Wild Lands Advocate The Alberta Wilderness Association Journal August 2004 • Vol.12, No. 4 http://AlbertaWilderness.ca [email protected] LOVING, LOSING AND RECLAIMING OUR PUBLIC LANDS Dr. Shirley Bray Our public lands are a source of great country, the boreal forest, the eastern slopes and remnants of wealth. Comprising about two-thirds of the aspen parkland and grasslands, where much of the public land provincial land base, they not only provide a is leased for grazing. vast amount of natural resources such as oil “Having public lands in this province is in the public and gas, timber, water and rangeland, but interest,” says Cheryl Bradley, a botanist, long-time prairie they also provide ecological goods and conservationist, and member of the Southern Alberta services, social and spiritual benefits, and Environmental Group. opportunities for recreation. They are places “There aren’t a lot of countries in the world where there is that deserve protection and that can, if well managed, serve as a lot of land held in trust for the public,” says Vivian Pharis, benchmarks of healthy ecosystems. AWA director and long-time defender of public lands. “And I Often divided into the forested green zone and the settled think it’s something that’s extremely valuable for anybody white zone, they comprise most of the Canadian Shield who enjoys the land for any reason.” “Public land makes all of us rich, particularly those who have no private land,” says Bob Scammell, a lawyer and writer INSIDE in Red Deer who has spoken out in defence of public lands for decades. Having Fun Still Vital to the Cliff Wallis Approach to Conservation 10 “I think the importance of public lands is that shared ALBERTA WILDERNESS WATCH ................................................12 stewardship,” says Archie Landals of the Parks and Protected Lakeland Today, But What About Tomorrow? ..................................12 Areas Division of Alberta Community Development. “The Mining and Reclamation Problems on Caw Ridge ..........................14 land belongs to everyone, and multiple use benefits extend way Saving Natural Capital in Alberta’s Boreal ......................................15 beyond resource use. I think Alberta and Canada are better Castle Mountain Resort Decision ....................................................16 places to live, generally because there is public land that Whitehorse Wildland Park and Cheviot Mine ..................................17 Cheviot Mine Requires New EIA ....................................................19 people have access to besides the private stuff that they own.” Forest Planning in the Southeastern Slopes ..................................20 Dr. Brian Horejsi, a wildlife researcher, believes that public Participating in Water Politics ..........................................................21 land “is one of the most unifying forces in a society. It is Abraham Glacier Resort Denied Again ..........................................21 absolutely critical. This unifying force may not be any more Secrecy Surrounding New ATRL-Lite Process................................22 Clearwater-Christina Heritage Rivers ..............................................22 Delay for Milk River Feasibility Study ..............................................23 Howse Pass Highway Dream Lives On ..........................................23 Bighorn Sheep Conservation ..........................................................26 Artist Profile: Dana Bush ................................................................29 ASSOCIATION NEWS ....................................................................30 A Tale from Molly’s Mountain by William Davies ............................30 Open House Program......................................................................31 Annual General Meeting..................................................................31 Annual Lecture and Awards .......................................................... 31 AWA Gala 2004 ..............................................................................32 S. Bray Looking across a medicine wheel in the Majorville area east of Calgary WLA, Vol. 12, No. 4 • August 2004 Page 1 important than ecological services, but we get a lot of agriculture. The oil and gas industry sputtered into existence. ecological services from places besides public lands.” Public In 1925 the Johnson Brothers started logging in southwest land is a common tie amongst us all in Alberta and Canada, he Alberta. says. “To me that’s paramount.” After 1930, development of the land continued. In 1947 the Yet like any source of common wealth, there are many oil industry took off with the discovery of the famous Leduc fingers in the pie, some much bigger, stronger and more No. 1 oil well in Turner Valley. Seismic lines and pipelines aggressive than others. Because of a lack of vision and began to crisscross the entire province. In 1957 the trunk road leadership, this has led to escalating conflicts and multiple from Coleman to Grande Prairie opened up the foothills. abuse. “Human greed has and will destroy public lands unless Rivers were dammed, irrigation was expanded through the humans are controlled,” says Steve Dixon, a farmer who lives south, and the boreal was opened for massive logging. in Brant and one of the founding members of AWA. People do In 1754 Anthony Henday, the first European to come to not have the right to destroy the land, he adds. Alberta, came on a reconnaissance mission for the Hudson We know about the past and present state of our public Bay Company. Norm Conrad writes about two perspectives of lands, but what about the future. What do Albertans want for what Henday’s coming meant in his book Reading the their public lands, and what values do we place on these lands Entrails: An Ecohistory of Alberta. In one view “[h]e marks today? the advent of purpose for Alberta – all before was mere Alberta’s public lands have come to us via a rather bitter nature.… All after was development and improvement, the history filled with greed and ignorance. It behooves us, beginning of civilization and the end of savagery.” In the therefore, to take a deep responsibility for these lands. second view, Henday’s coming is seen as the “lead ripple in a Even before public lands were turned over from federal sequence of waves of itinerant exploiters coming to take from jurisdiction to the province in 1930 they had undergone the land whatever the market’s appetite demanded, to export it, extensive changes. The fur traders had to enrich themselves and then move come and gone, as many populations on, leaving behind a hollowing land.” of furbearers were extirpated by the Lorne Fitch of Alberta Fish and late 1800s. By the 1880s only one Wildlife notes that “public land was small population of wood bison, in the stuff that was left after everything Alberta’s boreal forest, remained out else was taken. In the years since the of the four million that originally development of our landscapes, public roamed the land only 50 years lands have taken on a greater interest, previously. By 1900 much of perspective and value because they Alberta’s wildlife was gone. have been shown to be the buffers, “An awful silence settled across a they’ve been shown to be some of the land that, only a few decades earlier, C.Olson last best critical habitats.” had teemed with life,” writes Kevin “Alberta’s public lands represent Van Tighem in Home Range. “Even as one of the greatest opportunities for Steve Dixon in his Cessna airplane government began to waken to the long-term biodiversity and wildland need to conserve wildlife populations … the tide of settlement protection in the Canadian prairies,” notes Cliff Wallis, began a far more long-lasting set of changes to Alberta’s grassland expert and past-president of AWA. ecosystems and wildlife – habitat loss.” In the 1870s treaties with native peoples in Alberta signed Loving Our Public Lands over to white people the vast lands of Alberta in return for such Love of our public lands has prompted people to enjoy things as reserves, food and clothing. In A History of Alberta, them, to use them for recreation, to provide food through James G. McGregor writes: “Old Indians claim that none of hunting and fishing, to study them, to become active stewards them could comprehend giving up their hills and valleys and of them and to protect them. the land over which they had roamed, and have said that they When Steve Dixon, now 87, was young, his love of the land might as well have been asked to give up the air and the blue led him to join the Alberta Fish and Game Association in High sky and the sunshine.” River. He spent his spare days wandering through Kananaskis By the 1870s the land was surveyed, followed by the Country. “How could I be so lucky as being a poor boy and TransCanada railroad in 1883. In 1877 the first cows were being able to have the opportunity to go into that kind of a brought to Alberta and were pastured at first on open range. By country and enjoy it?” he asks. 1885 the Canadian Crown held most of Alberta’s lands. In Although he took a bull elk each fall for meat through the order to pay the costs of establishing control, surveying, winter, he says he never hunted with the idea of seeing how allotting land, and paying for railroad, it needed to turn the much game he could kill. “My interest in that country was to land to profit, to develop the west as fast as possible. The hike through it and enjoy the beauty of it and be able to sleep grasslands and parklands