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Managing in the mountains

Banff conference looks at issues associated with bringing people to the mountains

For the last year I have been carefully watching the transformation of the town of Golden from a logging-based economy to one based on tourism. As with most ski resort developments, Golden is now going through some crucial decisions as far as human impact on the environment.

Interestingly enough, this was the topic of a recent conference at the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture. From June 10 to 14 researchers, park managers, mountain enthusiasts, tour operators and planners gathered in the Alberta Rockies for the first Human Use Management in Mountain Areas (HUMMA) conference to examine how to measure and mitigate human impacts on mountain environments. Those impacts could be as simple as a footprint or as complex as the cumulative effects of human presence in a wildlife corridor. But as the conference brochure warned: Mountain environments are among the most fragile on earth. They are also among the most visited.

Golden is one of the most recent mountain towns to grapple with the issue of balancing man and nature, with its transformation to the Kicking Horse ski area. It’s a balancing act I’ve been following through production of the Goldenrush film, which will chronicle Golden’s transformation from logging town to resort.

The transformation is interesting, but so is the goal of drawing more people to the mountains. All over the world, mountain environments draw visitors and residents in ever-increasing numbers. In some mountain regions of the United States, population growth over the past decade was three times the national average. Whistler was one of the fastest growing towns in Canada for much of the 1990s. Every year more than four million people visit Banff National Park and in the United States more than 10 million visit the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and environs. Internationally, mountain areas face cultural and environmental impacts as sports-oriented mountain tourism grows in popularity.

It’s a question Golden is just beginning to deal with. As conference speaker Dr. Robert Manning, professor of natural resources at the University of Vermont said: "How many visitors can ultimately be accommodated in our national parks and related areas before the integrity of natural and cultural resources is threatened, and the quality of the visitor experience is degraded?"

Manning, who has worked with the U.S. National Park Service to develop and apply systems for measuring carrying capacities of protected areas, was part of an impressive list of speakers at the conference.

Bob Aitken is a freelance research consultant and writer from Scotland. His Ph.D. dissertation was on wilderness areas in Scotland (Aberdeen University, 1977), but for the last 20 years his expertise has been in designing sustainable trails or paths resulting in minimal damage to the surrounding environment.

Edwin Bernbaum, director of the Sacred Mountains program at The Mountain Institute and a research associate at the University of California at Berkeley, offered some incredible insights on The Sacred Mountains of the World. His book by the same title won the Commonwealth Club of California’s gold medal for best work of nonfiction and the Giuseppe Mazzotti Special Jury Award in Italy for literature of mountaineering, exploration and the environment. Bernbaum is a scholar of comparative religion and mythology and provided some insights on managing conflicts between value systems.

I had a particularly interesting interview with David Mattson, who has studied grizzly bears for the last 21 years, focusing on the conservation and behavioural ecology of bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem. I asked Mattson, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, about how grizzlies behave in logging environments versus how they behave in ski resorts. Mattson, whose lecture was titled Human Use Management to Diminish Wildlife Impacts, had some very interesting comments about whether bears had more "lethal" contacts with humans in industrial situations than in recreational situations. The subject is fascinating, especially since there have been mixed messages as to the actual dangers facing grizzlies in the vicinity of the new Kicking Horse Resort.

The conference – organized by the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture and sponsored by Parks Canada, with planning assistance from the IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas – was framed around four general themes: Optimizing responsible, sustainable recreation and tourism; Minimizing ecological impact; Optimizing access; and Minimizing cultural impacts. Each theme was explored through a moderated panel discussion, followed by problem-solving exercises based on real-life problems proposed by participants.

David Zehrer of Colorado spoke about managing major competitive events in the mountains. As race director for the Pikes Peak Ascent and Pikes Peak Marathon he has had to prepare and submit operating plans for the races to the U.S. Forest Service. He’s also co-ordinated sponsors’ interests with those of government agencies to keep conflicts to a minimum – a current which ran throughout the conference seminars.

There was also an evening of entertaining films picked for the occasion from the archives of the Banff Mountain Film Festival and introduced by its founder, Bernadette McDonald. It was really a powerful gathering and one which most definitely acted as a catalyst to get everyone’s creative juices flowing.

The issues discussed proved to be highly informative and at times provocative. Some speakers were quite opinionated and vocal.

As it turns out Canada’s national parks seem to have some of the world’s most established programs and policies. Some of the comments I noticed, from poorer nations especially, lamented the lack of funds and resources that their local parks authorities have to institute any kind of significant change.

While the conference focus was on land use in parks, the sessions only began to touch on the issue of impacts on the local mountain communities. This may be an area worthy of a whole conference in itself. It will no doubt be touched on in the 2002 conference, which is considering subjects such as planning and design in mountain areas, decision-making and governance in mountain areas, and water management in mountain areas.

The Banff Centre for Mountain Culture has Mountain Communities Conferences planned for the next four years. Associate director Leslie Taylor says the conferences are at the core of the CMC mandate.

"Through the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festivals we celebrate mountain experiences and visions, through these conferences we provide a way for people to exchange ideas about some of the very real issues confronting mountain communities today," Taylor said.

The conference had important messages for all of us, as far as global issues and mountain resorts are concerned. A town like Golden is just beginning to shape its approach to dealing with these issues; towns like Whistler and Banff have already established their approach, but can still modify their directions. The one thing all have in common is people with a passion for the mountains. The Banff conference showed that although the issues are huge, that passion can be translated to solutions.



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