Fur May Fly Over Plan to Give Big Mammals Room to Roam
10/16/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Fur May Fly Over Plan to Give Big Mammals Room to Roam
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Date: 10/16/97
Byline: Carol Berger
Copyright 1997 by Christian Science Monitor
Canada's ranchers are wary of a 'Yellowstone to Yukon' initiative unveiled
last week.
A plan to turn a huge swath of land along the Rocky Mountains into
a wildlife-protection zone has caught Canadian landowners by surprise.
Earlier this month, a prominent group of biologists and
environmentalists unveiled an ambitious proposal to create a wildlife
corridor across the Canadian and American Rockies. Called
``Yellowstone to Yukon,'' the protective zone would run 1,800 miles
from north to south and encompass half a million square miles.
The plan was unveiled at a meeting of more than 300
environmentalists in Waterton Lakes National Park in southernmost
Alberta Oct. 5.
While the plan made front-page news in Canada, whether the public
support and political will to carry it through can be mustered remains
far from certain.
In southern Alberta, the majestic Rocky Mountains are already white
with snow. Throughout the rolling foothills, ranchers are readying
their cattle for the long winter ahead.
Clay Chattaway owns a ranch west of the small town of Nanton. The
area is considered to have some of the best grazing land in Canada.
Mr. Chattaway's family has ranched here for more than four
generations. He is a director of the Waldron Grazing Cooperative,
which represents more than 70 ranchers in southern Alberta.
Chattaway says the protective-corridor plan is ``claptrap and a
pipe dream'' that ``will never work.''
``If an animal at the top of the food chain disappears because of
something we're doing, like using DDT that weakens the shells of
birds, then we should be concerned,'' he says. ``But if the grizzly
bear starts to grow four toes on one foot and seven on the other
because of the lack of genetic diversity, I'm not going to lose sleep
about it.''
Bart Robinson, coordinator of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation
Initiative, based in Canmore, Alberta, see things differently. His
organization serves as an umbrella for more than 80 conservation
groups. ``People look at the map and they tend to think people want to
turn this into an ark or something. It's really an area of focus or
study. Within this area, we're interested in creating ribbons of
connectivity,'' Mr. Robinson says.
``Bears, wolves, cougars, lynx, and wolverines need much larger
areas than previously realized to stay healthy and alive. We're trying
to connect the dots so animals can circulate from one 'island' to
another.''
At issue is whether wildlife living in ``islands'' of protected
territory - national parks - can survive. Biologists are finding that
grizzly bears, wolves, and other large mammals require large expanses
of territory to thrive. The Rocky Mountains, running north to south in
western North America, make up their natural habitat.
But development has chopped up natural migratory routes.
Environmentalists note that the east-west TransCanada Highway and
Canadian Pacific Railway running through Banff National Park in
Alberta are just two obstacles the mammals find difficult to cross.
The result is that smaller and smaller groups of these animals live
together, reducing genetic diversity and threatening their survival.
On Oct. 8, the British Columbia government announced an agreement
to protect a huge area of wilderness that adds a significant piece to
the puzzle environmentalists are trying to put together. More than 2.5
million acres in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains, known as
Muskwa-Kechika, is to be safeguarded from development.
Environmentalists hailed the move as a major step forward in the wider
effort to protect wildlife throughout the Rocky Mountains. The new
protected region is home to large numbers of caribou, grizzly bears,
and other mammals.
The decision was reached after negotiations between the provincial
government and oil and mining companies, environmentalists, and Indian
groups.
Environmentalists accept that their plan for the much larger
Yellowstone-to-Yukon protective zone may take a generation before
results are seen. Some interest groups, Robinson concedes, are
``pretty hostile'' to the plan.
Several senior spokesmen among Alberta's cattlemen said they had
never been consulted about a wide protection plan that would directly
affect their land.
And the issue is about land. One rancher described the southern
border area in British Columbia and Alberta as ``like Aspen [Colo.] in
the '50s.'' Beautiful scenery and close proximity to parks and ski
resorts has turned what was formerly a mining and agricultural region
into a prime recreational area.
The price of land reflects that. An acre of farmland has risen
sharply in value, to as much as $1,500 Canadian (US$1,125) an acre.
Add to that Alberta's current oil-and-gas development boom, and
pressure on the province's wilderness areas has never been greater.
Jim Abbott follows environmental issues for Canada's populist
opposition Reform Party. He refers to environmentalists as ``armchair
quarterbacks'' who live in apartments in cities. His home constituency
in southeastern British Columbia is a region ``smack dab in the
middle'' of the proposed wildlife-protection zone, he says.
The plan, he says, promotes ``the idea of 'two legs bad, four legs
good.' ``
``There has been a total lack of consultation. There has also been
an almost total lack of science,'' he says. ``They're working on
intuition.''
After decades of living in the foothills of the Rockies, rancher
Chattaway questions efforts to build special overpasses or underpasses
across highways to give large mammals a way to migrate farther.
``They can have all kinds of fancy overpasses, but there's
absolutely no logic in this thing. If the grizzly bear dies out
because of a lack of genetic diversity, that's just a consequence of
the way the world is headed. There was no one to defend Tyrannosaurus
rex when he was around.''
``This project does involve change for many people within the area,
changes in the way they've done things,'' Robinson says. ``But, at the
same time, what's absolutely apparent to me is that change is coming
anyway.''