Alberta’s back trail law threatens overburdened environment

Alberta scientists and environmentalists say that proposed legislation governing out-of-country trails on public lands will thwart efforts to restore nature and add one more stressor to an already overstretched landscape.

Environment Minister Jason Nixon has said that the Trails Act, pending a second reading in the legislature, will not close any trails and open the way for new ones.

But parts of the province are already above legal thresholds for so-called “linear disturbances,” from a highway to a cutoff line or a thoroughfare. And some wonder how the bill’s intent to open new access will combine with Alberta’s promises to reclaim increasingly scarce habitat.

“What’s missing from the Trail Law is trail closures in sensitive wildlife habitat,” said Mark Boyce, a biologist at the University of Alberta.

Nixon made a point of saying there would be no closings when he introduced the bill.

“This will provide an increase in designated trails that meet environmental standards,” he said. “What this law does not do is close trails.”

But at least four government-funded, peer-reviewed studies have concluded that the density of roads and trails is already damaging populations of animals such as caribou, brown bear and bull trout. That’s especially true in the hills and mountains of the southwestern province, where the use of ATVs has long been popular.

The Livingstone-Porcupine Hills plan for the area, a legal document, stipulates no more than 0.4 kilometers of trails for every square kilometer in the most sensitive areas and 0.6 kilometers everywhere. Government estimates already place the density in the area between 0.9 and 5.9 kilometers per square kilometer.

In other parts of the province, such as the Lake Bistcho region in the north, only six percent of the caribou’s habitat is not altered by linear features. Alberta has signed an agreement with Ottawa to try to increase that number to 65 percent.

Stream crossings also create problems by muddying downstream waters and damaging fish habitat. Nixon said the crossings will be improved and cleaned, but the Livingstone-Porcupine area alone has 3,000 of them.

“You cover almost any track on a quad bike, you’re not going to go that far before you have to cross a creek somewhere,” said Boyce, who uses an all-terrain vehicle. “Most of those are big muddies.”

In an email, Alberta Environment spokesman Paul Hamnett said the proposed law will not affect efforts to restore the old limits and will follow any subregional caribou plans “that are in place.”

“By designating trails and mapping recreational use of the desired trail network, the Trails Act will help prevent damage to public lands that can result from unintentional trail use,” he wrote.

But few parts of Alberta have completed subregional plans and Devon Earl of the Alberta Wilderness Association said new trails should not be allowed before the work is done.

“We need to have those plans in place first. It needs to be science-based.”

Alberta Environment, despite a request, did not disclose any investigation conducted before the Trails Act was introduced.

Fisheries biologist Lorne Fitch said the bill is “absolutely contrary” to the Livingstone-Porcupine plan, completed after more than three years of consultation.

“Getting to a (sustainable) threshold will require a tremendous amount of trail recovery, not the construction of new ones,” he said. “And that’s the case up and down all the eastern slopes.”

The bill has also been criticized for the discretion it gives the environment minister to designate trails and decide which user groups have access to them.

University of Calgary law professor Shaun Fluker has called the bill: “A statute consisting almost entirely of permissive statements authorizing a minister … to promulgate all substantive legal rules at some point. later outside the legislative process. “

Nixon has not responded to repeated inquiries about whether he is a current or former member of an ATV group.

Fitch said the Trails Act reflects an ongoing problem in Alberta conservation.

“This is the problem with people who don’t understand ecological thresholds and just want more (more logging, more OHV activity, more coal mines, more random camping) and still have native trout, brown bears and caribou,” he said.

“This is another cumulative impact on a landscape that already cries out for a reduction in land use.”

This Canadian Press report was first published on November 14, 2021.