Canada appears to manage its national parks in an . . . odd . . . way.
We’ve been to a number of national parks in the US over the past couple of months, and we pretty much know what to expect at this point. The US seems to treat its national parks as extremely sensitive land, with minor, controlled commercial development, a rustic, wilderness feel, with strict boundaries and rules, and plenty of rangers and park personnel around. You know when you’ve entered park land because there are only a few roads in and out, all with manned booths. There are generally few/no services around – it can be quite frustrating to stay in a national park for days on end because it’s hard to buy the things you need. But for us, that all adds to the rustic feel of the parks – you are closer to nature, and closer to the past.
So imagine our surprise when we drove West from Calgary to Banff national park:
- A major expressway artery runs through the park (so major it’s called Highway 1). You don’t know when you’ve entered the park (maybe there was a sign?). There was a booth a number of miles in (apparently blocking part of the expressway?), but I’m not clear that you had to purchase a parks pass to drive the highway.
- An expressway in the middle of an area that is supposed to function as a diverse wildlife refuge? Seriously? No question they’re dividing animal populations and restricting habitat with that one. They have installed some ‘wildlife overpasses’ to let animals cross over the highway, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction, but seems pretty optimistic as a fix.
- Why are there major towns in the middle of a national park? The town of Banff is pretty chichi, with expensive shops and restaurants, a mall, and more ice cream shops per block than our previous high-water mark, Bar Harbor. (Ice cream shops per block is our personal ‘index of touristiness’). The parks in the US sometimes have small towns on their flanks, and you can occasionally get lucky and find a grocery store inside the park boundary. Yet there are 3 ski areas in Banff national park!
- Lake Louise, which is a gorgeous, milky blue glacial lake about 45 minutes North of Banff, has a massive Four Seasons-like development at its base. There was a guy playing the harp in the lobby. Why is this in a national park, right at the border of a major natural wonder? We thought national parks were supposed to be unspoiled and affordable to a nation’s populous.
- During our 2 weeks in 3 Canadian national parks, we did not see one person we could legitimately call a ranger. Sometimes they had huts near trailheads where rangers were supposed to be, but nobody was ever in them. This is grizzly bear country! Who deals with the wildlife? Who makes sure all these tourists don’t wreck the landscape? Nobody we saw.
- In Jasper, we saw a number of people box in a bull elk to take pictures of it, until it got angry and started howling, scaring it into a road where traffic had luckily stopped. In Glacier, two park rangers were on scene when we were viewing 2 grizzly bears playing in the water near the side of the road 300+ feet away or so, and told us to vacate the area when the bears got out of the water because they needed more space.
Apologies for the diatribe here. We wondered these things in hushed tones while we were visiting the parks, unsure if we were being too critical. But now, we feel somewhat vindicated in our assessment. Kristen has been reading a book on grizzly attacks, which points out that the ridiculous nature of Banff’s extreme (for a national park) development, the expressway, and some poor wildlife management decisions, had historically created circumstances in which bears could become particularly dangerous in the area (it’s been better in recent years due to some drastic changes in practice).
Not that the US national park system doesn’t have any issues – but when you enter a park in the States, you at least know what it’s supposed to represent. The national parks we visited in Canada felt like, well, everywhere else in Canada.
No comments:
Post a Comment