I don't doubt that the recent Crowsnest Pass Herald headline (Anger sparked by locals following recommended regulations to protect recreational areas) and the story's introductory sentence ("Community locals are fuming … .") are true, but these statements stand in strong opposition to the sentiments expressed by roughly 80% of the people polled within this same community.
Most people are acutely aware that Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development's so-called management of the headwaters landscape isn't working, and that this hands-off approach has resulted in phenomenal damage.
I suggest that it would likely cost the people of Alberta more than one billion dollars to restore, today, and within just the headwaters of the Oldman Watershed (the Castle, Crowsnest and upper Oldman rivers), the landscapes that have been damaged by "recreational" abuse.
Alberta's current population is roughly three million. If the province is going to plan for a future in which the population is expected to double by 2050, it can't do this by blindly adhering to rules that didn't work in the 1980s.
I've been retreating from once-cherished landscapes here in the headwaters of the greater Oldman for more than three decades. Why? It hurts too much to see the way this priceless landscape has been degraded. Today, whenever I go on vacation, it's easier to pack up and leave Alberta than face this province's devalued waterways and its sprawling network of ruts, trash and weeds.
There will always be people who rail against change, but if society doesn't change the way it manages Alberta's headwaters landscape, there's not going to be anything left worth saving.
Recreational off roaders - the responsible ones - have it within themselves to curb the destruction caused by the mindless motorhead goons who think that cutting new, illegal trails and riding through streams and rivers is somehow cool. Report them, harass them, chastise them - whatever it takes. But I'm afraid that would be too little, too late. And to think of it, how DO you change the behavior of people like that? I guess the only way is to legislate them out of the forests, period.
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