Dear Editor:
The United Nations climate treaty is intended to kick into gear the climate protection and recovery actions of nations like Canada in 2020. We in the Okanagan have a golden opportunity to do our part.
Along with the rest of B.C. residents, and all Canadians, we could finalize a measure that would make a substantial regional contribution to limiting greenhouse gas emissions growth.
We could have an “honest” national park or protected area in place and up and “running” by 2020.
It’s important to not mistake a pseudo park for the kind of landscape protection and management that historical national park establishment is synonymous with.
We need a park that is off-limits to development and exploitation like road building, hunting, livestock grazing, machine based activities like mountain biking, helicopter invasion, logging, oil and gas development, coal mining, and large commercial endeavours like recreation and service developments (hotels, town sites and lodges).
All of these activities contribute negatively to global climate change. All these occur (even if they should not) in surrounding landscapes.
We need to craft a place a little bit better than Yellowstone, a place that emphasizes wildlife conservation, landscape protection, primitive travel (on foot, horseback), and interaction with the natural world.
Logging removes forest cover, compacts soils and promotes carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere. Protecting forests does the opposite; captures and stores carbon.
Livestock grazing can lead to cutting forests for pasture, which releases CO2 to the atmosphere. Most of the carbon in grasslands is stored in roots below ground.
Heavy grazing interferes with the capture and transfer of carbon to the soil. The best way to keep carbon in the ground is to reduce the harmful impacts of livestock grazing.
Burning fossil fuels releases immense amounts of carbon into the atmosphere; eliminating off road vehicle and internal park road use will help balance surrounding emission release.
Large commercial developments of any sort destroy natural vegetation and depend on vehicle access. This increases the carbon footprint.
The benefits of protecting large landscapes as parks, wilderness or conservancies, are numerous and timeless.
They help people and society recognize there are ecological and biological limits to consumption and growth.
They teach us there are places where we should set aside human exploitation so that other life forms can survive. Parks and wildlife conservation are the most successful ways of ensuring protection of native biodiversity and ecological function. And they provide a refuge from which forests, grasslands, and native wildlife can recover, expand outward, and help restore damaged ecosystems, not just locally, but across the Earth.
Expanding B.C.s base of protected areas by adding the South Okanagan national park or conservancy is a rare opportunity to join in and reduce harmful global climate change.
Dr. Brian L. Horejsi
Penticton, B.C.
