Conservationists are calling the province's Special Places program a major failure to protect wilderness regions, and industry groups are also disappointed. The criticisms have prompted environmental groups to ask Premier Ralph Klein to quickly create 10 new protected areas. Journal reporters Dennis Hryciuk and Ed Struzik examine the Special Places program today, and the proposed sites over the next 10 days.

Four years after the Alberta government officially launched Special Places, industry groups have joined environmentalists in attacking the province's program to protect ecologically significant areas.

Both sides say Special Places has failed on several fronts.

The government, they say has failed to ban industrial activity in protected areas despite business requests to do so.

Major land use conflicts between conservationists, industries and landowners remain unresolved. Local committees considering sites often whittle them down to small areas.

The criticism has come from business interests such as forest industry spokesperson Bob Demulder.

'The intent of this was to come up with enough protected areas that met the needs of all the parties, with everyone going away happy,' says Demulder, a director of the Alberta Forest Products Association. 'That won't happen now.'

Demulder and other business leaders find themselves disagreeing with a government that believes industrial activity should be allowed to continue within Special Places.

'If you ask the public whether logging should be allowed in a protected area, the answer is pretty obvious. We're not stupid!' Demulder says.

'It seemed to be that, by default, maybe they (government officials) weren't trying to meet the goals of Special Places.'

Petroleum industry spokesperson David Luff is even more blunt.

'We support a policy of no oil and gas activity in Special Places,' says Luff, vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Because the government has taken the opposite approach, conflicts with conservation groups will probably continue, he says.

Both Luff and Demulder caution that final judgement on Special Places should wait until it is completed in about two years, but they aren't holding back their barbs, either.

The fact that industries were among those urging the province to start Special Places points to what so many people feel is wrong with the program.

Ray Rasmussen was one of six people the government appointed in 1993 to go around the province and consult Albertans about how Special Places would fit into Alberta's land protection network.

They received more than 500 written submissions from virtually every sector of society.

The University of Alberta business professor credits a number of people in both the forestry and energy sector for getting the government to seriously consider the idea of Special Places.

'Industry saw what was happening in British Columbia, and many of them were very, very worried that Alberta was quickly going to be the scene of the same nasty environmental battles in British Columbia that were making headlines all over the world,' he says.

'They wanted to avoid the publicity, the bad will, and the uncertainty and expense that went with having to have public hearings in every valley.'

Both Demulder and Luff agree.

'What got industry to the table was the idea that this would be the last kick at what would be protected,' says Demulder.

'This would be protected and this wouldn't be.'

Luff notes that the oil business wanted a protected areas program that would create certainty over what lands the industry could operate or not operate in. 'It fell quite a bit short of that,' he says.

Government officials respond that it's still too early to judge Special Places because it won't be wrapped up until late in the year 2000. They note that thus far a total of 46 sites covering 5,250 sq km have been created under the program: an area about half the size of Jasper National Park.

Looked at another way, the average size of each Special Place created to date 114 sq km: is about one seventh the size of Edmonton.

Along with previously created provincial and federal parks and wilderness regions, Alberta is now protecting about 10 per cent of its total area, says Special Places provincial official Jim Law.

And another 56 sites are being considered by both local committees and the province. They could provide an additional 9,1000 sq. km of protected land, Law notes.

OPTIONS FORECLOSING

But environmentalists such as Peter Lee of the World Wildlife Fund are doubtful about what can be achieved when the provincial co-ordinating committee for Special Places, of which he is a member, winds down next month.

'The options for preserving our province's natural heritage are rapidly foreclosing,' he says.

'Many areas like western Swan Hills have either been lost to intense or irretrievable landscape disturbances, or have been committed to one or more industrial uses.'

Steven Kennett predicted Special Places was going to fail just months after the government officially launched the program in 1995. He is a research associate with the Calgary based Institute of Resources Law funded by the federal government, the Alberta Law Foundation, and the private sector.

NO STANDARD FOR PROTECTION

He says the process was doomed from the start when the government failed to set a standard for protection in Special Places. It was then left to local committees made up of ranchers, oil men, loggers and local elected officials to arrive at consensus.

'It was a recipe for disaster. This was neither a protected areas strategy nor a comprehensive land use exercise.'

Rancher Ron Davis, who chaired the committee looking at the Whaleback site in southern Alberta, puts it this way.

'The government handed over to us what they couldn't do for years and expected us to somehow wave a wand and come up with a magic solution. In hindsight, that was unrealistic.'

In the absence of any clear direction from the government about what protection is, Davis believes the future of the Whaleback is not as secure as he would like it to be.

'We did the best we could under the circumstances.'

What strikes forest industry spokesman Demulder is that local committees often weakened or reduced the size of proposed sites.

'Even forestry sites that I thought would come back fairly well came back less so,' he comments.

Kennett concludes that Special Places has 'poisoned relations between the government and the environment community, and laid the groundwork for a series of bitter land use conflicts that will focus national and international attention on Alberta's environmental record and its resource industries.'

Environment Minister Ty Lund is seen by many environmentalists as one of a number of reasons why Special Places has failed.

