Ed Struzik, Journal staff writer
Edmonton, The Edmonton Journal, February 17, 1999
Legend has it that butch Cassidy passed through the Waleback in southern Alberta on one of his legendary flights from justice.
The Peigan Indians can trace their ancestry back to one of the many archeological sites that can be found on the hilltops overlooking valleys and creeks still filled with bull trout - and bordered by stands of rare grassland vegetation found almost nowhere else on the prairies.
No on is contesting the fact that the Whaleback is a special place.
It is one of the last great stands of montane in Alberta, a place where the prairie rolls right up to the mountains, and where elk, moose, deer, wolves, grizzlies and cougar move about freely through forests filled with 575-year-old limber pines.
For the past 18 years, only a river has separated James Tweedie from this world in southern Alberta But he and others fear that if the Whaleback is given Special Places status in the months ahead, this roadless wonder of wilderness will soon be carved up by logging trucks, oil and gas rigs and all-terrain vehicles following in their path.
"It's a tragedy,", says Tweedie, who makes his living building houses and barns in summer and making fine handcrafted furniture in the winter months.
"Special Places was supposed to protect what is left of wild lands like the Whaleback in Alberta what it's doing though is tearing it all apart for the sake of a few dollars in oil and gas and lumber."
Tweedie is as close to the issue as anyone. From April to December of 1997, he put his heart and soul into the work of a local committee that was appointed by the government to consider designation the Whaleback as a Special Place.
He quit in frustration when it became clear that the loggers and oil men on the committee were succeeding in pushing their economic interests over that of wilderness.
Tweedie is not alone in believing that industrial activity has no place in this wilderness.
In an unprecedented decision in 1994 the province's own Energy Resource conservation Board rejected Amoco Canada Limited's application to drill a well in the area.
"The Whaleback area represents a truly unique and valuable Alberta ecosystem with extremely high recreational, aesthetic and wildlife values," the report stated in justifying its decision.
At first glance, it appeared that Tweedie's worst fears would be realized. The local committee he quit eventually recommended that there was a place for oil and gas, loggers, ranchers and recreationists in the Whaleback.
But there was a glimmer of hope last September when the Provincial Coordinating Committee overseeing Special Places recommended no new development in the Whaleback and a provincial buy-put of the Amoco lease. Facing a barrage of negative publicity over its plans in the area, Amoco subsequently offered to relinquish its lease in the region in exchange for compensation or other holding elsewhere.
Environment Minister Ty Lund has since rejected that offer, saying it would set an unwanted precedent for other areas of the province.
Ron Davis was the rancher who headed the Whaleback local committee. Insisting that he is speaking only for himself, he says he always had a problem reconciling how oil and gas and logging could mix with preservation principle in the Whaleback.
"Had there been the option of recommending that the area be protected from these activities it would have made our job easier," he said.
But I talked to Environment Minister Ty Lund at least twice about this and he said that wasn't an option. So under the circumstances, I think we did the best we could have done."
Davis insists the committee isn't recommending an "open for business agenda as many people think.
"Would the Whaleback become a Special Place, we insist that a local management committee should run it, and ensure that integrity of the landscape be preserved," he says.
"That's not an open invitation for industry to start building a lot of roads and oil rigs in this area. Don't forget that the Whaleback is as wild and pristine as it is because the local community has kept it that way."
Davis expected a decision on the Whaleback from the government before the new year. He says he'd be happy if they decided in the end to buy out Amoco. Concerns about what the province will eventually do about the Whaleback were heightened last week when a report detailing the ecological significance of the Whaleback and the age of its old growth forest came to light.
Environmentalists say the report was suppressed. But Environment Minister Ty Lund insists that it was made available to every member of the local committee.
World Wildlife Fund director Petter Lee, a member of the Provincial coordination Committee overseeing Special places, says the bottom line for him is that his committee wasn't given the report, even though he tried three times to get a copy.
Now, he's calling on the Provincial coordination committee to ask Ty Lund why such critically important information was withheld.
"It appears that the Provincial coordinating Committee's decision regarding the Whaleback needs to be strengthened in light of the reported information in the leaked Whaleback report obtained by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society," says Lee.
Tweedie has since got a lot of support from ranchers and environmentalists for the stand that he took, and he has warned of a British Columbia and northern Alberta style environmental battle if industrial development is allowed in the area.
"I may have quit the committee, But my heart and soul is still in this," he says. "We're not letting go. If they put oil and gas in here, they'll have a fight on their hands. I promise."