Castle Provincial Park and Castle Wildland Provincial Park, located near Waterton in SW Alberta, were recently created by the Provincial government to protect this sensitive and valuable bit of wilderness. The government is asking Albertans to provide feedback on the draft management plan for the parks.
The deadline for this is tomorrow, April 19. Please take some time to read the information on this page and complete the survey there. If you had completed the survey for the previous management plan, you can still respond now to the new plan.
One of the main issues at stake is whether off-highway motorized vehicles (OHV’s) will be allowed in the parks. There is an extensive network of trails in the parks, and the OHV community is lobbying to allow OHV use in the parks to continue. Researchers say that the proposed parks are already so heavily used that it will require a lot of restoration before they can really be valuable wildlife refuges. There are so many roads and trails in the parks right now that many species have been negatively impacted.
As birders and conservationists, we should lend our voices to this debate.
Bluebirds are very shy species.
If Parks department think they can better control survival, then by all means, yes
Limit OHVs
and close off roads to achieve the end results.
Thanks for this. I didn’t realize I could comment on the revision, too.
Please do not allow Recreational vehicles in the Park… we need to preserve these natural areas…. designate other areas for quads…. (owner of two Quads)
My husband and I are very concerned that there is reference to offsetting limiting the use of OHS in the Castle Area but offsetting the reductions or elimination of OHS use in the Castle Area with land use in the Livingston and Porcupine Hills. We believe that lands already destroyed by OHS use are more than enough given that the OHS users are happy to endure loud noise and degraded landscapes. No additional land should be made available for OHS use in the Livingston and Porcupine areas.
OHS use of fragile areas in the Castle, Livingston and Porcupine Hills needs to be forbidden and more importantly there needs to be strict enforcement otherwise these restrictions will be ignored as they are in many protected areas due to lack of adequate funding for enforcement. The elimination of summer OHS use in the Castle area with extremely regulated and limited use of OHS for picking up the hunters kill may be acceptable depending on the regulations developed for such limited use..
Winter OHS use needs to be strictly controlled during the time periods when animals are breeding and the female animals are pregnant or have vulnerable young. Winter OHS users should be restricted to special trails in some of lower elevations and possibly some already degraded four wheel drive roads with funding for adequate monitoring and enforcement of the use of trails by OHS users.
Thank you for sending this! I wasn’t aware of the survey. I immediately filled it out. Took about 15 minutes. I hope everyone will support this plan to preserve this beautiful place. So fortunate our Minister of the Environment took charge before it was totally ruined.
Here, here! For the sake of the birds (and all wildlife) we need to limit the most harmful human activities in the most sensitive parts of nature.
WE ROLAND and SONIA PERROTT HAVE SEEN WHAT OHV TRAILS DO TO THE ENVIRONMENT WE . WE HAVE SEEN WHAT HAS HAPPENED AT NORDEGG AND BIG HORN AREAS . NO .. IF ITS A PARK .NO OHVS ..IS OUR VOTE