They say that he came into the ministry only months after attacking his own government's agenda in the legislature.

'People are concerned that large tracts of land are going to be protected to the point where you can only be permitted access by foot,' he told the legislature on April 27, 1994.

'As if this wasn't ridiculous enough, now I'm hearing that Alberta Parks are going to be managers of these huge areas.'

In a supplementary question, Lund asked then environment minister Brian Evans 'how on earth sterilizing large tracts of land could possibly add to economic development or tourism?'

Lund is accustomed to the barbs coming from environmentalists, but the complaints from industry and ranchers are hitting a sore point.

He accuses industry of rhetoric that is at odds with the actions of their own member companies.

Those firms are stubbornly holding onto industrial permits in proposed Special Places wherever they can, Lund notes.

'Why haven't they come forward and given up their dispositions? That's not the real world.'

Industry groups such as Luff's, however, say the government has just as stubbornly refused to consider any kinds of compensation for companies that want to pull out of a protected area.

The petroleum industry has suggested many times that land swaps, lease credits or outright cash settlements could resolve many of the conflicts, Luff says.

'Special Places as a policy was itself precedent setting. It should require precedent setting processes to make it happen.'

Lund believes any widespread program of compensation would be unrealistic.

Oil companies keep their findings from explored areas secret, he explains, so it would be difficult to know how much the government should compensate them.

'You tell me how we're going to determine if there is oil and gas there,' the minister says.

In fact, economic interestcan'tbe ignored, he adds. Despite what industry groups say, many businesses want to continue or expand their operations.

'You can't shut down an entire, huge area,' Lund says.

As for hopes that industry environment disputes would be ended by the program, Lund believes such expectations are naïve.

'I don't know how industries thought this would take away any of the conflicts they'd have with environmental groups. Those will always continue,' he says.

HIGH MARKS FOR B.C.

Ironically, British Columbia, the scene of so many ugly environmental battles in the past, is getting high praise from both industry and environmentalists for the way it has managed its version of Special Places since 1992.

B.C. has nearly reached its target of doubling the size ond believes any widespread prarks system and it has establisnrealistic.

Oil companies keep their findings from explored areas secret, he explains, so it would be d, dwarf anything that has been created thus far in Alberta.

The Muskwa-Kechika contains 44,000 sq km. of territory.

Of that 11,000 sq km is designated as wilderness where no industrial activity is allowed.

The rest is a special management area in which some industrial activity is allowed subject to approval from a committee of stakeholders that includes environmentalists, industry representatives, aboriginal people, and other local interests.

'You've got to give the British Columbia government credit,' says George Smith, conservation director for B.C.'s Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and a member of the Muskwa-Kechika management committee.

'While it's not perfect, and there's still some way to go, there's no comparing what has been achieved here to what has happened with Special Places in Alberta. Alberta is a disaster.'

Kennett says B.C. ran a very sophisticated program that was clear about what was to be protected, and what it is to be protected against.

He says it had a secretariat that was run by the province's former Ombudsman, and a clear science based approach to the plan.

'Everyone went into it knowing what they had to compromise,' says Kennett.

'Here in Alberta, everything is up for grabs and each interest has an incentive to push its agenda in each site. It's a recipe for frustration and conflict.'

As a result, environmentalists are universally calling the Special Places program a disaster. All conservation groups pulled out of the provincial co-ordinating committee last year, save the World Wildlife Fund.

Lee, its Alberta director, calls Special Places a 'staggering failure of historic proportions.'

Still, he and representatives of two other major environmental groups aren't entirely giving up on the program.

They met with Premier Ralph Klein in mid January, asking him to designate 10 areas as new Special Places as a way to salvage the program.

The areas, including the huge Birch Wabasca regions, are relatively free of conflicts and could easily be protected, the groups say.

So far, Klein has not responded. But there is some acknowledgement, at least on Lund's part, that Special Places has rankled many different interest groups.

'We're getting darts from every angle,' the minister acknowledges. 'Then we must be treating everybody pretty fair. If someone was gloating about how well he was doing out of the program, then I'd be worrying.

'At the end of the day, I believe we'll have representative samples of the regions,' Lund says.

'That is what we set out to do.'

The Lay of the Land on Special Places

What: An Alberta government program to set aside ecologically significant areas of the province.

Where: All areas of Alberta in six natural regions: Canadian Shield, boreal forest, Rocky mountains, foothills, parkland and grassland.

When: Officially launched in 1995, to be completed by the end of 2000.

Who: Proposals made by a provincial co-ordinating committee and local committees. Sites are approved by Environment Minister Ty Lund.

Actions to date: 46 sites designated as Special Places; covering 5,250 square kilometres in total (about half the size of Jasper National Park); average size of each site, 114 square kilometres (about one seventh the size of Edmonton).

Example: Whitehorse Wildland Park announced August 1998: 174 square kilometres next to Jasper National Park near Hinton. Unique features: harlequin duck nesting habitat, elk range, rare plant communities, corridors for wildlife such as grizzly bears.