Tourists’ cars line these Rocky Mountain roads. Soon logging trucks will haul the trees away

Kananaskis Country was initially designated in 1978, envisioned as a backyard for Albertans to hike, ski, camp and vacation. Less than an hour from Calgary, the mountains, forests and rivers were an ideal escape from the city.

It was the culmination of years of increasing interest in protecting the area and was a particular focus of then-premier Peter Lougheed.

The eastern slopes resource management plan, which encompasses Kananaskis, was introduced one year before the area was officially declared, and took a holistic view of how to manage resources and uses.

“The environment of land, water, vegetation and wildlife must be managed totally and not as separate elements. Although the provincial goals and regional objectives are defined individually, the management required to achieve any one objective does consider the many interrelationships with the environment,” it reads.

“Because the demands are so high, there is often a competition for the same land and same resources in the eastern slopes,” it continues. “Thus, not all goals will be achieved to the same degree of success in all areas.”

Lougheed had been pushing since at least 1971 — when his Progressive Conservatives swept the long-governing Social Credit party out of office — to pause resource extraction in the area until conservation decisions could be made.

It was a time when coal was still being pulled from the area around Canmore and south of the current border of Kananaskis near Crowsnest Pass. Logging and oil and gas were also underway in the region and Lougheed didn’t want to designate the area after it was already stripped.

Kananaskis logging roads bring troubles of their own

The logging road that will soon carry trees out of the valley around the Highwood River is rough and muddy. There are no logging trucks or equipment along its route in late September, only rutted wheel tracks and puddles as it cuts from the highway entrance over a controversial new bridge and up a hill into the expanse of green.

Dow, who lives in Calgary, says there were restrictions on fishing this summer, due to low water levels and higher temperatures, but no restrictions on building a bridge that will carry logs out of the clearcut.

“So it’s completely backwards to think that on one level, the government acknowledges and understands this is too much stress on our watersheds, yet then they’re like, ‘Yeah, go ahead. We’ll kick off the construction of this bridge and get prepared for all the logging that’s going to happen.’ ” |Read more https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-kananaskis-country-logging/| thenarwhal.ca/alberta-kananask…

#abpoli #Kananaskis #CrowsnestPass #water #resources #logging #environment #politics