© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
November 16, 2000
By Neville Judd

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, November 16, 2000 (ENS) - British Columbia has become the first Canadian province or territory to set aside 12 percent of its land base as park land. But there are no shortage of critics willing to point out that the provincial government's enthusiasm for making parks has exceeded its financial ability to manage them.

B.C. Premier Ujjal Dosanjh and provincial Environment Minister Ian Waddell announced that the 12 percent target set nine years ago under the Protected Areas Strategy was reached Tuesday with the addition of more than 600,000 hectares of protected areas under the Mackenzie Land and Resource Management Plan.

Joined with the Muskwa Kechika management area, which was established in 1997, the newly protected lands stretch across northern B.C. from the Rockies to the Pacific in an area five times the size of Jasper National Park.

"Nine years ago, we said we would double our parks and recreation areas," said Dosanjh. "We have met our promise, protecting over 12 percent of B.C.'s diverse and beautiful environment for today's, as well as tomorrow's, families."

"Protecting 12 per cent of our province and meeting the United Nations goal sets a global example and it's good for our economy," said Waddell.

The 12 percent target arose from former Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland's Our Common Future report for the United Nations in 1987. The figure has no basis in science or conservation biology but provides a target for governments to focus on. B.C. now joins New Zealand and Alaska as one of the few places that has passed the 12 percent mark.

But in the course of doubling its number of parks, the B.C. government has halved the budget allocated to managing them.

In 1985 the parks budget represented 0.5 percent of the provincial budget. In 1998, it amounted to 0.15 percent, or C$33 million (US$21.4 million). That figure dropped to C$30.9 million (US$20 million) this year.

The Ministry of Environment, Land and Parks, which oversees parks spending, has seen its budget cut by about 50 percent in the last five years - from C$264 million (US$170.5 million) in 1994/95 to $188 million (US$121 million) in 2000/01.

Yesterday's announcement included an additional C$4.9 million for the ministry's budget, $2 million of which will be allocated to parks management and facilities.

While conceding the government deserves praise for meeting the 12 percent goal, Ian Gill of Ecotrust, a non-profit group promoting conservation based development in coastal rainforests, believes B.C.'s parks are in a perilous position.

"Cutting the parks budget while doubling the number of parks is patently absurd by any equation," said Gill. "If you did that in the transport ministry or the health ministry people would cry bloody murder. But parks are out of sight and out of mind. A lot of people don't realize that parks are managed or how they are managed."

Gill said the environment ministry is not helped by the way government ministries are structured. "The weight of government is tipped toward the old economy. We have an enormous well funded ministry of forests that is completely disproportionate to the resource it manages. By comparison, the parks ministry has no power, no budget with a huge resource that's underappreciated.

"We need to derive a revenue base that doesn't force us into crass commercial disasters like Banff," said Gill. Banff National Park has seen C$500 million of commercial development since 1992.

"And the more profound question that needs to evolve is what constitutes park management."

With more park visits comes a greater and more varied expectation of what a park should look like and how it should be managed. And unlike the traditional role of parks, which was to provide recreation and enjoyment, biodiversity must now be taken into account.

According to ministry figures, visits to B.C. parks increased by 67 percent between 1985 and 1995 while staffing fell by seven percent. Last year more than 24 million visits were made to provincial parks.

The plight of B.C. Parks funding and the environment ministry has even aroused a lobbying campaign by a coalition of recreation and environmental groups working under the name Help MELP (Ministry of Environment Lands and Parks).

Pat Harrison, executive director of the B.C. Federation of Mountain Clubs, and one of the campaign leaders met with Premier Ujjal Dosanjh last month to lobby for an extra C$15 million a year for B.C. Parks.

"The word from the Premier is that there would be no new funding right now but a mid-course correction later," said Harrison. "He was very non-commital but then he's preoccupied with so many crises."

Some parts of B.C. feel they have been left behind in the government's protected areas strategy. The Sunshine Coast, north of Vancouver, is still waiting for its Land and Resource Management Planning process, the public forum which allows communities to influence decisions over areas to be protected.

Consequently, only three percent of the Sunshine Coast has been saved as park land.

Last year on the Sunshine Coast, the provincial government set aside 140 hectares of park land on Mount Elphinstone, an area home to the endangered tailed frog - which was recently added to Canada's official Wildlife at Risk list - screech owl and several rare mushroom species.

Just prior to the three parcels of land officially being designated as protected, Ministry of Highways trucks built a one kilometre exploratory road into one of the listed areas to extract gravel.

While local environmentalists maintain that ministry employees knew of the area's imminent protection, staff might have been forgiven for missing the park boundary. To this day, the land has no sign of its protection as a park and, like hundreds of other parks created since the provincial government launched its protected areas strategy, no management plan.

"The 140 hectares is of some use but we expect to see many extinctions of species in this area," said Adrian Belshaw, chairman of the Sunshine Coast Regional District, which had lobbied hard for 1,500 hectares of Mount Elphinstone to be saved.

"Elphinstone has one of the highest densities of mushroom species - over 1,000. This morning I found an Albatrellus Caeruleoporus, a type of mushroom found in only one other place in B.C.

"I don't think the protected areas strategy is a noble project. The 12 percent target was for overdeveloped nations to shoot up to. With all the pristine areas B.C. had, we shot down to 12 percent."

George Smith, chairman of the B.C. Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, disagrees. The 12 percent target gives people something to focus on, said Smith.

"We can get wrapped up in a stupid debate over the number 12 or we can get on with what's really important, which is doing a proper job of protecting land with environmental integrity," said Smith.

Smith helped negotiate Mackenzie's Land and Resource Management Plan and the special management plan for the 4.4 million hectare Muskwa Kechika area in northeastern B.C., the largest and most innovative package of protected areas and special management zones in the province.

The plan balances resource management with conservation, said Smith. More than one million hectares will be permanently protected with the creation of 11 new protected areas. These areas are surrounded by more than three million hectares of special management zones.

In these zones, wilderness and wildlife habitat will be maintained while resource development such as logging, mineral exploration and mining, and oil and gas exploration and development will be allowed in a way that Smith said is sensitive to wildlife and environmental values.

"There are not going to be parks everywhere and you can't just stop at parks," said Smith. "So this is how we proceed - conservation biology in concert with special management zones in connective corridors."

This week, Smith told reporters, "The Muskwa Kechika in northern British Columbia is one of the richest wildlife areas on earth. Today the B.C. government increased the conservation package of the Muskwa Kechika Management Area to 16 million acres of parks and legislated special management zones. The world conservation community will cheer this decision."

At least one community will not be cheering. As ENS reported last week, northern B.C. native band, the Tsay Keh Dene, wrote to Premier Dosanjh asking him to put the Mackenzie Land and Resource Management Plan on hold.

The Tsay Keh Dene are in the middle of land claims negotiations with the B.C. government. Some of the land being negotiated falls under the Mackenzie Land Resource Management Plan. There are currently 51 First Nations, in 42 sets of negotiations, participating in B.C.'s treaty process.

"I cannot see how two separate negotiations can be carried out for the same piece of land," Tsay Keh Dene chief Ella Pierre told ENS. "I cannot see how the same land can be governed by two different laws."

The B.C. government maintains that such plans do not affect native treaty rights or land claims. Error: Unable to read footer file.