Letter to the Editor
Park would sustain area's natural beauty
By Don Gayton, Summerland
First appearing in the Penticton Western News on October 07, 2008
Lately I have been walking the grasslands of the Okanagan-Similkameen, and speaking as a private citizen, I do worry about their fate. Somehow we pay lip service to the importance of our natural ecosystems, while our developments keep on whittling them away.
All this grassland walking and thinking has brought me to wonder about the national park reserve proposal.
The Okanagan Similkameen is the only major biome in Canada with no national park. I'm not sure why that happened, but Parks Canada is belatedly trying to rectify that oversight, with their current feasibility study. It is a pity that a park wasn't created here at the same time that Banff, Jasper and Waterton were created, before our valleys filled up with so many commercial uses and urban development. But that historic opportunity didn't happen, and now we are coming down to a crucial decision point: do we engage in the tortuously difficult, multi-sectoral, compromise-ridden process of park establishment, or do we walk away from it, saying our spectacular Okanagan Similkameen landscapes are now so highly developed that they are no longer worthy of national park status?
That decision comes down to us local folks: if we let Parks Canada and the politicians know that we want a park in some form, I'm pretty sure we could get one. If we don't want a park, then the folks at Parks Canada probably have lots of things to do in other parts of the country.
We should be careful to separate our specific opinions about the current park reserve proposal, from our general opinions about the federal government. It is a known fact that any federal initiative in Western Canada automatically becomes a lightning rod for all current and historical grievances: National Energy Policy, metrification, bilingualism, western alienation, child-proof pill containers — you name it. Along with hockey, fed-bashing is a national sport in B.C., one I happily indulge in myself sometimes, but we shouldn't let those knee-jerk instincts cloud our opinions about a proposed national park.
In the Okanagan Similkameen, we are faced with a truly devastating irony: we have the highest biodiversity and endangered species values in the entire country, smack dab alongside some of the highest urban growth and development pressure in the entire country. Salamanders compete with subdivisions, gopher snakes with golf courses, yellow-breasted chats with Cabernet vineyards. The Greek gods could not have dreamed up a more exquisite dilemma.
The issue of livestock grazing is of course a challenging one. I value the long-term and positive role that ranching has played in the Okanagan, and yet I understand that livestock grazing and a class A park don't mix well. Many of us have urged Parks Canada to explore the development of a partnership role with the ranching community. I also note the example of Bar U Ranch in the Alberta foothills, a working ranch on land that is owned by Parks Canada. My dream is that the parks people and the ranchers sit down again, perhaps with an outside mediator, check their ideological baggage at the door, and have some honest, free-ranging discussions. There are good, thoughtful folks in both the local ranching community and in Parks Canada. I have no doubt they could develop collaborative, mutually beneficial solutions if they had a mind to.
I can't really comment on First Nation views on the park proposal, since I don't know the nature of their objections. But I do know that no government organization, whether it is federal or provincial, is more open to First Nation cultural, spiritual and employment values than Parks Canada. Here is a potential opportunity for co-management, not on a token but on a truly substantial scale.
Another objection I hear about the park proposal is that we don't want more tourists. Now as much as I am passionate about the grasslands, I have to admit they're not a huge tourist draw. The Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan, which I know fairly well, pulls in a few thousand visitors a year, and they tend to be the more responsible, light-on-the-land types — birders, photographers and seekers of solitude. And the bonus — for the local Val Marie community adjacent to the park — is that visits are spread over a long season and visitors tend to stay for several days, instead of just weekend in-and-out trips in July and August. Incidentally, when GNP was first established, the local ranchers were solidly against the park. Now they, and the surrounding communities, are in support.
I am certain that there is a lot of quiet support here in the Okanagan Similkameen for a national park. Well folks, here's a news flash in politics (which is where the park decision will be made) quiet support is meaningless. Active, vocal support and persistent support, even by small minorities, is what politicians respond to. Ideas and movements that generate quiet support tend to become footnotes in the history books.
There are huge challenges in creating a national park in a highly developed, fragmented landscape such as ours. But they are good challenges. We can be the ones to break new ground and move traditional 19th century park concepts boldly into the 21st.
I hiked up Black Mountain, near Chopaka, recently. Looked south across the rolling sweep of sagebrush grassland, down into the majestic valley of the Similkameen and up again to the serried ranks of the Cascade Mountains on the horizon. Wind and occasional birdcalls created a background tapestry of natural sound, free from the whine of cars and highways. Raptors circled silently in the thermals overhead. Autumn sun glinted off the needle and thread grass, and highlighted the subtle blues, grays and greens of big sagebrush. A few hardy ponderosa pines and Douglas firs claimed their niches on rocky knobs. The aspen in the draws were turning to the colour of hammered gold.
The timeless beauty of this our Okanagan landscape deserves to be celebrated, studied and sustained with a national park.
Contact politicians today to tell them to help make the national park a reality!