Province announces Bighorn Country conservation, tourism and recreation proposal

To ensure the right balance of Indigenous, economic, environmental and social values and goals, provincial officials say all interested parties can now provide input on the future of the Bighorn Country through an online survey available now until January 31, 2019.

“Forty years ago, Premier Peter Lougheed created Kananaskis Country due to increased pressures on the eastern slopes,” Premier Rachel Notley said in a release. “Now, Kananaskis provides amazing experiences and opportunities, showing that investments in Alberta today mean our children and grandchildren will have wild spaces to enjoy in the future. We are asking all Albertans to help us create a place for everyone.”

“This mix of parks, recreation areas and public land-use zones has the potential to be the greatest tourism development opportunity the area has ever seen,” adds Shannon Phillips, Minister of Environment and Parks. “We know how much Albertans value nature and time spent outdoors. This proposal will create new jobs, enhance mountain recreation and preserve the wilds of the Bighorn backcountry for generations to come.”

Officials say new land designations in Bighorn Country would better protect headwaters and biodiversity, support continued traditional land-use by Indigenous Peoples, and provide high-quality outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism opportunities.

The proposal is also said to support all current recreation activities (such as camping, hunting, hiking, fishing, climbing, mountain biking, horseback riding and off-highway vehicle use) to ensure these activities continue for generations to come.

Hilary Young, Senior Program Manager with the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative, says this is great news.

“All Albertans should be celebrating this announcement,” says Young. “They have voiced the desire to see this protected and it’s going to happen which is awesome. We had hoped to see a little bit more land protected but we think this is a really terrific first step.”

Young says Y2Y and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) now looks forward to sharing their thoughts on the proposal.

“We’re really happy about the Wildland Park designation,” she explains. “There is a lot of great intact habitat that is going to be protected under the designation and it’s still going to allow a lot of recreation opportunities, so hunting and fishing and Indigenous treaty rights will still be respected.”

Young points-out the Wildland Park designation will also protect Edmonton’s headwaters.

“It means there won’t be any industrial extraction happening in the Wildland Park,” exclaims Young. “We would have liked to have seen that Wildland Park extend a little bit further to the east but again I think there’s going to be opportunities to contribute to the management planning process further east.”

The Bighorn region extends from Banff National Park eastward towards Drayton Valley and includes Clearwater County and most of Brazeau County. The region also forms the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan River and Red Deer River, which supply clean drinking water to over 1.5 million Albertans.

The new and expanded parks and protected areas being proposed would add almost 400,000 hectares of protected land and increase the overall protection in Alberta from 14.6 per cent to 15.2 per cent. No impact would be anticipated on active industrial leases within the proposed Public Land Use Zones and no forestry tenure within the parks and protected areas is being proposed.

To find out more about the proposed Big Country Initiative and provide feedback online, visit talkaep.alberta.ca.

by Sheldon Spackman

Province announces Bighorn Country conservation, tourism and recreation proposal

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