Dear Editor:

Rumours that B.C. 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 effort to pre-empt pressure from a large majority of voters in the South Okanagan who would prefer that the area be designated as a national park.

Mount Kobau is a unique ecological area worthy of development as a world-class national park.

Parks Canada would devote the 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, as well as 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 an op-ed piece last week, 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. It has no money to develop or implement proper managements.

BC Parks simply does not have the capacity, structure, tools or resources necessary to manage the complex task of maintaining Kobau’s biodiversity in the face of climate change and to implement meaningful co-management partnerships with Okanagan First Nations.

The number of full-time park rangers in B.C. has sunk to a low of just seven individuals who are expected to patrol 14 million hectares of protected areas that are 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 protected areas in the province 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 restoration or enforcement activity.

As a result of legislative changes passed in 2014, the provincial park designation no longer protects sensitive areas against development pressures.

Those amendments permit the issuance of investigative use permits within park boundaries for transmission lines, pipelines and other industrial activities.

This can lead to the shrinking of park boundaries to accommodate logging or mining activities.

Polak needs to stop listening to Linda Larson and start listening to the views widely expressed in the Consultative Report on her Intentions Paper that Mount Kobau needs to be included in the national park.

Al Hudec

Oliver, B.C.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Hudec is a longtime Vancouver lawyer who has written about environmental issues in British Columbia over the past several years. He calls Oliver home when he’s not pursuing his legal career.