Rumours that Provincial Environment Minister Mary Polak is about to declare Mount Kobau as a Class A provincial park are disquieting. Such a move would be a cynical political effort to take the national park issue off the table before the upcoming provincial election.
Mount Kobau is a unique ecological area worthy of development as a world class national park. Parks Canada would devote the vision, funding and resources required to provide conservation, outdoor recreation, education and cultural protections. Parks Canada would fund restoration efforts, the development of trails and the construction of interpretive centres, together with jobs and business opportunities for First Nations.
BC Parks is a near defunct organization lacking the manpower, funding and vision to provide meaningful protection of Mount Kobau’s biodiversity or to develop its tourism potential. In a recent op ed piece, Joan Sawicki, the former B.C. Minister of Environment, painted a picture of BC Parks as an organization perilously close to starvation. According to the 2010 Auditor-General’s report, BC Parks is failing to meet even its most basic responsibility to maintain ecological integrity.
BC Parks simply does not have the capacity, structure, tools or resources necessary to turn Mount Kobau into a world class ecotourism destination, to manage its biodiversity in the face of climate change and to implement meaningful co-management partnerships with Okanagan First Nations. Staffing in BC Parks has sunk to a low of just seven full time park rangers who are expected to patrol 14 million hectares of protected areas, an area the combined size of Denmark, Costa Rica and Switzerland. Auxiliary park rangers are hired in the summer months, but the season for these positions has been shortened significantly with some auxiliary rangers being hired for only eight weeks.
Simply declaring new provincially protected areas in the Okanagan without providing the funding and manpower necessary to provide meaningful protection is pointless. British Columbia already has over 1,000 parks and protected areas, but has cut the operations budget for BC Parks to $31 million – $10 million less than in 2001. Full-time park ranger staffing levels are a quarter of what they were in 2001. Consequently there is no meaningful development, restoration or enforcement activity.
Legislative changes passed in 2014 permit the issuance of investigative use permits within park boundaries for transmission lines, pipelines and other industrial activities. As a result, the provincial park designation no longer protects sensitive areas against mining and other industrial development pressures.
Declaring Mount Kobau a provincial park will do nothing to improve Linda Larson’s dim political prospects. These stem fundamentally from her lack of respect for her electorate.
Al Hudec, Oliver
Mount Kobau is a popular hiking destination for many locals and tourists who believe it should be part of a national park reserve. (Richard McGuire photo)
