Landscape in the Livingstone Range faces multiple threats

David McIntyre, Opinion

Dear Premier Redford:

I offer the following as a catalyst for quick, positive action, a rare commodity on the political front, but you've shown that you can do it:

Summertime, 

and the livin' is easy

Fish are jumpin'

And the best hiking's up high …

The attached image was taken on Sunday, August 5th. The view looks southwest across Alberta's Livingstone Range, a billion-dollar viewscape in the headwaters of the Crowsnest River—a component of the Oldman Watershed. This is a landscape that, because it's never been assigned a value, nor received meaningful protection, continues to be targeted by industry. It's located in southwestern AB, where the MD of Pincher Creek meets the MD of Ranchland and the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass. These three contiguous jurisdictions are set against a gorgeous—but occasionally industry-ravaged—backdrop of public land.

This iconic, Crown of the Continent landscape is home to the world's greatest concentration of golden eagles—thousands of eagles—and a 5,000 year-old chert quarry. And the Livingstone Range is a vital component of the world's greatest concentration of prehistoric vision quest sites. The pictured landscape is also Canada's premier soaring site, a Mecca for the international soaring community. This same drop-dead-gorgeous heritage rangeland and mountain vista is home to a diverse assemblage of wildlife, including elk, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, grizzlies and more. The Livingstone Range's diverse vegetative mosaic of rare rough fescue grasslands and endangered forests of limber and whitebark pine have also been designated a historic viewscape by the MD of Pincher Creek, a designation that's expected to receive provincial and national endorsements.

This same landscape is being targeted by overlapping industrial threats.

What's wrong with this picture?

The view looks southwest into the eastern slopes of Alberta's Livingstone Range, a Crown of the Continent landscape that's home to a host of world-class features and vistas. This landscape is threatened by proposed clear-cut logging, a strip-mine and an array of high-voltage transmission lines.

One of these mornings

You're going to rise up singing

Then you'll spread your wings

And you'll take to the sky

But til that morning

There's a host of things that can harm you

With the Gov. of Alberta standing by

David McIntyre