Proposed Legislation Will Allow Industrial Development
in Alberta’s Parks and Special Places

 March 16, 1999
Action Alert ­ Help Still Needed to Stop Development in Alberta’s Parks

Is this the future of Alberta’s Provincial Parks under the Natural Heritage Act?

 March 8, 1999
Alberta’s Bill 15, the Natural Heritage Act, Challenged Internationally

March 5, 1999
Natural Heritage Act meets heavy criticism by conservation groups, industry, opposition, media

February 16, 1999
Proposed Legislation Will Allow Industrial Development in Alberta’s Parks and Special Places
 
 

April 23, 1998
CPAWS Withdraws from Special Places 2000 Program
 
 

Contact your MLA and Premier Ralph Klein on Wednesday, February 17, 1999

 Please, contact your MLA and Premier Ralph Klein on February 17, 1999, the day the Legislature begins its sitting for the Spring session. Let them know you want a law that will protect Alberta’s parks and wilderness areas from development, forever.

 To contact your MLA:

 Telephone 310-000 to find out your MLA’s address or telephone number. You can also call him or her toll-free by dialling 310-000 first. You can e-mail your MLA at AltaTalk@gov.ab.ca. Indicate who you are writing to and include your regular mail address as they only reply in writing. Every MLA can be written at:

 Legislature Building,
Edmonton, Alberta, T5K 2B6

 To contact Premier Ralph Klein:

 Telephone 310-000 and then 427-2251 to reach Premier Klein's office in Edmonton toll free. Write him at:

 307 Legislature Building,
Edmonton, Alberta, T5K 2B6

 E-mail the Premier at AltaTalk@gov.ab.ca.
Address it to the Premier and include your regular mail address.

 Please try to contact the Premier and your MLA on February 17th. But if you can’t do it then, do it before or after. Just do it please!

Proposed “Natural Heritage Act” ­ Quick Fact Sheet

• Alberta has seven kinds of parks designations, created under three different pieces of legislation. When “Special Places” are created, they are given one of these designations. The seven kinds of parks designations are:

 

 

1. Wilderness Area
2. Ecological Reserve
3. Willmore Wilderness Park
4. Wildland Provincial Park
5. Provincial Park
6. Natural Area
7. Recreation Area
• Wilderness Areas, Ecological Reserves, Willmore Wilderness Park, and Wildland Provincial Parks are relatively highly protected places. Wilderness Areas are protected from industrial development, logging, motorized access, and even are off limits to hunting, fishing, and horse travel. The Willmore Wilderness Park is unique in Alberta and is off limits to industrial development, logging, roads and motorized travel. Wildland Provincial Parks are a sub-category of provincial park that prohibits new industrial development, roads and new commercial tourism facilities. Logging and industrial development on pre-existing leases may be allowed.

 

 

• In Ecological Reserves, pre-existing oil and gas or forestry leases may be developed or renewed, and motorized travel may be authorized on designated routes. Virtually any kind of development may be permitted in Provincial Parks, Natural Areas, and Recreation Areas.

 

 

• When the Special Places 2000 program was announced, most conservation groups, including CPAWS, refused to participate in the process. One of our concerns was that Alberta did not have adequate parks and protected areas legislation. We believed that a network of protected areas could be created only if there were proper legislation that prevented inappropriate development in parks and protected areas.

 

 

• After CPAWS joined the Special Places process in 1995, we spent a lot of time negotiating with other participants the framework for new legislation that would prohibit industrial development, forestry, roads, commercial tourism facilities, and motorized travel inside parks. Unfortunately, we were not successful and the proposed new legislation will not provide this protection.

 

 

• Under the proposed Natural Heritage Act, five new designations will be created:

 

 

1. Provincial Nature Reserve 
2. Wildland Provincial Park
3. Natural Environment Provincial Park 
4. Heritage Rangeland
5. Recreation Area
• Once the new Act is passed by the Legislature, Provincial Parks, Wilderness Areas, Natural Areas, Ecological Reserves and the Willmore Wilderness Park will no longer exist, and all parks and “Special Places” will be designated as one of the above new categories.

 

 

• In particular, Alberta’s three wilderness areas (the Siffleur,the White Goat and the Ghost,) the most protected landscapes in the province will disappear and become Wildland Provincial Parks. During the transition, they will be vulnerable to management decisions that could allow off-road vehicle use and logging under the guise of “vegetation management.”

 

 

• Under the new designations, oil and gas leases can still be issued, but surface development on new leases (i.e., drilling rigs, etc.) will not be allowed within the boundaries of all categories but Recreation Areas. However, pre-existing oil and gas leases will be allowed to be developed with new drilling rigs and associated facilities. Logging to prevent or suppress wild fires or to control insects or disease (euphemistically called “vegetation management” in the legislation) will be allowed in all categories. Roads will be allowed to access pre-existing industrial leases in Wildland Provincial Parks and Heritage Rangelands and more generally in Natural Environment Parks. Motorized off-road vehicle access will be allowed on specified routes in Wildland Provincial Parks and Recreation Areas. Staging areas for off-road vehicles and snowmobiles may be established in Natural Environment Provincial Parks.

 

 

• The proposed “Natural Heritage Act” does not allow the creation of a network of areas protected from industrial development.

 

 

• There already are many examples of Special Places that have been opened to industrial development:

 

 

• When Special Places was announced in 1995, Lakeland Provincial Park and Recreation Area was highlighted as the flagship of the program; three years later, in 1998 the government approved a new pipeline corridor through the Recreation Area.

 

 

• In June 1997, the government sold new oil and gas leases in the Rumsey South Natural Area and under the Rumsey Ecological Reserve.

 

 

• In February 1997, Fort Assiniboine Wildland Provincial Park was announced as a new Special Place; seven months later new roads were cut and drilling rigs were erected to drill for oil and gas on a pre-existing lease within the park.

 

 

• In January 1999, 50 trees were logged in Willmore Wilderness Park so the Alberta Forest Service could prevent mountain pine beetle, a natural forest species, from living in the park.

 

 

• All of Alberta’s lands have been earmarked for industrial development; this means that every new Special Place will have leases within its boundaries for oil and gas, logging, or mining ­ the new law will allow these to be developed.

 

 

• Under the proposed “Natural Heritage Act,” virtually all Special Places, whether Provincial Nature Reserves, Wildland Provincial Parks, Natural Environment Provincial Parks, Heritage Rangelands, or Recreation Areas will be vulnerable to new oil and gas development, logging, roads, off-road vehicles and snowmobiles, and other kinds of development.

 

 

• CPAWS believes strong legislation is needed to ensure that enough parks and protected areas are established to preserve the diversity of life in the province and provide Albertans with places to experience Nature on her own terms. We are asking the Alberta government to either withdraw or drastically amend the “Natural Heritage Act” to ensure all Special Places are secure from industrial development and motorized forms of travel.

 

 

 Wendy Francis
Conservation Director
Calgary/Banff Chapter, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
Telephone: (403)232-6601
E-mail: wfrancis@calcna.ab.ca