Lakeland, a flagship on the rocks

Dennis Hryciuk, Journal Staff Writer
Edmonton, The Edmonton Journal, February 20, 1999

In 1992 Lakeland was touted as the centrepiece of the newly created Special Places program. Today the land is chewed up by oil and gas drillers and all-terrain vehicles, the lakes are overfished and wildlife populations are near collapse.

Seven years after the provincial government created the first Special Places in Alberta, a government commissioned report is calling the area an environmental mess.

The Lakeland region is so damaged by oil and gas activity, logging, overfishing and illegal all-terrain-vehicle use that its ecological integrity is in danger of collapsing, the report says.

Written by Calgary ecologist Richard Thomas, the study only came to light last fall after provincial officials attempted to keep its contents under wraps.

Now conservationists are asking the province to strengthen protection, and enlarge the land area for what was supposed to be the flagship of the Special Places program.

To date, Lakeland Provincial Park and its adjoining Recreation Area have been so weakly protected that local activists are outrages.

"Is there no corner of the province that's sacred? It appears not," says Tom Maccagno, a former mayor of Lac la Biche and a long-time conservation advocate for the region.

Maccagno served on an advisory committee in the early '90's that recommended an end to industrial activity in what was then a proposed protected area.

"We thought it was far more important to maintain the integrity of the area and its biodiversity than to chip away at it the way we are now."

The result has been a severe degradation of the Lakeland, he says.

Moose and deer are in danger of being wiped out, while fish populations have dropped drastically, he notes.

It's all a shame for an area that has had such a rich variety of wildlife, Maccagno says. Visitors have found a diversity that includes lynxes, marten, bald eagles, blue herons and many kinds of songbirds.

But the area is threatened by a variety of forces, says the Thomas report.

It details how seismic lines, roads, pipelines, logging and oil and gas activities now criss-cross three quarters of the Lakeland area.

Sports fishing, trapping and unauthorized all-terrain-vehicle traffic are also eroding the area, Thomas writes. All those activities are putting heavy strains on wildlife and fish in the region, he concludes.

Pleas to Upgrade

As a result, a coalition of environmental groups have asked Premier Ralph klein to upgrade both the park and recreation area to a wildland park, which would ban all-terrain-vehicle use.

The groups also want Klein to quickly phase out all industrial activity and add about 1,000 sq. km. to the current 600 sq. km.

But conservationists face a fight from oil and gas companies, who point out that their activities are creating jobs in the area.

"Do they propose to move the people out?" says Dick Wilson, spokesperson for Alberta Energy Company Ltd.

The company has oil and gas leases in the area and fully expects to develop them, Wilson says.

A bigger and more protected Lakeland could cut back that activity and reduce the local population, he notes.

Because of those possibilities, the company would want to be part of any local discussions on the Special Places process, Wilson says.

But Lakeland County Reeve Debra Lozinski points out that a previous consultation process showed there was little local support for continued oil and gas activity in the protected area.

She also notes that a management plan that was supposed to have dealt with issues such as regulation of boats and all-terrain vehicles in Lakeland has so far not been created.

A draft form of the plan has been around for years but has not yet been finalized by the provincial Environment department, Lozinski says. And local people are still upset by a provincial proposal to put a pipeline corridor through the park recreation area, she adds.

"We were told that if the Energy department wants it, they get it."

Recently, Environment Minister Ty Lund said the province may consider changing the boundary of Lakeland to allow for the corridor.

However, the county has suggested several alternatives outside the park recreation area that could accommodate a pipeline, Lozinski notes.

It's all quite a change from the time that Klein, then environment minister, told a visiting Prince Philip that Lakeland would be the flagship of the newly announced Special Places program in 1992. Lakeland, government officials said, was to be a model for the program and a "lifeline to an ecologically sustainable future."

Years later, activists such as Maccagno say that promise hasn't been kept.

He notes that at the time, the province produced a video on Special Places that it called Nothing Less Than Paradise.

"I say: nothing less than a scam."

A local committee is to be appointed to consider the increased protection proposals for Lakeland suggested by the Special Places provincial coordinating committee.

Provincial government officials are not commenting on the area until that process and Klein have had a chance to consider the proposals.

But Maccagno says he hopes both local and provincial officials have a change of heart when they reconsider the matter.

"Everything is looked at as a resource. We should look at these things as treasures. They should be respected and cared fro, and they're not for sale."