As people across the country are loading up their vans for camping weekends and hoisting their backpacks for wilderness adventures, a group dedicated to saving Canada’s parks says governments from coast to coast are failing to protect the land we all treasure.
The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society just released its sixth annual review of the state of Canada’s parks – and, worryingly, the group finds that most parks and proposed protected areas in the country are facing greater challenges than they were a year ago.
Specifically, the report says governments are prioritizing industrial and commercial interests over the ecological, social and economic benefits of parks.
Sadly, if not surprisingly, our own B.C. government comes under fire in the report. The reason? The changes it made in March to the provincial Park Act that allow the government to issue permits for feasibility studies related to the construction of roads, highways and pipelines through provincial parks – and for the broadly defined category of “research.”
“These changes undermine the fundamental principle that parks are to be protected from industrial development in perpetuity,” the report says.
B.C. is not alone. Also highlighted in the report are a move in New Brunswick that will open up increased logging in conservation zones, a proposal for a hotel in Jasper National Park and plans to open up the Yukon’s Peel watershed to mineral, oil and gas staking.
Enough already. Whatever money such plans may generate is not worth the cost in the loss of protected park and conservation lands.
Canada’s parks are parks for a reason. We are renowned for the beauty of our land, and that land deserves to remain intact for generations to come.
Here’s hoping that this report – and the storm that’s already brewing in response to it – will cause the powers that be to rethink where the real value lies in this beautiful land of ours.
