In The Northwest: Action belies image as B.C. cuts its parks

Monday, March 18, 2002
 

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

VICTORIA, B.C. -- Amid a phalanx of federal and provincial politicians, with a pledge by Prime Minister Jean Chretien that he will take up snowboarding, the governments of Canada and British Columbia introduced a bid in November to play host to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Not long afterward, the government of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell cut off public money to the popular Public Avalanche Bulletin. Winter sports enthusiasts across B.C. rely on the bulletin for updates on weather and snow conditions.

"Beautiful British Columbia," as the province bills itself, is making ugly cuts in the already-minimal money it spends on parks, fish, wildlife and outdoor recreation.

Projecting deficits of $10 billion (Canadian) in the next four years -- red ink set flowing, in part, by its own tax cuts -- Campbell's government plans to close campgrounds, jettison management of provincial parks, ax interpretive programs and let forest roads go to seed.

Axings north of the border will go far beyond temporary park closures being planned or carried out in Washington and King County.

The cuts are perplexing, given that tourism brings in upward of $10 billion (Canadian) a year to B.C. and directly supports more than 100,000 jobs. Rapidly growing adventure tourism accounts for about one-tenth of what is a huge sector of the economy.

Campbell's Cabinet ministers are straightforward about what they intend to do. At least 50 provincial park campgrounds -- maybe as many as 100 -- are likely to be shut down. And the Forests Ministry will close all of its camping and picnic sites across B.C.

"We are not in the recreation business in the forestry ministry; we are looking to transfer responsibility to local communities," forestry minister Mike de Jong said in an interview.

In addition, de Jong said, "We will be largely getting out of the road-maintenance business." Bridges will no longer be repaired, or landslides bulldozed, in areas where active logging is no longer under way.

Such roads lead to some of British Columbia's most scenic parks, places featured in telecasts of Campbell's Cabinet meetings. An old logging road leads to the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island, site of Canada's tallest trees. A road from Hope gives access to Skagit Provincial Park and the upper end of the Ross Lake National Recreation Area in Washington state.

"Well, you won't be able to drive your Cadillac Eldorado to some of these places," de Jong joked.

What may happen in the upper Skagit is not so funny.

Under a 1982 accord, the city of Seattle agreed to forgo plans to raise Ross Dam by 121 feet, which would have flooded eight miles of the upper Skagit Valley in B.C. The province provided power that would have been generated by the "High Ross" project. The deal also created a Skagit Environmental Endowment, which has paid for recreation and wildlife projects in both countries.

Skagit activists in B.C. recently discovered that, as part of its cuts, the forest ministry plans to board up outhouses on the Canadian side of the border -- one of the province's most popular car-camping and trout-fishing destinations.

Why is the government so intent on cutting an infrastructure on which recreation depends?

The Cabinet minister responsible for parks, Joyce Murray, recently told The Vancouver Sun that the cuts were "not easy" but "responsible." Murray insisted that she recognizes "the incredible importance of parks to people here in B.C., and the incredible importance to the international community of this asset."

Joe Foy of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, who has fought to create the Carmanah and other parks, is not so sure.

The left-leaning New Democratic Party, which governed until last April, doubled park acreage from 6.1 to 12.3 percent of British Columbia's land base. It was ousted by Campbell's BC Liberal Party, conservative despite its name and heavily backed by forest companies.

"The timber and mining industries have a big time hate on for the provincial park system," Foy argued.

The economy of "SuperNatural British Columbia" (another tourism slogan) depends on two things -- natural assets and outside markets.

B.C. exports more than $6 billion (Canadian) worth of forest products each year. At the same time, British Columbia's physical beauty imports thousands of visitors. Studies show that every dollar put into provincial parks generates $10 worth of economic activity. "The parks are what attract people to this province," argued Vicky Husband, conservation chairwoman of the Sierra Club of B.C.

Canadian officials love nothing more than to lecture the world on environmental protection. Premier Campbell held forth on "sustainable development" at the Expo 2002 energy-environment conference last week in Vancouver.

But how can B.C. live up to its billings as a "SuperNatural" destination if visitors find roads washed out and campgrounds closed and trash-covered, and are forced to defecate near the banks of the Skagit?

How can its government in good conscience bid on the Winter Olympics while it is defunding avalanche warnings to cross-country skiers and snowboarders?

It's reality check time, for British Columbia's government as well as outside visitors (and Olympic organizers) looking in.
 

P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com
 

Taken from: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/62670_joel18.shtml

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