News Room
No cake, just more cuts, for B.C. parks centennial
"The B.C. parks budget is only slightly larger now than the budget for the government's public affairs bureau," wrote Sierra Club of B.C. executive director George Heyman. "There appears to be money to spin the 100th anniversary of B.C. parks, but not to protect or improve them." This might not be a new song -- the NDP hacked millions out of the parks budget before the Liberals ever came to power -- but it sure has become a depressing dirge. Bad enough to have a drinking glass emptied in your face, but do it year after year and it starts to feel like waterboarding. The effect is evident in neglected hiking trails, bridges and other park services. "They really are deteriorating noticeably," says Jamie Boulding, on the phone from Strathcona Park Lodge, which his parents founded in 1959. The park itself was the first in B.C., came into being March 1, 1911, following an exploration expedition led by B.C.'s lands minister, Price Ellison, the year before. A group of hikers re-created that Campbell River-to-Port Alberni effort -- including the defining ascent of Crown Mountain -- in 2010; a film on their journey can be seen at UVic on March 1. The centennial should offer a chance to celebrate and promote B.C.'s once-cherished system, to counter the drop in the number of people actually dragging themselves away from their iWhatevers long enough to get a taste of what we used to boast of as SuperNatural British Columbia. "You want government to be lean, but what a bad year to be cutting the parks budget," Boulding says. As it is, he says the remaining parks workers do the best they can, but can't keep up with the work; some access trails stay closed all season. Recent news archives are littered with anecdotes of B.C. campsites closing early and visitors centres not opening at all, of firewood/camping/parking fees as high as the smell from some of the outhouses. The Sierra Club's Sarah Cox suffered a concussion when her backpack snagged as she was clambering over one of the dozens of big trees blocking an unmaintained trail in Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park in southeast B.C. That was a couple of days before a pair of cyclists, one with a rifle strapped to his back, sped past on another trail, making for the truck they had left on the no-vehicles road. The park ranger station was empty. Sometimes the infractions are more serious: A decade or so ago, the Mounties discovered someone had been logging a provincial park for the best part of a year, even spending $40,000 to have the wood hauled out by helicopter. Rules are irrelevant if no one is around to enforce them. "We have only one regular full-time park ranger for every 1.3 million hectares of B.C. parks and protected areas, far less than jurisdictions like Alberta," Heyman wrote. This isn't just about maintaining a wilderness playground for people in Tilley hats and Gore-Tex. Last August, B.C. auditor general John Doyle released a report saying the province doesn't have a plan to conserve the ecological integrity of its 1,000 parks and protected areas, the ones that purify water, prevent floods and allow endangered species to survive. Environment Minister Barry Penner basically shrugged sadly and pointed to the province's billion-dollar-plus deficit, said health care was B.C.'s spending priority; where we would rather spend our taxes, on park planning or your mother's hip replacement? (He didn't mention the new $458-million roof for B.C. Place.) Maybe we simply can't see the forest for the trees. The way we treat our wilderness puzzles Strathcona Park Lodge's European guests. "They can't understand how little we value it," Boulding says. But to see another funding cut on the parks system's 100th birthday really takes the cake. Jack Knox, The Victoria Times Colonist
