report for everyone, including those environmentalists who have some complaints."
The fact that there is something for everyone in the Castle report is exactly what's got so many people - not just environmentalists - upset.
"We're talking acres instead of hundreds of square kilometres of area that will be protected," says botanist Cliff Wallis, who spent a good part of two decades studying the ecology of the Castle for both the province and independent organizations.
"Everything else gets divided up among the oil industry, the loggers, the all-terrain vehicles, and the ranches.
"There is not a lot of room for protection in this multi-stakeholder system. And what the Castle needs at this stage is protection from these activities."
Most everyone agreed that the Castle is one of Alberta's ecological hotspots. It is home to 120 rare plants, seven per cent of Alberta's wintering bighorn sheep, and many rare and endangered animals such as the grizzly, cougar and wolverine.
The area owes its remarkable biodiveristy to some rather unusual ecological factors.
Gale-force Chinook winds funneling down the east side of the Front Range canyons prevent the normal growth of forest, allowing for grasslands and a diversity of native plants to thrive at very high elevation lakes.
David Sheppard moved to the area from Regina 21 years ago because he thought it was one of the most beautiful places in the world in which to retire. He doesn't mind the fact that he's had to share the wilderness with an increasing number of people in recent years.
What troubles him are the gas wells, the flare stacks, pipelines and logging roads that are slowly surrounding his half-section of land and creeping higher into the upper elevations of the Castle.
"I honestly don't know if we'll stay much longer if things continue the way they've been going," he says. "It's only a matter of time before it's all destroyed".
Sheppard is not alone in sounding the alarm.
The province's own Natural Resource Conservation Board recently noted that "roads and trains have fragmented habitat, reduced habitat effectiveness and opened up large parts of the area to uncontrolled access.
"Other disturbances such as logging and cutting seismic lines have exacerbated the effect over shorter periods," the Board noted.
It warned that "unless steps are taken to better control use of the area, environmental deterioration will continue."
Gordon Petersen, the photographer who currently heads the 350-member Castle-Crown Wilderness Coalition, presumed that the NRCB report would guide Aris and the local committee in arriving at their recommendations.
But the committee mentioned the NRCB only once in their report, saying it wasn't relevant to their considerations.
Although it was the Coalition that nominated the Castle for inclusion in the Special Places Program, none of its members, not any other government to sit on the local committee.
Petersen says that when it became clear that the committee was interested only in hearing from development interests, his organization formally withdrew the nomination.
The withdrawal had no effect on the work of the local committee.
"What we've go now is a complete disaster," he says.
"If the recommendations are accepted by the government. It will be an enshrinement of the status quo. It will be business as usual, but under a different name, one that will give the illusion that this is somehow going to be protected."
Steven Kennett, a research associate with the Calgary-based Institute of Resource Law, says the work of the committee was largely predetermined by the fact that the group had no standard by which to measure protection, and no leadership from the province to guide it in any other direction but one that supported resource development.
The Institute is funded by the federal government, the Alberta Law Foundation and the private sector.
"The local committee was given carte balance to do as it pleased, even to the point of ignoring the science of what Special Places was supposed to achieve and what others like the Natural Resources Conservation Board has recommended in the past, " he says.
"It's isn't surprising that it's ended up this way."
Aris remains unrepentant despite the criticism.
"We can talk a lot about what protection means. But it's not always in the best interests of nature," she says.
"Old growth forest is really a monoculture that limits the diversity of species. We have a tremendous diversity of wildlife down here because we've managed it properly. Conservation is the wise use of resources. Timber harvesting, grazing and other activities can be used as management tools in maintaining the biodiversity of the region."