Funny Parks Canada is marketing itself but the infrastructure in the Kootenay park is falling apart. Trails closed, cheap tarps over the rotten road signs instead of new signs, Radium hot springs pool is in horrible condition.....
Oh and a local was fined for maintaining a hiking trail because parks wasn't getting it done.
I find it rather funny how so many buy products from them for the purpose of hunting or sledding not realizing ever purchase they make there goes towards shutting down the activities they are buying the equipment for
IN TODAYS EDMONTON SUN(WE'RE LOSING GROUND TO PHILLIPS AND HER ECO FRIENDS):
Alberta delegation in Ottawa secures caribou protection money
Published: May 3, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2018 3:18 PM MDT
EDMONTON — The federal government says it will provide extra cash to help Alberta live up to Ottawa’s demands on restoring threatened caribou herds. “We’re willing to partner with Alberta in terms of money and we want to work with them,” Jonathan Wilkinson, parliamentary secretary to federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, said Thursday. Wilkinson did not release an amount. Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips took an industry-heavy delegation to Ottawa to tell McKenna that the province needs more money and time to live up to federal demands on restoring caribou herds. In a release, Phillips said the province remains “fully committed” to recovering its herds, some of which are down to a few dozen animals subsisting on landscapes heavily transformed by decades of logging and drilling.
Alberta needs more time to study the economic impact of restoring those lands to meet federal guidelines, she said. Phillips wants $50 million over three years for that study. She also wants an ongoing commitment to fund restoration costs that she says could reach $1 billion. “Fully understanding social and economic impacts is a crucial part of developing a made-in-Alberta plan for achieving caribou recovery,” she said in a release. Caribou herds are dwindling across Canada and the federal government has made their recovery a priority. It has required provinces to file caribou recovery plans that restore at least 65 per cent of critical habitat. Few have. Alberta recently suspended parts of its plan over economic impact concerns. A report from McKenna on Monday found significant gaps in how provinces protect caribou habitat. It concluded every province has permitted industrial use on that land without taking federal legislation into account. Stan Boutin, a University of Alberta caribou expert who has followed debate and research for years, said further study on economic impact is unnecessary. “There’s no doubt if you move toward protection, (there will be) enormous economic impact. We’ve shown that in spades.” He said Alberta’s landscape is so heavily altered that restoring it to the point where it can support caribou herds will take at least 20 years and probably longer. “That will take way too long for their positive effects to even be felt by the caribou.” Even pulling industry out of caribou range immediately wouldn’t help, he added. “We have been in that (eco)system so much that even if we walk away today, that would be no good for caribou.” Wilkinson said much caribou habitat is so damaged that some of the federal cash will have to go toward controversial measures such as fenced-off maternity pens for pregnant cows and wolf cull programs. Bringing back caribou range will be the work of decades, he said. “We need to get to restoration of critical habitat, but that takes time.” Although not all wildlife scientists agree with him, Boutin said it’s time to give up on the idea of wild, free-ranging, self-sustaining caribou. Herds will need aggressive management for the foreseeable future while slow, steady restoration takes place and industry goes about its business. “We are in the business of managing caribou. That’s not full husbandry, but it’s getting way closer.” — Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at row1960
AND HERE'S ANOTHER ANGLE THE GOVT IS GOING TO USE... AND THIS ISN'T GOING TO BE GOOD FOR MOTORIZED VEHICLES OR RANDOM CAMPING:
[h=1]Alberta wilderness group calls for action after 224 grizzly deaths in 10 years — most caused by humans[/h]
Postmedia News
Published: May 3, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2018 5:10 PM MDT
The Alberta Wilderness Association says limits should be placed on motorized access into grizzly habitat, after 224 of the bears died between 2008 and 2017.Joanna Skrajny, conversation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association, said three of the past five years have seen spikes in the number of grizzly deaths in the province.“They’ve really been largely due to road kills and high poaching figures, so to me that suggests that we need to be doing better in order to reduce the number of deaths,” she said.All but 17 of those deaths have been human-caused, she noted. One of the measures Skrajny said the association wants to see is a reduction in the number of roads and trails in grizzly habitat.
“The 2008 grizzly recovery plan showed that there is a scientific number that grizzly bears need in order to recover, and that is just the amount of roads that grizzly bears can sustain, and we haven’t implemented that,” she said. “So to me, that is really one of the most important things that we could do in order to reduce the number of grizzly bear deaths.”For example, she said, in the public lands in the Livingstone-Porcupine area, there are more than 4,000 km of industrial roads, seismic lines, pipelines and off-highway vehicle trails. Skrajny said increased enforcement and more wildlife corridors could also help protect grizzlies. She added the numbers released by the province are only “the known mortalities.”“Researchers … estimate that the true number is probably up to twice as high as the estimated number,” she said.Paul Frame, provincial carnivore specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks, said Alberta is aware of motorized access to grizzly habitat as a source of human-caused mortality, and as something that needs to be addressed. However, Frame added that the province recently conducted inventory in bear management area three, where a seven per cent annual population increase was documented, area six, where a four per cent annual increase was documented, and bear management area five, where the population has remained stable.“While we’ve identified managing human access to grizzly bear habitat as a way to reduce human-caused grizzly bear mortality, it does appear that in at least parts of the province, grizzly bear populations are increasing even though we haven’t made great headway on reducing that access management,” he said.Frame said the province does want to reduce or eliminate human-caused mortality of grizzly bears. He added the province will have an updated grizzly recovery plan coming out soon.