Biologists pen letter over Nixon’s ‘misinformation’ on conservation plans

The plan calls for a variety of permitted activities and offers $40 million over five years for campsites and other infrastructure. Off-highway vehicles, horse packing and hunting would continue, although with new restrictions.

Grazing leases would continue. No existing trails would be closed.

But Jason Nixon, the United Conservative Party member for the area, said the New Democrats sidelined an ongoing consultation process to ram the plan through before an expected spring election.

“We can go back to the regional planning process, which was working great,” he said. “There’s no need to rush this through before the election.”

That process has recommended conservation areas very similar to the proposed Bighorn parks, areas that were first outlined as long ago as 1988.

The plan remains open for public comment until the end of January. Fourteen public and invitation-only information sessions were scheduled in five communities between December and Jan. 31. Further consultation is planned through the spring.

Still, Nixon said many people remain uncertain about the plan’s impact on industry and land use and suggested it could take another year to gather input. He said the government has been overly reliant on information from environmental groups and has only recently opened up the process.

“There are many people who have concerns,” he said.

Fitch said the signatories to the letter, who have held some of Alberta’s highest conservation jobs and have between them more than 1,000 years of experience, all believe action is required now. He said the density of trails and resource roads in the Bighorn is probably already well above the level at which environmental damage occurs.

“We’re already seeing the impacts of that, particularly on native trout,” he said.

The letter, which calls the Bighorn proposal appropriate, suggests there are limits to Alberta’s natural resources and “we overuse them at our peril.

“Unfortunately, this is not a commonly held perception, or a popular one,” the letter said. “Our landscapes and watersheds have been neglected, we expect too much of them and they are coming apart at the seams.

“It can’t be a free-for-all anymore.”

(Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960)

by The Canadian Press (Bob Weber)

Biologists pen letter over Nixon’s ‘misinformation’ on conservation plans

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