British Columbia is a land of extremes, blessed by the clash of successive unstable terrains that have shaped its geography and its flora and fauna.Even the human fauna is shaped by it to extremes of political polarization. British Columbia takes some pride in being home to some of the nation’s wackiest, most extreme and incomprehensible politics. That probably explains a lot about the actual lamentable state of the environment belying BC’s spectacular landscapes.
In February alone the province was treated to a series of tell-tale announcements. Dr. Peter Ross made national news explaining that “Supernatural BC’s” coastal waters are a microplastic soup. The BC scallop fishery is collapsing as 10 million scallops were lost to ocean acidification. After two decades of wildlife management to re-build endangered interior caribou herds, their numbers have plummeted to record lows, with a near collapse of the Moberly herd.In this context, in spite of persistent public and First Nations opposition, projects for the flooding of rich agricultural lands, rare plant species habitat and key wildlife migration corridors, including what is left of the interior caribou, preparations for the Site C dam project continue unabated. In order to avoid further scrutiny, the BC government has even exempted Site C from the Agricultural Land Reserve review process.
This absurd merry-making reached new heights when Prime Minister Harper rebuked Taseko mines, and by extension BC’s Minister of Mines and Energy, Bill Bennett, for persisting with the “New Prosperity” mine project at Fish Lake, which has now twice failed to meet minimum federal environmental standards. Prime Minister Harper’s government has hardly garnered a high reputation for environmental activism, but in comparison with BC’s government, this Spanish proverb applies: Al país de los ciegos, el tuerto es rey (“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”)
The actual sad state of BC’s environment, as reflected in the fragmented but constant flow of bad news, is the product of cumulative self-contradictory mismanagement, where promotional marketing has often replaced science. Even the best science and the best intentions of environmental biologists cannot undo the corrosive cumulative impacts of misguided government policies which delude the public into believing that we can promote development at will, and also maintain a sustainable high quality environment. Though site by site we may talk of landscape-level integrated management, the cumulative yielding of ecological priorities to economic development can never result in the promised land of endless sustainability.
Fifty years ago when the US Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, framed the Wilderness Act (1964), the Endangered Species Preservation Act (1966), and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), he understood two important facts to which our Canadian legislators remain to this day seemingly unaware. First, Udall wrote into legislation that species need “critical habitat” not just habitat surplus to human demands. Second, that wilderness is essential to our humanity, and must remain “an area where earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
Changes to BC’s Park Act
Failure to understand and appreciate these key values is reflected in the controversy that now surrounds BC’s Parks Act. The act itself is flawed because, unlike the Canada National Parks Act, it does not view these protected areas as conservation areas, but primarily as poorly defined “recreation” areas or playgrounds, although many of the provincial parks such as Strathcona and Tweedsmuir, rival most national parks in size and grandeur. In the BC Parks Act “re-creation” exceeds the kind of low-impact conservation-oriented activities that Peter Wells aptly described in the winter issue of the Canadian Society of Environmental Biologists’ Bulletin. Just as Peter Wells’ perspective is one in which recreation naturally and logically leads to an appreciation of nature and conservation that enhances “the role of the recreationist in citizen science,” the concept of the untrammelled public ownership of parks is essential to the development of the public responsibility for stewardship of the parks. Otherwise, parks are simply “commons” and as Garrett Hardin so aptly documented in 1968, commons become abused by competing private interests.
A recent legal decision has asserted the legal right of the Minister of Environment to give precedence to private commercial recreation interests over the public character of the park as “a protected area.” This shows that “recreation” as defined in the BC Parks Act is inconsistent with untrammelled public ownership of “an area where earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” In short, this decision asserts that BC parks are not “protected areas”, but merely commons open to commercial interests, recreational and otherwise.
After more than two decades of constant erosion of the management and protection of our provincial parks, the Park Act [RSBC 1996 Chapter 344] has now itself been revised with the passing of Bill 4. The Bill weakens sections 8.1 and 9.1, which were originally designed to protect the ecological integrity and legacy of the parks.
The revisions signal a renewed attempt to enable private commercial interests and developments that would grant privileges to industry and override the public’s ownership of BC’s provincial parks. In the original wording the BC Park Act restricted alienation of interests for Class A or C parks (the majority classification for BC Parks) and restricted resource extraction. The amendments will now facilitate “feasibility and impact” studies for the “location, design, construction, use, maintenance or deactivation of roads, telecommunication infrastructure, transmission lines, and pipelines.”
