Dear Editor,
At the beginning of November 2002, Parks Canada gave serious consideration to a winter closure of the 38-kilometre Maligne Road on a two-year experimental basis to determine whether human activity or wolves, or a combination of the two, were responsible for the precipitous decline of the woodland caribou in the Maligne Valley.
Just three days after this consideration was announced, Parks backed off鈥攔eportedly due to pressure from business interests. To justify its change of mind, it cited the 2000 Jasper National Park Management Plan, which reads: 鈥淜eep the Maligne Lake Road open in winter for people who want to observe wildlife, sightsee, ski, or participate in other appropriate activities.鈥�
Twelve years after the proposed road closure it is hard to tell if the ease with which wolves were travelling on a plowed road into caribou habitat was contributing to the decline in the herd numbers. We shall never know.
Now, however, we have a different situation: Maligne Tours wants to erect tent cabins on what is national park land at Maligne Lake. But the 2010 Jasper National Park Management Plan clearly states: 鈥淎pply the Redevelopment Guidelines for Outlying Commercial Accommodations (OCAs) in the Rocky Mountain National Parks (2007) to commercial accommodations outside the town. No new land will be released for overnight commercial accommodation outside the community.鈥�
Parks鈥� solution to this is to amend the Management Plan鈥攑resumably ignoring the Redevelopment Guidelines for OCAs鈥攊n order to allow Maligne Tours to erect its tent cabins.
If the 2000 Management Plan was so set in stone that Parks could not take steps to try to save the declining caribou herd, how can it now change the 2010 Management Plan to allow commercial overnight accommodation in the Maligne Valley 鈥攁 move that might well spell the end of this now critically 鈥榚ndangered鈥� herd?
Thus, after 45 years of respecting its mandate to protect ecological integrity at Maligne Lake, Parks Canada will now allow overnight commercial accommodation there鈥攁t first in the form of tent cabins, but will the next hotel proposal be far behind?
Jill Seaton
Jasper, Alta.