These assessments can be made by the proponent and or his agents. BC Parks and the Ministry of Environment no longer have the staff to carry out these studies, and work will therefore have to be contracted under the “professional reliance” model. Subsequent development will only require the simple approval of the Minister, seemingly without even requiring public consultation or independent scientific assessment.
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has pointed out that in late June 2013, Minister Polack circulated an internal document requesting to know what it would take to change existing “protected areas” designations.The alleged document would then coincide with the disastrous judgement of Justice Sigurdson (June 24 2013) against Friends of Strathcona Park’s challenge to the Minister’s issuance of a permit to the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort to use part of the park for commercial activities.
The changes give industry and commerce precedence over environmental and ecological values seemingly of special interest to the public. Bill 4 renders the public ownership of parks and the concept of “protected areas” completely meaningless, since both can be undone whenever and wherever a commercial opportunity arises.
Paving the Way for Energy
BC Parks now stand in the way of energy projects such as shale oil fracking, in-stream power projects and of pipelines, as Fish Lake stands in the way of the “New Prosperity” mine. As easy access to energy supplies decreases, parks and protected areas are increasingly becoming targets for industrial and commercial developments. In the United States, state park authorities are re-writing legislation to allow fracking in state parks, and the future of the national parks system is already in question.
The 2009 protests at Pinecone Burke Mountain Provincial Park, and the 2011 protests at Glacier National Park, against the passage of Independent Power Project (IPP) transmission lines through the parks, heralded what is sure to become a growing concern in this province. Unfortunately, if controversy over the IPPs, the collapse of the Moberly caribou herd and the handling of the Site C project are any indication, industry-related science in the public arena is not providing adequate guidance for the protection of nature.
Thus, in an industry-commissioned report for Clean Energy BC, Dr. Brian Riddell, CEO of Pacific Salmon Foundation, found in November that up to 88% of IPPs had potential impacts on salmon, only to publicly declare in February that IPPs did not seem to have a noticeable impact on salmon! The key here being how “noticeable.”
The report itself notes: “between 15 and 23 of these projects … as being inconclusive …,”thereby confirming a basic lack of data to provide reliable “noticeable” conclusions, and of value mainly to opening “dialogue with an industry that understands that environmental and public accountability is appropriate and expected in BC.”
It is not that we lack the knowledge. Nor is this a question of good or bad intentions. It is a simple question of understanding where the limits lie. Outcomes on the ground, acknowledgement of what is effectively systematically going wrong, not marketing platitudes of what is “appropriate and expected in BC” must guide decision making. There are broader questions to be asked that exceed even our best datasets, the latest “Best Management Practices”, and the broadest “terms of reference” of any contract we sign. Those are the critical conservation questions that Udall and his advisors asked 50 years ago, and which we need to continue to ask every day.
The future of our parks as biodiversity reservoirs and as refugia for species relocation in an age of tremendous environmental upheaval is now more urgent than ever, and yet it is threatened once again by the lure of short-term gain, of economy over ecology. In short, it is threatened by a tragedy of the commons.
Our parks were explicitly created for the benefit of future generations. It is often said that the experience of the grandeur of nature in our parks brings us to scale. The proper scientific management of the parks must always be guided by reverence and an understanding that “man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
As climate change progresses, the preservation of the integrity of our parks will become increasingly important.
On Vancouver Island, we will face special challenges, since Strathcona Park is deemed to be the provincial park that will undergo the greatest ecological changes. Thus, although Strathcona may be our oldest and biggest park, size is not a guarantee of resilience. Strathcona is also our most fragile and most vulnerable park. It is therefore the one that will require the most public stewardship.
Canada is signatory to the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity. Under that convention we are committed to creating and maintaining 17% of our land mass as “protected areas.” Twenty-two years later we have barely set aside 10% of our land mass as protected areas – and that includes national and provincial parks often in questionable states of “protection” and management. This makes the public defense of the ecological integrity of our parks and protected areas an imperative.
BC’s government has taken various progressive steps to address climate change, however no government can claim to taking climate action seriously while dismantling its protected areas. There needs to be a clearer sense of purpose and consistency of action if we are to begin to take adaptive measures. Marketing claims that “environmental and public accountability is appropriate and expected in BC” must measure up with observed facts on the ground.
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Loys Maingon is a semi-retired professional biologist owner of Aardscan Biological and Environmental Ltd., and manager of the Comox Valley Garry Oak and Endangered Plant Nursery.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2014 Canadian Society of Environmental Biologists Bulletin.
